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Talking WooCommerce Point of Sale Integration with Chris Muench of PHP Point of Sale

Bridging the gap between physical retail and eCommerce is a challenge that many businesses face. Keeping your inventory, prices, and sales in sync can be a labor-intensive process. Chris Muench and his business, PHP Point of Sale, provide a robust and flexible solution to this problem with built-in WooCommerce Point of Sale integration. Read on to get the story behind PHP Point of Sale, and what Chris sees for the future of multi-channel selling. Continue reading “Talking WooCommerce Point of Sale Integration with Chris Muench of PHP Point of Sale”…

Marketing Automation for WooCommerce is way less complicated than this.

Marketing Automation for WooCommerce: The Definitive Guide

Marketing Automation isn’t just for big companies with big marketing teams and big budgets. By combining WooCommerce and its rich ecosystem of extensions with MailChimp’s robust API and automation features, businesses of any size can benefit from automated workflows that increase engagement, conversion rates, and return customers. Here’s everything I know about Marketing Automation for WooCommerce, so you can put it to work for your online store.
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Is Ethical Social Media Marketing Possible?

Does “ethical social media marketing” sound like an oxymoron? With all of the recent revelations about all the exciting places our Facebook data goes without us knowing about it, I’ll bet many people who use Facebook Ads as a part of their marketing strategy are wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into right now. Is it ethical to advertise on a platform like Facebook? And knowing that there’s little that any one of us can do to change Facebook’s ingrained behavior, what can we do to make sure that our own businesses are doing the right thing?

Continue reading “Is Ethical Social Media Marketing Possible?”…

It's Christmas in July!

How Top Seasonal Businesses Maintain Cash Flow and Survive the Off-Season

Many handmade businesses sell seasonal products, and even those that don’t are affected by the seasonality of craft fairs, art shows, farmers markets, and the like. Most of the advice on setting up your seasonal business to survive year-round comes down to socking enough cash away during the fat times to survive the lean ones. That’s good advice, but your seasonal business should do more than simply survive. Here are four ways to not only survive, but thrive for all twelve months of the year. Continue reading “How Top Seasonal Businesses Maintain Cash Flow and Survive the Off-Season”…

A lego version of Jeff Daigle at Jeff’s WooConf 2017 talk.

WooConf 2017 Presentation: Moving from Etsy to WooCommerce

One of dbdc’s core services is helping artists and makers with growing businesses make the move from Etsy to an online store of their own. Usually I recommend using the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, which is powerful, easy to use, and open source.

I had the honor of speaking on the subject at the 2017 annual world-wide WooCommerce Developers’ Conference, a.k.a. WooConf 2017. The conference itself was an amazing opportunity to meet people from all over the world who contribute code, provide customer support, write plugins, and build stores, and run businesses using WooCommerce.
Continue reading “WooConf 2017 Presentation: Moving from Etsy to WooCommerce”…

Jewelry from Ashley Shenkein‘s Collection

5 Keys to Building a Really Successful Maker Business: An Interview with Ashley Schenkein Jewelry Design

Ready to take your maker business to the next level?

Learn a few lessons from Ashley Schenkein. She runs the highly successful Ashley Schenkein Jewelry Design. This maker sells her work at her studio in Denver, in shops across Colorado and California, and on her online store at asjewelrydesign.com. Schenkein amasses thousands of likes on her beautiful and simple jewelry, which sells at competitive price points.

I sat down with Ashley for an interview, and gleaned five tips from her rise from conventional day job to designer extraordinaire.

Continue reading “5 Keys to Building a Really Successful Maker Business: An Interview with Ashley Schenkein Jewelry Design”…

Taking Action: Using Your Business’s Voice to Work for Change

Last November, right after the election that turned the world upside down, I wrote about five reasons for hope to be found in the Handmade community and the economy around it. Almost a year later the world looks even more chaotic and overwhelming than ever. Some days I wonder if there is anything that will keep us from sliding over the brink. But on other days (like today) I remember that I, and many of you, have a way to speak louder. We run businesses that speak to people every day, on social media and in the products and services we put out into the world. And we can use our voices to take action. Continue reading “Taking Action: Using Your Business’s Voice to Work for Change”…

Create Desire for Your Products the Ikea Way

Create Desire for Your Products the Ikea Way

How do you use your website to create desire for your products? You show a) the quality of your products and b) how they are different from similar items being sold elsewhere. Many small businesses think that means a home page with few product photos and a welcome paragraph talking about what makes their store unique. But take a look at the websites of big retailers selling in competitive markets. There’s not a single welcome paragraph in site. How do they create desire? Do they lead with their products or their story? The answer is that they lead with both.

Continue reading “Create Desire for Your Products the Ikea Way”…

61% of Abandoned Carts are Caused by this One Thing

61% of Abandoned Carts are Caused by this One Thing

An average of 69.23% visits to eCommerce sites result in abandoned carts. Seven out of ten customers who find something they want to buy on your site, and take the trouble of adding it to their carts, stop there and never come back—why? If you could rescue even a quarter of those abandoned carts your store’s sales would increase by over 150%. Well, guess what? 61% of customers say that they would stick with their abandoned carts if one single thing about the checkout process was different. Continue reading “61% of Abandoned Carts are Caused by this One Thing”…

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