[ad_1] There’s no denying that if you want to monetize your site or build an eCommerce store with WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to go. The powerful, versatile plugin currently powers over 6.5 million active online stores, making it the global leader in the world of eCommerce software platforms with a total market share of 36.68%. To put that into perspective, the second biggest eCommerce platform, Squarespace Online Stores, enjoys just under a 15% share of the same market. So what is it about this platform that makes it so popular? As you’ll read in this comprehensive WooCommerce guide, the answer is really a combination of things: 1. It runs on WordPress, which itself powers a significant portion of all the websites on the Internet. 2. It’s very easy to set up and use, meaning you can set up a complete online store (see our Woocommerce Tutorial) with practically no technical know-how required. 3. It offers an impressive list of features that can be extended via a variety of top WooCommerce add-ons and integrations, many of which we’ll share with you below. First, however, let’s talk about what exactly WooCommerce does, and how you can put it to work to build your online retail business. What is WooCommerce? At the most basic level, WooCommerce is a plugin that transforms your standard WordPress site into a dynamic online store. Yet to leave the description at that would be to do a disservice to what a rich and extensive tool WooCommerce really is. Via its own core features and many of the third-party extensions that we’ll share with you later, this comprehensive platform gives you everything you need to run your online business, handling everything from sales, shipping, and taxes to advanced marketing campaigns, all without hardly ever having to leave the WordPress environment. Article Continues Below WooCommerce Core Features: Out of the box, WooCommerce offers all of the following: Basic reporting and analytics Customizable eCommerce themes Add products to sell physical, digital, or service-based items Subscriptions Payment gateways Abandoned cart tools Manage orders Manage shipping and taxes Manage customers Marketing tools. The great thing is that if you find any of WooCommerce’s in-built tools don’t offer quite the level of functionality you need, you can always add one of the platform’s own 800+ extensions or one of the thousands of third-party add-ons out there. WooCommerce Analytics and Reporting By default, WooCommerce offers a standard set of reporting and analytics tools that provide that data on things such as: Your best and worst-selling products How many customers you’ve acquired Your inventory levels. All of this is relatively easy to access and make sense of, meaning it may be a good option if you’re just starting off and only have a few orders. However, if you have a lot of data and need more high-level reporting features, the following three extensions are a better option. 1. Metorik There are a few key reasons why we rate Metorik as the number one reporting and analytics tool for WooCommerce. First, the platform was developed by an ex-Automattic engineer who helped to build WooCommerce in the first place which means that, of all the third-party extensions out there, few understand WooCommerce and its users better than those at Metorik. Second, it utilizes an attractive, clean interface with intuitive navigation and a visual reporting style which makes it much easier to understand your data than the default WooCommerce reporting features. Thirdly, it provides an extensive array of reports on everything from revenue generated and total orders to how much tax you’re paying, to what extent refunds are hurting your bottom line, and more. Learn more about this powerful analytics tool in our comprehensive Metorik review. Pricing: Plans start from as little as just $20 for up to 100 orders per month. Try Metorik 2. Advanced WooCommerce Reporting If you’re happy with the level of data provided by WooCommerce but find the lackluster layout doesn’t lend itself well to gaining quick, accurate insights into your store performance, or if your success is such that Metorik’s order-based pricing doesn’t suit your budget, try Advanced WooCommerce Reporting instead. This popular plugin takes your core WooCommerce data, presents it in a much more easy-to-understand format, and provides you with both more data points and reporting options. Advanced WooCommerce Reporting Cost Advanced WooCommerce Reporting is available for a one-time cost of $45 for a standard Envato license. Try Advanced WooCommerce Reporting Don’t like any of these options? See our guide to the top 9 best WooCommerce reporting and analytics tools for your store. WooCommerce Product Add-Ons It’s hard to criticize WooCommerce’s product pages. Regardless of your theme, you’ll be able to present customers with all the information they need to make a purchasing decision, including dynamic product photos, shipping details, and more. Still, depending on the products you’re offering, you may want to go further and allow customers to personalize your products, upgrade their purchases, or create their own product bundles. If you’re looking for the perfect solution to allow you to do that, WooCommerce Product Add-Ons is the one for you. This feature-rich extension gives customers more flexibility over their purchases by allowing you to add a wide range of extra fields to your products. Elsewhere, you can also offer upsells, customized product packages so that you can sell personalized gift boxes and even a price calculator for more complex orders. See our detailed WooCommerce Product Add-Ons guide to learn more. Pricing: $69 for a single-site license or $119 for use on unlimited sites. Try WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Managing Shipping and Delivery in WooCommerce When you first install WooCommerce, you’ll be able to offer customers multiple shipping options with different rates and assign those options to different regions. This is a great start, but as with everything eCommerce related, you can enhance your shipping process with a number of add-ons, including: 1. WooCommerce Advanced Shipping The WooCommerce Advanced Shipping plugin allows you to use table rate shipping to set an
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Konstantin Kovshenin Launches Sail, a CLI Tool for Deploying to Digital Ocean – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Last week, Konstantin Kovshenin launched Sail, a CLI tool for deploying WordPress applications to the DigitalOcean cloud. The project is free to use and open source. However, he has plans for an upgraded premium experience down the road. Kovshenin cited speed and efficiency as the two primary reasons developers should give his new tool a try. “You don’t need to wander around web UIs to launch a new server and install WordPress. You just sail init. You don’t need to open your SFTP GUI client to upload changes to your application. You just sail deploy.” He also said that because it is a simple CLI, it will integrate well with existing developer tools and services like Gulp, webpack, GitHub Actions, and more. “I’m a DIY guy when it comes to WordPress hosting, so I like to get my hands dirty with servers, code, configuration, and everything else,” wrote Kovshenin in the announcement post. “I’ve been using virtual servers at DigitalOcean for small WordPress projects for a very long time, and it’s great, and also very affordable.” He had grown annoyed doing routine maintenance and configuring servers for new projects. This led him to write many scripts for handling each piece of this over the years. Over the past couple of months, he cleaned them up and packaged them as a single CLI tool called Sail. It works across Linux, macOS, and Windows. While he lists some advantages of using Sail over the competition in the announcement post, he thinks the benefits come from using Sail with other developer tools. “For example, if you already use Git and GitHub, Sail can automatically deploy your application whenever you push to your main branch,” he said. “If your project is built with Gulp and webpack, you can ask npm to deploy your application after a successful build.” The CLI tool does not make assumptions about the development environment. Developers are free to use whatever setup they are accustomed to, such as Vagrant/VirtualBox, XAMP/MAMP, Local, Docker, or a custom setup. “You can use it without a local development environment at all and just cowboy-code your way through, and Sail will help you deploy with confidence and roll back when you’re overly confident,” he said. The following is a short video demo: The Future of Sail For the short term, Sail only works with DigitalOcean. However, Kovshenin plans to support more providers down the road as he looks into “more complex architectures.” However, he said it is not a high priority at the moment. “DigitalOcean has the best documentation, hands down,” he said. “The simplicity of their APIs just blows you away. And that simplicity extends to their pricing as well, which made it quite an obvious choice.” While the tool is free, he will offer a Sail Premium service. There is currently no launch date for it. Kovshenin said he was gauging overall interest before diving in. However, he does have an Early Access signup form. Those who use it will gain free passes during the beta period and possibly a discount at launch. Right now, his focus is on building the core Sail features, which he says will always be free. “The biggest new feature I’m excited about right now is Blueprints,” said Kovshenin. “This is going to be a YAML manifest file, which will describe the desired application environment and state, including which WordPress plugins to install and activate, which themes and settings, as well as any additional server software and configuration, such as mail, firewall, etc. And to get all of this you’ll just need to specify the blueprint file to sail init.” The goal is to allow users to build, reuse, and even share their blueprints. Sail itself will even make common configurations available. A single blueprint could include WooCommerce, Stripe, Storefront, Jetpack, Redis object caching, mail relay via MailGun, and more. “Other features on the list include sub-projects, staging/cloning, automatic and remote backups, profiling, monitoring, and malware/vulnerability scanning,” said Kovshenin. He is hoping for more feedback on missing features that could make the project more useful for others. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWordPress 5.8 Puts a Powerful Image-Editing Tool Into Users’ Hands – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Features such as the upcoming block-based widgets system, the template editor, theme-related blocks, and others have taken up much of the spotlight as of late. However, one of the best user-focused tools shipping with WordPress 5.8 is a duotone filter for Image and Cover blocks. The term “duotone” in this sense means combining two colors as a filter. Then, layering it over an image or video. More specifically, one color is used for the shadows (dark elements), and the second color is used for the highlights (light colors). When the feature first landed in Gutenberg 10.6 back in May, I spent a couple of hours just tinkering around with it on that first day. Since then, I have racked up a few more. It is a powerful media-editing tool that does not require users to dive into image-editing programs, allowing them to change the mood of a story at the click of a button. Duotones can be anything from a simple grayscale to a mixture of any two colors. Shadows and highlights can even be inverted, depending on the shades chosen. The following shows the difference between an original image of kittens (because who doesn’t love kittens?) and one with a grayscale filter: Original image vs. grayscale duotone version. WordPress offers a set of eight duotone color sets by default. This includes a grayscale, dark grayscale, and various combinations, making for some fun filters. Some will work better than others, often depending on the media file uploaded. Applying the WordPress purple and yellow duotone filter. Like many other features awaiting users with WordPress 5.8, theme authors are those who need to dig in to offer a range of ready-baked options for users. The new theme JSON file configuration allows developers to define a set of duotone colors that match their theme. Defining custom duotone filters is as easy as plugging a name, a slug, and two colors into a theme.json file. The theme developer handbook includes examples of creating such presets. Custom “emerald scale” duotone filter from a theme. Users are not limited to the filters that WordPress or their themes offer. The duotone popover allows them to choose from any range of colors for custom shadows and highlights. Duotone typically works best when an image has a high contrast, which means a wide-ranging spread between the light and dark colors. Darker shadows and lighter highlights make for more visually stunning filters. When used with the Cover block, users can add filters to both image and video backgrounds. However, they also have access to the typical overlay color or gradient option. This provides a ton of flexibility for customizing media. Duotone filter + gradient overlay on a Cover block. Because the duotone feature works with an inline SVG file under the hood, it also means that using it does not permanently change image or video files. Users can still use their original media elsewhere on the site without uploading a second copy. Duotone is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other possibilities outside of just laying a couple of colors on top of an image. Bence Szabó wrote an extensive tutorial on using SVG filters for patterns on CSS-Tricks. This could be a route for background options in the future — wood grain, anyone? Maybe not every possibility is suitable for core WordPress, but I would love to see plugin authors taking a stab at some alternatives. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWhich Is the Best Marketing Tool? (2021)
[ad_1] Trying to choose between GetResponse vs Mailchimp for your email marketing and digital marketing platform? Both of these tools started as email marketing services but have since morphed into full digital marketing platforms complete with website and landing page builder tools, along with many other useful options. But which is the best tool for your specific situation? To help you decide between GetResponse vs Mailchimp, I’m going to compare these two tools in three key areas: Ready to get started? Let’s dig in! 🧰 Features To kick off our comparison, let’s go over the features that each tool offers in a comparison table. The core of both tools is email marketing, but both also offer other useful marketing features like a CRM, landing pages, and more. High-Level Features Feature Mailchimp GetResponse Email marketing ✔️ ✔️ CRM ✔️ ✔️ Landing page builder ✔️ ✔️ Full website builder ✔️ ✔️ Webinars ❌ ✔️ Live chat ❌ ✔️ Web push notifications ❌ ✔️ Facebook ad creator ✔️ ✔️ Dedicated WordPress plugin ❌✔️* ✔️ * Mailchimp only has an official plugin for WooCommerce stores. There’s no official plugin for regular WordPress sites. Overall, you can see that GetResponse can do pretty much everything that Mailchimp does…plus more. GetResponse just launched its own full website builder, so it now has feature parity with Mailchimp there (Mailchimp used to have that as an edge). Beyond that, GetResponse can go a lot further with useful features like webinars and live chat. With Mailchimp, you’d need to use a third-party service to add those features (and probably pay extra to do that). With GetResponse, though, you get everything built-in, which both simplifies your marketing efforts because you need to use fewer tools and also saves you money. Nitty-Gritty Features Now, let’s get more in-depth into the nitty-gritty features. I’ll break these down into different categories… Email marketing Feature Mailchimp GetResponse Drag-and-drop email builder ✔️ ✔️ Pre-built email templates ✔️ ✔️ Autoresponders ✔️ ✔️ Marketing automation ✔️ ✔️ Email analytics ✔️ ✔️ Transactional email support ✔️ ✔️ RSS to email ✔️ ✔️ Website/landing page builder Feature Mailchimp GetResponse Drag-and-drop builder ✔️ ✔️ Pre-built templates ✔️ ✔️ Popups and forms ✔️ ✔️ Custom domain ✔️ ✔️ A/B testing ✔️ ✔️ Sales funnels ❌✔️* ✔️ * You can manually create a sales funnel with Mailchimp – there’s just not a built-in feature to help you do it. Overall, you can see that things are pretty similar in terms of the core features that you’d look for. Of course, there are smaller feature differences here and there, but most people probably won’t notice big differences in either direction. ⚙️ User Interface Now that you know the features, let’s get into the user interface of Mailchimp vs GetResponse. That is – what is it like to use each tool and how user-friendly are they? Mailchimp Mailchimp has a very minimalist dashboard with lots of white space. To access the various tools, you can use the small sidebar on the left: To interact with your customers, you can create a “campaign”. A campaign can be pretty much anything: Email Customer journey Landing page Survey Ads Social media post Signup form Printed postcards Mailchimp Email Builder I’ll keep the focus on emails for now. When you create an email, you’ll get a multi-step builder that takes you through setting up your email in different screens. First, you can choose from three types of emails: Regular Automated Plain-text Then, you’ll be in the dedicated interface for your email, which makes it easy to set up key areas: At the time that I’m writing this, Mailchimp gives you a choice between two different email builders – the “Classic” drag-and-drop builder or a new builder that’s in beta. I’ll use the new builder because it might be the default builder by the time that you’re reading this post. When you create an email, you can choose from a blank slate or a pre-built template. Then, you can use a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder to control your email design and content. You can move things around with drag-and-drop and easily add new elements by clicking the plus icon: To edit text, you can just click and type. You also get a dedicated option to insert merge tags, which lets you include dynamic information in your email templates (like a person’s first name). For eCommerce stores, you’ll also get a dedicated product block. And that’s it for the highlights of creating an email. Mailchimp Website Builder The rest of the Mailchimp interface carries on the same general aesthetic. For example, the drag-and-drop website/landing page builder uses a similar builder, though the website builder is a little more “section-based” where you construct your website by putting together blocks for different sections. Inside each section block, you can customize the content and design: This means the website builder doesn’t quite offer full free-form drag-and-drop design, though it should be plenty for people looking to build simple websites. GetResponse In contrast to Mailchimp’s interface, GetResponse’s interface is a little more “busy”. That’s not a criticism, it just seems like a different design philosophy, where Mailchimp tries to create a minimalist experience and GetResponse tries to pack in every feature and navigation option: You can also customize the main dashboard to meet your needs by adding “widgets”. GetResponse Email Builder When you create a new email, you get a nice compact interface that looks pretty similar to the equivalent interface at Mailchimp: To design your email, you can choose from a variety of pre-built templates for various niches or start from a blank slate. Once you choose your starting point, you’ll be in a drag-and-drop builder. You’ll see a live preview of your email on the left along with options in the sidebar to add new content blocks or customize your existing blocks: When you select a block, you’ll open its settings in the sidebar. For text blocks, you can just click and type on the live preview and you’ll also get an
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