Apple just revealed a major new financing feature!
Apple enters the competitive “Buy Now Pay Later” (BNPL) market, forecasted to be $40 billion by 2030.
All merchants in the US that have Apple Pay enabled will automatically benefit from this update, without any additional integration required. That includes all Shopify merchants!
What do you think about BNPL solutions? Have you tried them already for your business?
2 weeks ago, Google announced a major Search Engine algorithm update: the May 2022 Core Update.
If you want to learn more about what a core update is, we had written a previous article about this, which you can read here.
We now have more info and feedback from website owners about the changes. And it turns out the shake-ups have been massive.
There have been massive movements, positive as well as negative, in website rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).
In the video, we share some data analysis about the Google update aftermath and the community’s reaction from marketers and website owners.
Manual Ad Placements – Time Consuming and Frustrating
Manually setting up ad campaigns, through platforms like Facebook, Google, and more, are seemingly not an exact science. Plenty of WooCommerce business owners throw ads up across social media, but don’t understand why they are paying so much for such paltry results.
Unless you are a digital marketing expert, knowing where and when to place ads can seem almost esoteric – but automated ad placements are much more powerful than you think!
Programmatic ads are what major companies like Google, the Economist, TNT, and other major corporations use to get the best ad placements for the cheapest price. Now, there is software that exists that brings the same online promotional power to small and medium-sized businesses. If there is one aspect of your online business to automate, let it be your ad placements. It will save you hours of time a day and the constant headaches of playing “trial and error” with your online ads
Automating Customer Data Collection & Retargeting
Furthermore, to increase sales on WooCommerce, storeowners need to have software that gathers the profile info of whoever sees and interacts with the ads! That way, you can continue showing them promotional specials in the future, targeting them with your products without having to lift a finger. This kind of precision in your digital marketing (especially at scale) is simply impossible with at least some level of automation.
Within the last few years, mobile users officially tipped the scales over desktop ones: 61% of website visits in the US came from mobile in 2020, while worldwide the number rose to 68.1%. However, for many business owners who comes from traditional “brick-and-mortar” backgrounds, it can be difficult to handle both a beautiful desktop WooCommerce site alongside a smooth mobile user experience.
As we’ve written about before, e-commerce sites need to adapt their mobile layout to the design features and limitations of viewers browsing their site on a tinier screen!
That means more simplistic visuals, “swipe-through” slideshows (to browse product after product), and clickable buttons that “expand” or minimize content/product descriptions. That way, you can neatly pack in all the features of your site without overwhelming users browsing on their phone.
Along with that, advertising your WooCommerce store across mobile apps gives you a whole new level of promotional exposure. Again, your mobile ad designs need a different aesthetic when compared to desktop. The dominant form now are “swipe-able” slideshows that present your product with a beautiful, simple, bold background. That way, while playing their favorite mobile game or browsing their favorite news aggregator, users see ads for your WooCommerce store!
Diversifying where you place your online ads is key to a successful digital marketing strategy. It can seem a bit overwhelming to think about at first, but it is much easier than you might think to be running ad campaigns on desktop, mobile apps, and across the web. By fine-tuning each ad campaign to the medium it runs on, you have a much better chance of increasing your WooCommerce sales 😊
If you want help automating your ad placements for the best results, reach out to try Ad360 today! Our free two week trial gives users a chance to realize the significance of running both desktop and mobile-friendly ad campaigns – all with only a few clicks.
Set a Daily Budget
First, to take control of your online marketing, establish a “daily average” budget you can spend on advertising. New stores can gain traction across the web with as little as $5/day ($150/month). From there, a general rule of thumb is 5-10% of your revenue goes back into marketing overhead.
Calibrate Your Custom Audience
Second, you need to begin targeting your custom audiences! You can target customers based on demographic info (e.g. – age, gender, location), or interests they express online. Make sure to dive into research on your custom audiences – they will be your most likely customers!
Retarget Likely Customers
Ok, so you’ve set a daily budget, established large swaths of your custom audience, and now you’ve put out some nice ads. The metrics show that roughly 10,000 users viewed the ad from either their desktop or mobile. But barely any clicked through or bought!
Do not be discouraged, this is normal. Just remember, if even 1% of those 10,000 end up becoming customers, that’d be 100 new orders to your WooCommerce store. So, how do you up that conversion rate to become a truly successful online business?
Automate Ad Placements for Peak Conversions
There is software, easily accessible on the market, that can automate ad placements for the cheapest price and maximum exposure. Retargeting software could further increase your conversion rate to 2-3%, putting in the elite tier of e-commerce stores. In fact, the top 10% of all online stores have a conversion rate of 3.8% or higher.
Virtually all the most successful e-commerce stores deploy automated ad placements to get affordable ads with great visibility. They also all use savvy digital marketing techniques – like retargeting – to increase their WooCommerce sales. How? By reaching back out to customers who have seen their ads across the web and social media! After a few “touches,” customers are ready to go from “browsing” to “buying.”
Feel free to check out Ad360’s Quick Ads, to trial automated ad placements. It only takes one click to organize your next ad campaign!
While setting a daily budget and promoting on major platforms are the backbone of driving traffic to your store, neither will automatically increase your SEO or SERP.
Instead, quality website text and blog posts help Google “crawl” your page more efficiently. By doing so, you will rank higher for the keyword searches potential customers execute every day! So, Ad360 recommends that, if you have a WooCommerce store you are advertising online, make posting a 250+ word blog post part of your routine.
It’s important to note that good visuals online – especially mobile – are essential to catching customers’ attention. Xerox found that colorful infographics increase readership and customer memory by 80%! However, to keep them there, it helps to have a supporting blog post describing your product.
Because WooCommerce comes with a WordPress site, e-commerce business owners can get in a routine of preparing advertisements to go out across social media and the web, and linking the accompanying blog post with a minimal strain on your time.
In fact, the blog posts do not even have to be perfect and sound “polished” and professionally written. Most online users read blog posts for entertainment and education, not to make buying decisions. Some quick numbers on that: 77% of the internet users read blogs, and a third of all readers read them solely for entertainment. So, let your blog be your outlet for you to show your brand’s personality and connect on a more conversational and intimate tone with your followers. Hopefully, this post here inspires you to keep pressing on ahead with your WordPress blog – let your voice be heard!
And hey, it increases your sales on WooCommerce and SEO ranking. Why not? 😉 Make the most of your WooCommerce promotion with an updated WordPress blog!
Google just announced the May 2022 core update for their Search algorithms!
This means that they’re starting to roll out massive changes to their ranking algorithms and that your website might be heavily impacted – positively, or negatively.
The previous large update like this one – called core updates – was in November 2021. Although Google is making changes all the time to their algorithms, they release a major update only every few months. These are likely to have a deeper impact on your website’s ranking in the Search Engine Response Pages (SERP).
Note that Google hasn’t disclosed what these new changes are specifically. The Google Search Engine algorithms are their secret sauce, so there always very secretive about how they work.
So what to do if your website is negatively affected?
Google says there’s no quick fix to turn things around if your rank drops massively.
However, there is a solution. It’s just that it’ll require more efforts to implement: Google advises affected website to work on their content and produce higher-quality content.If you do this, you can expect your search rank to improve over time.
You may ask, ‘What is high-quality content?’
To answer this, Google is pointing out to their guidance to help you produce better content which will be favored by the algorithms. This document is dated August, 2019 (almost 3 years old), but it remains the most up-to-date reference in terms of content quality for Google. They’re even linking to this page in this week’s announcement.
So this remains the best solution to work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
If you want to learn more, watch the video on our YouTube Channel ‘Ecommerce Success by Ad360’, in which we review in more detail the Google announcement, and the Google’s recommendations to get better ranked:
Wishing you a lot of success!
If you set a healthy daily budget for your ads, and organize sensible “custom audiences” to funnel ads to, your store will likely see a spike in traffic. However, we’ve noticed a common concern of WooCommerce storeowners online.
Many have expressed that, after shelling out for ad placements, they saw no corresponding bump in click-through or conversion rates. This means that even though users are seeing the ads online, they are not clicking buy. A boost in traffic, but no increase in sales, is a frustrating experience for WooCommerce stores with great products.
What can WooCommerce storeowners in this position do to boost sales?
Ad Retargeting! Arguably the most valuable online tactic for increase e-commerce store sales.
If you’ve been keeping up with Ad360’s “growth academy” series, you know it takes multiple engagements – or “touches” – before most customers are ready to make a purchase. Ad retargeting becomes an essential digital marketing tactic here. You can capture the data of customers who visit, and target all future ads towards these individuals.
Why?
They’ve already demonstrated concrete interest browsing your store!
Eventually, after seeing 3 or 4 of your WooCommerce store’s ads, customers go from simply being “aware” you exist, to purchasing every seasonal special!
However, WooCommerce ad retargeting “plugins” can be costly, confusing, or slow down your site speed – defeating its purpose. If you want help establishing ad retargeting as an effective part of your digital marketing strategy, reach out to Ad360 today! We’ll give you the 360 degree breakdown: retargeting is our specialty 😊
So, if you are interested boosting your “click-through” and conversion rates, give us a call or email today. Happy selling!
The WooCommerce “plugin” for WordPress is free, meaning the only costs come from paying for website hosting, your domain name, and security certificates. Furthermore, WooCommerce sites are much more flexible, allowing you to add features and connect outside services (e.g. – Etsy stores, Mailchimp), with no problem.
… That is, if you are familiar with coding!
The downside to WooCommerce’s cheap base plan and customizable features are that many storeowners will complain of the hours they themselves spent trying to fix “bad code” on their site, or the hundreds of dollars they had to pay a developer to come in and do the fixes for them.
Many owners who are not tech-savvy have huge problems with speed load times, which we’ve talked about as being one of the most important features of your e-commerce site. WooCommerce owners may be saddling their site with plugins that are unnecessary. However, if you are not a coding-savvy storeowner, it can become incredibly frustrating to hire a web developer every time you want to update your product line.
If you already have a WooCommerce store, and have experienced any of the issues above, Ad360 is the solution to your website promotion and repair! We offer a free website audit, can identify any issues with site speed, and make sure your store is ready to succeed online 😊
Booster Plus
BoosterPlus is an “all-in-one” plugin that comes highly recommended from many WooCommerce storeowners. It adds “buy buttons,” price labels, product listings, product images, pdf invoices, and dozens more features depending on the bundle you pick up. There is a free tier, but it may be worth looking at paid tiers because of the “all-in-one” nature of the plugin. Great for upgrading your WooCommerce store and boosting sales!
OptinMonster
We here at Ad360 have offered a 3-part series explaining the importance of email marketing to increasing e-commerce sales (link to part I, II, and III). OptinMonster is well-known for generating leads and converting “abandoned cart” sales at excellent rates.
OptinMonster could be a strong pairing with Ad360’s services. Ad360 is the e-commerce leader in retargeting, effective (and automated) ad placements, and professional ad banner design. Pairing that with OptinMonster’s focus on email marketing could be a potent combination to increase sales on WooCommerce.
Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce
Once your sales begin picking up, customers will demand a high level of organizational efficiency for shipping. In order to keep up with the competition, the advanced shipment tracking plugin for WooCommerce empowers storeowners to automate their fulfillment workflow.
Customers get tracking numbers to follow on the front end, while your business can easily keep track of which packages are marked as “completed,” and which ones are marked as “shipped.” Very helpful when you begin fulfilling hundreds of orders a day 😊
Honorable Mentions
The plugins below are ones we did not see as “universally” applicable to all stores, but check them out to get your WooCommerce strategy. You’ll likely start having ideas about what your store really needs just by reading the descriptions of each.