In the world of WordPress plugins, there are those that are built for developers, and those that are built for marketers. One of the great things about WooCommerce is the array of available tools specifically designed for the marketers. This article is going to focus on some of the more intuitive and user friendly extensions that can be excellent solutions for those marketing-minded folks that want to create a better user experience that drives sales.
WooCommerce Multilingual
This is the go-to plugin for making an entire WooCommerce store multi-lingual. This plugin creates a programmatic bond between
WPML (the front-runner in WordPress translation solutions) and any WooCommerce store. The plugin works on a variety of levels including compatibility with simple products, variable products and grouped products.
The best feature of this plugin is its end-to-end coverage the full WooCommerce system. The language translations not only are applied to products and product categories, but are also present throughout the entire checkout process – even sending purchase confirmation emails in the customer’s selected language.
WooCommerce Prices by User Role
This would be fantastic plugin to incorporate into a B2B eCommerce store that offers dynamic pricing to different customer types. This plugin essentially piggy backs off of the user role classification system in WordPress. A site administrator can use this plugin to manage one ecommerce store, consisting of one set of products, but apply different pricing to the product set. The price that is then displayed is dependent on the users designated role.
This plugin includes other features that make it even more flexible, including the ability to apply discounts and markups for designated user groups.
One particularly neat future is the ability to hide the “Add to Cart” button. This type of management could be utilized in a B2B capacity so that resellers can place orders and interact with the site in a true eCom capacity. At the same time, ordinary consumers are limited to more of a catalogue style experience. One store, one product set, two experiences.
WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart
This plugin adds some very advanced functionality to a WooCommerce store for a relatively minor price.
In particular, this plugin tracks abandoned shopping carts for both registered users and guest users, and provides site admins with the ability to follow up with shoppers that abandoned their cart.
For registered users who are logged in, the cart tracking begins from the moment they add an item to it. For guest users who may not be logged in, this plugin requires them to work their way to the point at which they enter their email address during checkout.
Once an abandoned cart is logged in the admin, a site administrator can then trigger targeted emails consisting of promotional material, discount codes, and a link for the user to recover their abandoned cart.
WooCommerce Customizer
This is a small and lightweight, but handy plugin - like a Swiss Army knife. It allows administrators to make small modifications to their WooCommerce page templates that more appropriately match their business logic.
For example: perhaps for a golf store, instead of an “Add to Cart,” button, it would be better suited to say “Add to Golf Bag.” Or for a car parts store the “Additional Information” tab on product pages could more appropriately read “Part Specs.”
These are examples of all little things that can be easily changed, on the fly, using the WooCommerce Customizer.
YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search
An article about making WooCommerce better would not be complete without addressing search functionality.
This plugin provides a live search for WooCommerce stores that is configurable in a number of ways to serve the most relevant results. Search queries can be run on all product metadata, including product description excerpts, product content, categories, tags and even SKUs.
For those stores that have tons of product categories, the search form can be configured to display category drop downs for front end users to narrow their search.
My favorite feature of this plugin is the fact that it supports shortcodes. This means that a marketer can configure the search logic and a developer can use the generated shortcodes to put the custom search anywhere they wish within a page template or site.
