Tag Archives: online

Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School?

Posted on August 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Winter holidays may be peak money-making time for online stores, but don’t overlook the back to school season. Parents and students spent more than $82 billion on back to school purchases in 2018. That’s more than shoppers spent on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day combined. Today’s back-to-school must-haves include much more than jeans and school supplies, which means your eCommerce site may have a bigger audience than you think for back-to-school offers. And just about any business can offer a back-to-school themed deal. The National Retail Federation says that back to school (defined as shopping for K-12 students) and back to college spending will hit record highs this year. The average household with K-12 kids will spend $696 on back to school. The average household with kids in college will spend $976.  Want your online store to capture some of that spending? Here’s how you can get your eCommerce site ready and for back to school and back to college shoppers. Do You Have What Back-to-School Shoppers Need? If your store sells kids’ clothes, shoes, backpacks, or school supplies, you’re probably already on top of your back to school marketing game. However, electronics are also hot sellers for back to school. More than half of shoppers for K-12 kids said they’ll buy at least one new electronic device for back to school this year. The top electronics items for K-12 kids are computers, cellphones, and calculators.  The back to college market includes even more categories. School supplies, clothes, and shoes are all big categories for these young adults. So are personal care products and food—more than 70% of students surveyed said they’ll be stocking up on these items when they do their back to school shopping.  More than half of back to college shoppers also plan to pick up some college-branded gear (which can be anything from shirts and hats to décor and gifts), electronics, and furnishings. More than a third of back to college shoppers—presumably parents—plan to stock up on gift cards, too. Can You Offer What Back-to-School Shoppers Want? Let’s say your store doesn’t sell any of the items mentioned above. You can still ace back to school season. Here are a few ideas to help you brainstorm your own offers: Gardening supply stores can offer deals on seeds and tools for teachers who want to plant school gardens. Online travel agencies can offer weekend packages for parents who need a little kid-free time after summer full of family togetherness. Pet supply shops can run deals on treats and toys for companion animals whose pals are at school all day. Board game, sporting goods, and toy sellers can promote deals on items that families can enjoy together on the weekends. Stores that sell any sort of cleaning products have a perfect tie-in. Back to school is the perfect time for a deep cleaning of the house and car. Understand the Back to School Shopping Timeline School shopping season starts sooner than you think and lasts longer than you may realize. About half the households surveyed in early July by the NRF said they’d already started shopping. And the big sale event that budget-conscious back to school shoppers wait for has already passed this year. Amazon Prime Day and its competitors’ sales draw a lot of attention from parents, teens, and college students.  However, the other half of households surveyed at the beginning of July hadn’t started shopping yet, because they’re waiting for the best sales. If you want their back-to-school business, you’ll need to serve up a great sale. What Makes a Great Back to School Sale for eCommerce Sites? Price. Now’s the time to offer coupon codes and flash sales on your site to appeal to parents and teens—and to stay competitive with your competitors’ deals. Most back to school shoppers are price sensitive, a trend that’s persisted for years. However, tweens and teens are spending more of their own money on back to school purchases. That may translate into a few more splurge items (the average teen is kicking in about $36).  Show some deal love to the teachers who shop with you, too. Teachers often spend out of their own pockets for classroom supplies—a big expense on a typical educator’s salary. Most major retailers offer special back to school deals like coupons, freebies, and extra rewards program points for educators. Your store will be more competitive if it does the same. And you don’t have to sell school supplies to make a teacher deal work. You can give them a deal on whatever you sell. Free shipping . There’s no way around this one. The NRF survey found that “90 percent of K-12 and 85 percent of college shoppers plan to take advantage of free shipping.” Already offer free shipping? You’re good to go.  If you don’t, now might be a good time to start. One popular approach is to offer paid shipping for your fastest delivery option and free shipping for slower delivery. These budget-conscious shoppers generally won’t mind waiting a couple of extra days in exchange for free shipping.  Before you add free shipping to your store, you may need to adjust your product prices. Factor in your expected shipping expenses, so you don’t lose money on those orders. Now is also a good time to review your online store’s shipping guidelines to see if they need updating before the holiday rush. Promotion. Create a campaign for the parent and young adult segments of your store’s email list that shows off your best back to school offers. Update your store’s blog with news about new back to school items or upcoming flash sales, and then share those posts on social media. You can create coupon codes for your email list and social media followers , too. Nearly 20% of internet users say they always use coupons when they shop , and another 26% use them “very often.” Give them what they’re looking for. Post Back-to-School Steps Review your site traffic and sales numbers to fill out your back to school season report card. Make notes and put back to school prep on next year’s marketing calendar. Then take a breath and start getting your online store ready for the holidays . Good luck! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Your eCommerce Website Ready for Back to School?

Product Pages Matter More Than Ever. Here’s How to Make Yours Better

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post Product Pages Matter More Than Ever. Here’s How to Make Yours Better appeared first on HostGator Blog . Pop quiz: Which matters more, your website’s homepage or your product pages? Thanks to the way most people search and shop now, one of your product pages will probably be their first contact with your store. In fact, they may never see your homepage at all. That’s okay–it means people are landing on your product pages when they’re ready to buy. But will they buy from you? It depends on how effective that product page is. Here are some ways to make yours convert. Use SEO to Help Shoppers Find Your Products SEO can be intimidating to new store owners because there are a lot of elements to consider, and best practices change when search engines like Google update the way they index and rank sites. It’s a good idea for any new eCommerce entrepreneur to master the basics of SEO and keep learning. To start, these are some of the elements you’ll want to optimize on your product pages: Page speed There are two things to keep in mind as you check how long it takes your product pages to load. One, this page may be a visitor’s first experience with your store. Two, if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less on their phone, they’re probably going to leave. How can you get a page full of high-resolution product photos and demo videos to load fast? Start with a host that delivers fast load times, like HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting. Choose a theme for your store like Astra or Schema Lite that’s lightweight and doesn’t slow down load times. And follow our recommendations for selecting image formats, sizes, and indexing for better SEO and, yep, faster page loads. Keywords and unique copy You might be tempted to save time by copy-pasting manufacturer descriptions or descriptions from other pages on your site, but this can ding your search rankings. Every product page needs its own unique description that includes the keywords shoppers use to search for that type of item. Go beyond basic keywords like “boys sandals” to so-called long-tail keywords that help people find exactly what they want to buy: “boys soccer sandals” or “toddler boys suede sandals.” This takes time, but it will help your product pages rank higher in the kinds of specific searches people do when they’re ready to make a purchase. Behind-the-scenes SEO Meta tags and schema markup are two elements that customers don’t see, but search engine crawlers do. The meta tags and descriptions on each page tell crawler bots what’s on the page, so make sure those robots can tell it’s a page for a “red enameled tea kettle” or “small martingale dog collar” for better click-through rates. You can also add schema markup to your product pages to generate rich results in Google searches. The easiest way to do this is with Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper . Enter your page URLs and start tagging. Create a Good Customer Experience with Smart Web Design and Copy Google’s UX playbook for eCommerce is full of research-based recommendations for product page improvements. For example, each product page should include a value proposition —a free shipping deal, a coupon code, or something customers can’t get anywhere else.   Don’t be shy about putting product prices up front. Customers prefer it, and if they must hunt for the price they may move on to another store. Google recommends displaying prices above the fold (before a user has to scroll down) on product pages. Make your descriptions easy to read Google suggests bulleted lists, and I agree. No one wants to read a paragraph full of product details on their phone. Customers are more likely to buy if they get the details at a glance. Include customers’ product reviews This is important for any kind of eCommerce site, but it’s absolutely critical if your store has many similar products. This helps shoppers decide which option is right for them without having to leave your store to find reviews. Bonus: customer reviews can help with SEO. First, add reviews to your product pages. Then, use schema markup (see Behind-the-scenes SEO, above) to format your reviews for rich search results. Add secondary calls to action “Add to cart” is the most important CTA on every product page, but not every shopper is ready to buy right now. Maybe they’re on their phone and don’t want to enter credit card data on a tiny screen. Maybe they’re at work and their break is coming to an end. Secondary CTAs like “add to wishlist,” “save for later,” and “add to favorites” encourage your customers to come back later to complete their purchase. Test, Adjust, Repeat How will you know if your product pages are working well? Test them! Marketers use A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of two different versions of one element—an image, a headline, a call-to-action button, even the color of your page background. Once you know whether version A or version B gets better results (more click-throughs, more sales), you know which one to stick with. For an in-depth example of A/B testing, you can read how we A/B tested 300 million emails to find the best design elements. To begin A/B testing elements on your pages, you can register for a free Google Optimize account . Optimize integrates with your site’s Google Analytics, and it walks you step-by-step through the process of optimizing your online store. The very first step? Create an A/B test. You’ll get a tutorial that shows you what to test, how set it up, how long your test should run, and how to manage and get reports on your tests. Ready to start setting up your online store? Choose one of HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting plans for fast load times, easy set-up, and free SSL certificates for site security. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Product Pages Matter More Than Ever. Here’s How to Make Yours Better

How to Use Facebook Messenger for eCommerce

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Use Facebook Messenger for eCommerce appeared first on HostGator Blog . Facebook Messenger is no longer just an app you can use to message your friends. Now it’s an app where you can chat with your friends and shop at the exact same time. That’s right, Facebook Messenger is also a powerful tool for eCommerce. According to Statista, there are now 1.3 billion monthly active Facebook Messenger users worldwide. That’s a ton of users that you can interact with. But, don’t open Facebook Messenger and start messaging your followers at random, telling them to buy your products. Not only is that time consuming, but it’s also ineffective — and weird. So, how do you use Facebook Messenger successfully to impress your customers and grow your sales? Here’s how to use Facebook Messenger for eCommerce. 1. Convenient Customer Support With the advances in technology we have today, customers are no longer interested in calling your customer service line or waiting hours for you to answer a customer support email. In fact, 12% of Americans rate their number one frustration with customer service as “lack of speed”. They want lightning fast customer service and support, so your business needs to adapt. Luckily, with Facebook Messenger you can provide quick and convenient customer support to consumers around the clock, no matter where they are. But this doesn’t mean you need to be sitting around, Facebook Messenger app open, and answering customer support questions all day, you can use a Facebook Messenger chatbot to handle customer service for you. With a tool like Many Chat , you can easily create a Facebook Messenger chatbot to answer all of your customers’ pressing questions and concerns — without having to touch a line of code. With this tool, not only can users access your customer support right from Facebook, but you can also add a Facebook Messenger Customer Chat window to your eCommerce website . This way, all of your customers will be aware of your convenient customer support option, not just the ones who follow you on Facebook. 2. Generate Leads and Deliver Content Most users that visit your website will not buy anything from you on their first visit. They might be checking out what you have to offer, comparing prices, or reading reviews before they make the decision to purchase. So, instead of risking losing these visitors, take the opportunity to turn them into a lead. A highly effective way to turn consumers into leads is by offering a free gift like a coupon or exclusive content through an email signup optin on your website. But, for those users who would prefer not to get content via email, you can send their content via Facebook Messenger instead.   OptinMonster , a powerful lead generation tool for your website, now has a chatbot integration feature that allows you to do just that: Simply connect your OptinMonster account with your ManyChat account and you can drag and drop the Facebook Messenger block right inside your optin form. The users who previously would avoid signing up for your email list have a whole new avenue available to them, giving you more opportunity to generate leads. 3. Personalized Recommendations Personalization is important in eCommerce. In fact, 33% of customers who abandoned a business relationship last year did so because personalization was lacking. Luckily though, you can use Facebook Messenger to enhance personalization for your customers too. By using a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, you can give personalized recommendations to give your customers exactly what they want. That will not only impress them, but boost your sales as well. Take a look at this example from Lego. Their chatbot, named Ralph, can help customers find the perfect products by asking questions such as where they’re located , how old they are, budget, and interests. This added level of personalization will help prime your potential customers for checkout and make their overall shopping experience with your online store a breeze. 4. Offer Easy Checkout What if customers didn’t even have to visit your website to make a purchase? After all, the more options your online store provides for your customers to buy, the more opportunity you have to boost sales. Well, you can make that dream a reality with Facebook Messenger. With Facebook Messenger chatbots you’re not limited to giving users product recommendations; you can actually allow users to browse products and checkout right from the app. This option eliminates steps for the consumer; instead of asking them to visit your site to make the purchase, the checkout button is right there, making them more likely to take action. You can even send abandoned cart messages via Facebook Messenger that include a checkout button. So, no more losing out on potential sales. Consider adding urgency with a message like “Last chance to claim this offer!” to increase conversions even more. Your customers will love having the ability to shop at your online store without ever having to leave the Facebook Messenger app. Boost eCommerce Sales with Facebook Messenger Your target audience is probably on Facebook multiple times throughout the day — aren’t we all? Why shouldn’t your eCommerce business be there too? Don’t miss out on using this powerful social media messaging app for your eCommerce business. When you use Facebook Messenger for your eCommerce business you can increase customer satisfaction, generate a ton more leads, and boost your sales. Plus, it’s easy and affordable too. Start turning your instant messaging conversations into sales today. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to Use Facebook Messenger for eCommerce

How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important appeared first on HostGator Blog . You probably already have regular computer backups in place. You may manually back up all your important files to an external hard drive, or you may have found a way to automate the process. Do you do the same thing for your website? Backing up your computer helps prevent data loss if anything unfortunate occurs—like your computer gets damaged or hacked and you need to reinstall your OS and start from scratch. Just as your computer is susceptible to online threats, so is your website. Perhaps even more so. Beyond taking the necessary security precautions to protect your website , you’ll also want to regularly backup your website. That way, if something unfortunate does occur, you won’t have to completely start over. Instead, you can simply restore your site from a previous backup. Below you’ll learn what an online data backup service is, why you’ll want one, and the benefits it’ll bring you, so you can decide which website backup service is best for your needs. What Is a Website Backup? Simply put, a website backup is a copy of all of your website data. What the backup storage encompasses will depend upon your online backup provider. As a general rule of thumb, the more data that’s included in the data backup, the better. This is especially the case if your website runs on a content management system like WordPress, where you’ll need all of your site’s files, content, media, and databases to get it up and running again. How Often Should You Back Up Your Website? Like computer backups, website backups should also be done on a regular basis. It won’t do you much good to restore your site from a backup that’s a few years old. The best case scenario is either daily or weekly backups. Whether you go with daily or weekly depends on how often you update your website. If you only publish a single blog post per week, and that’s the only update you make to your site, then weekly backups will suffice. Why You Need to Backup Your Site It’s hard to imagine what losing all of your website data feels like until you’ve gone through it yourself. Regardless, it isn’t a fun experience. More importantly, it’s something that’s completely avoidable with the right online backup software behind you. Here are three unfortunate situations that could occur when you don’t backup your site: 1. You Lose All the Work You’ve Done Building a website takes a ton of time and energy. This effort only multiplies the longer you’ve been running your site. Could you imagine losing years of work on your website overnight? All the customizations you’ve done to your site. All of the content you’ve created. All the time spent getting everything just right. If you don’t have any backups to restore from, then you’ll have to recreate all of this from the very beginning. Or, if you hired someone to make customizations to your codebase, then you might have to hire them to do it all again. 2. Loss of Site Revenue During Recovery If your site has been generating revenue via content, products, or services, then you run the risk of all of this being lost. If your site is content driven, then you’ll have to create all of this content from scratch. If you run an eCommerce website, you’ll have to completely recreate your product pages, category pages, and more. When your site is offline, any existing revenue will completely stop until you can completely restore your website. Depending on how much data you’ve lost this could be a long time—especially if you’re a small business or solopreneur and you’ve created every piece of content yourself. 3. Loss of Time During Site Rebuild You should spend time growing and managing the day to day of running your website, not having to re-do tasks you’ve already done. Imagine the frustration of trying to re-do years’ worth of work. Some sites that have been running for years will have hundreds of blog posts or product pages. If you haven’t done a single backup since starting your site, then you’ll have to create all of this again. If it took you years to do once, then it might take you years just to get back to your starting point. Of course, this is the worst case scenario. With regular website backups, this nightmare won’t happen to you. How Website Backup Services Work Online backup companies help to simplify the process of backing up your website. By way of example, let’s talk about an online backup service for documents, like Dropbox. If you have a Dropbox account, you drag and drop files into the application, and a copy of your files are stored on a cloud server. It’s pretty seamless, but it still requires you to select which files you need to back up. This is great for documents and other media files, but backing up an entire website is a bit more technical in nature. Websites have a ton of moving parts and a variety of files required just for your website to load the right way. Forget to backup a crucial file and your website might not load properly. If you’ve ever played around with the code of your own website, then you’re probably familiar with how changing a single line of code can bring your website offline. Yeah, not fun. When you use an online backup service, all of this is taken care of for you. You’re not the one individually backing up every website element and file yourself. The service does it automatically in the background. This helps to ensure that every single file is backed up and you can easily restore your site if the need arises. Once you choose your online website backup software of choice and configure it to your website, you won’t have to touch it again. Just select the website you’d like backed up, and choose the frequency. The application will then run in the background, silently backing up data in your site to your preferred guidelines. This helps to take the headache out of backing up your site while giving you a safe and secure backup if you ever need to restore your site to a previous version. 3 Benefits of Using an Online Backup Service If you don’t know how to backup your website , online backup services can greatly simplify the process. All you have to do is sign up for a service and the rest is taken care of for you. You don’t have to worry about remembering to backup your site, or even securing your backups the right way. All of this and more will be taken care of by your online backup service. Here are some of the biggest benefits you’ll realize from using an online backup service: 1. Backups Are Effortless With an online backup service, you don’t have to think twice about whether or not your site is going to be backed up. All you have to do is sign up for the service and the rest is taken care of for you. Cloud-based backup solutions are very efficient. Instead of having to manage your backups yourself and ensure they’re properly stored, the entire process happens automatically behind the scenes, and your site’s files and folders are stored securely on a remote server. You also don’t have to worry about the maintenance, or physical protection of your data storage devices as well. All of this is taken care of by your website backup provider. Usually, your website data will be stored across multiple different storage locations as well, in case one becomes corrupted, or damaged in some way. 2. Enhanced Security Protocols If you’re manually backing up your site and using a basic storage solution, then your levels of security won’t be as high as what a cloud backup solution can provide. Simply using an HDD backup can open your files up to all sorts of risks like data corruption, storage malfunction, physical damage, and more. Even if you’re regularly backing up your site, it’s no use if you can’t actually access your data. Online backup services not only have multiple layers of security to protect your files, but they’ll be stored on redundant servers. This means that copies of your site’s files are stored across multiple server physical servers. It’ll be near impossible to get this level of security and data recovery when managing your backups yourself. 3. Speedy Site Recovery One of the biggest benefits of using an online backup service is being able to restore your site to a previous version in an instant. With quick website recovery and data restoration times it’ll be like your site never took any damage in the first place. When you’re managing your own backups this will be a much slower process, especially if you don’t have the necessary technical skills. A lot of online backup services will also offer technical assistance for restoring your site or even have one-click recovery options. This is a must-have for website owners who don’t want to go through the technical process of restoring their sites themselves. Choosing the Best Website Backup Service When you’re looking for a solid website backup service there are certain features you’ll want to keep an eye out for. The last thing you want to do is choose a low-quality online backup service. Here are three key features you’ll want to keep an eye out for when choosing a backup service: 1. Off-Site Backups You want your backups to be protected from hackers and hardware failure. This means that your backups need to be stored in an off-site protected location, not just on a traditional website server. Look for an online backup service that offers off-site backups as part of their service offering. 2. Automated Backups If you have to create your backups yourself, then you’ll probably never get around to it. Our lives are busy, and you probably have a handful of website-oriented tasks you’re trying to complete every day as well. The last thing you’ll remember to do is backing up your website. Plus, it’s a simple enough task that it’s easy to put off until “tomorrow”. With automated backups, you don’t have to think twice about backing up your website. Just sign up for a service, create a backup schedule, and the rest is taken care of for you. Automation is one of the most important aspects of an online backup service. Without automation, the task probably won’t get done. 3. Redundant Backups Another very important feature of your online backup service is redundant backups. This is where your website files and folders will be stored in multiple server locations. Or, you’re having backups of backups made. This ensures that a single event won’t bring down your backups or storage, and you have multiple lines of defense, instead of a single point of failure. Introducing the CodeGuard Backup Solution If you’re already a HostGator customer then you should probably consider CodeGuard as your preferred backup solution. Think of CodeGuard as a time machine for your website. Have a website update that goes wrong? Or, your site gets hacked and your site will barely function? Or, maybe your site is going haywire for no reason at all? In one-click, you can restore your site to a previous version that functions how it should. CodeGuard is equipped with features like: Daily automatic backups (or whatever frequency you prefer) One-click restore of your entire website, or a single file that’s been corrupted Email alerts for any unauthorized changes that are made to your website 24/7 website monitoring and scheduled scans The ability to backup multiple different websites in a single storage space Download a zip version of your entire site for manual backups (if you want even more stored versions of your site) If you’re already hosting your site with HostGator and looking for a backup solution, then CodeGuard is a no brainer. It immediately integrates with your existing web hosting plan, so configuration is a breeze. Just choose your backup plan, select the websites you want to save, and this tool will do the rest. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of why website backups are so important , and something you must do before an unfortunate incident occurs. With a solid website backup solution behind you and an experienced web hosting provider to rely on, you’ll protect the future of your site from any risks that are lurking online. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important

The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Hosting

The post The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites appeared first on HostGator Blog . Selling products online has never been easier, even for the smallest of businesses, thanks to WordPress-compatible eCommerce tools like WooCommerce and free themes to customize your store’s appearance. Whether you’re still in the planning stages or want to update your online store, it can be a challenge to pick the right theme from so many options. Here’s a look at some popular eCommerce themes for WordPress, along with a quick overview of WooCommerce for WordPress, to help you find what you need. Setting Up an Online Store on Your WordPress Site A lot goes into building an online store : product categories, search tools, inventory tracking, color and size options, a way for customers to pay, and shipping options. And those are just the basics. WordPress doesn’t provide these functions automatically, so you’ll need to install an eCommerce plugin to get started. One of the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress is a free, open-source program called WooCommerce . It’s used by small store owners and major brands around the world because it integrates so well with WordPress and because there are so many ways to customize it. For example, you can add support for different payment methods, email list management, and merchandising with extensions from the WooCommerce library. Want to sell memberships or subscriptions? There are WooCommerce extensions for that, too. (Many but not all WooCommerce extensions are free.)   Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Themes give you another way to customize your WooCommerce store by changing its appearance and creating the user experience you want your customers to have. These are our picks for the best WordPress themes for eCommerce, and they’re all compatible with WooCommerce.   1. WooCommerce Storefront Storefront is a free theme built by and for WooCommerce. It includes schema markup for SEO, and it has a responsive design to so it looks good and works well on all kinds of devices. Storefront’s developers built it for fast loading and easy use. You don’t have to use WordPress shortcodes to customize Storefront, and it’s compatible with lots of payment, shipping, and SEO plugins. When you want to update your store’s look, you can use the WordPress customizer with Storefront. You can also switch to one of Storefront’s child themes. Each of the 14 child themes (free to $39 each) is tailored to a different type of business, like food, fashion, books, toys, and vacation lodgings. Storefront is a good choice for both: Non-tech people. Because it’s tightly integrated with WooCommerce, you’re unlikely to run into compatibility issues that would require coding skills to fix. And Storefront is compatible with the new block-based Gutenberg editor in WordPress . Tech people. If you’re happy to write your own code, Storefront and WooCommerce’s open-source foundation make it easy to build your own extensions to customize your store. Storefront’s not the only free WooCommerce theme out there. Let’s look at a few top choices from other publishers.   2. Astra Like Storefront, Astra is WooCommerce compatible and uses schema markup to help your store’s SEO. Astra’s developers recently released a free library of blocks you can use with WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor to customize your site without coding. Astra is very fast—it takes less than 0.5 seconds to load, using standard WordPress data—and it only uses about 50 KB of resources. That means your store pages will load fast and keep your shoppers from bouncing before they see your awesome merchandise. Astra also has a library of pre-made starter sites. You can use the Astra Starter Sites plugin to install one and save yourself a lot of time on store design. Upgrading to Astra’s pro or agency packages ($59 to $249) gives you access to more starter sites. Astra is a good choice for: Shop owners with lots of mobile customers. The store’s light weight and fast load times make it a good fit for m-commerce. People who want to a pre-designed site. Astra’s starter site library gives you instant site options.   3. eStore Another popular theme for WooCommerce, eStore is responsive, SEO-friendly, and designed to help your pages load quickly. If you’d like your customers to be able to make and share wishlists from your store—a feature that can earn you more conversions—eStore is compatible with the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin . This theme has a couple of cool design features in its free version: the ability to color-code your product categories, and a template that lets you feature all products in a collection on a single page, as well as in their categories. The pro version ($69) gives you more options for customizing eStore’s appearance, with the addition of Google Fonts, more header and color choices, and testimonial and product tab widgets. eStore is a good choice for: Store owners who want wishlists. YITH Wishlist and eStore work well together. Sellers who regularly feature new collections. The eStore product collection template makes those displays easy to update.   4. MetroStore Like eStore, MetroStore supports YITH Wishlist and provides product-collection page templates. It’s also compatible with YITH WooCommerce Compare , a plugin that lets customers select and compare different items in your store. Comparison charts can help increase your store’s conversion rate, especially if you sell appliances, tech products, or other items whose specifications and features are big factors in your customers’ purchasing decisions. MetroStore’s free version also lets you add video backgrounds to your full-width banners—a pretty cool feature if you have a brick-and-mortar store, fashion shows, or product demos to showcase. The pro version ($55) lets you import demo pages to your store in a single click so you can set up your shop faster. Upgrading also gives you offers and team members sections for your store. MetroStore is a good choice for: Stores that sell tech, appliances, or tools. Support for the YITH WC Compare plugin lets your customers create comparison charts. Store owners who want to use video in their store design. The video-background banner makes that possible.   Choosing a WordPress Theme for Your eCommerce Site Before you choose a theme, it’s a good idea to explore their online demos on your laptop, tablet and phone to see if they’ll give customers the experience you want them to have. Then you can download the free versions of the themes you like best to try them out with your own content before you go live. After you debut your new theme, track metrics like bounce rate and conversions to see if your new theme is helping customers find what they want or whether you need to make adjustments. Ready to get started? Start building your eCommerce store today with HostGator WordPress hosting . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes for eCommerce Sites