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Getting Started with Facebook Messenger Chat Bots for WooCommerce

Getting Started with Facebook Messenger Chat Bots for WooCommerce

Here’s a question for you: if you run an online store that is always open and is available to customers in every time zone, how do you provide the best customer service experience? For those of you who answered “Stay Online 24 Hours a Day!”, I admire your dedication but I don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world to make that work. A more realistic solution that many companies use is to use a Live Chat feature that lets customers leave a message when you’re not online. But what if there was a way to answer customers’ questions in real time, even when you aren’t there?

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How to Migrate Etsy Shipping Profiles to WooCommerce

How to Migrate Etsy Shipping Profiles to WooCommerce

Etsy and WooCommerce might do basically the same thing—give you a platform to sell goods online—but they do a lot of things very differently. One of those things is how they approach shipping. Etsy has Shipping Profiles that can be applied to individual products, while WooCommerce sets up everything under Shipping Zones, each containing different Shipping Methods that can be customized with Shipping Classes. Is your head spinning yet? Well don’t worry: in this article I’m going to give you a tour of WooCommerce’s shipping settings and show you how to migrate Etsy Shipping Profiles to WooCommerce.

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dbdc's Year in Woocommerce Review

Happy Birthday to Woo(commerce)

Today is the 5th anniversary of the release of Woocommerce, the eCommerce platform the engine behind almost 40% of online stores and the one I recommend for artists, makers, and businesses selling products online. To celebrate five years of empowering people to start their own, independent online stores, I’m writing a 2016 in Woocommerce Review. Let’s take a look back at the highlights of past twelve months because age certainly isn’t slowing Woocommerce down!

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Getting Your Online Store Ready for the Holidays

Getting Your Online Store Ready for the Holidays

Yes, the leaves are still on the trees but it’s time start thinking about getting your online store ready for the holidays. For many artists and makers selling their goods online, the winter holiday season is the busiest and most stressful time of year. Busy is great, but stressful isn’t. Here are some ways to make this year’s holiday season your most successful and your least stressful one yet.

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6 Steps to Build Your Sales by Building Customer Trust

6 Steps to Build Your Sales by Building Customer Trust

One of the crucial tasks of a successful eCommerce online store is to build customer trust. It seems like every time you turn on the news there’s a report of another financial hack, so people are naturally wary of putting their credit card numbers into any old website, even if they love your products. Fortunately there are well-known cues that people look for when they decide whether to trust a website. Read on to find out six things you can do to roll out the red carpet and show your customers that your site is trustworthy, safe, and secure.

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Open for Business with Square for Woocommerce

Square for Woocommerce Plugins: What You Need to Know

Integrating WooCommerce with Square has long been tops on the wish-list of artists and makers who sell both online and at urban markets, craft fairs, and art shows. Today there are many solutions available, including the free and official Square for WooCommerce plugin, and the paid WooSquare Pro plugin. With both, you can use Square as a payment method on your WooCommerce site, and keep your inventory, prices, and products synchronized between your physical Square POS (Point of Sale) and your online WooCommerce store. How well do they work? I spent three weeks testing them to find out. Continue reading “Square for Woocommerce Plugins: What You Need to Know”…

The Best Way to Import Etsy Listings into Woocommerce

Plugin Review: The Best Way to Import Etsy Listings into WooCommerce

“What’s the best way to import Etsy listings into WooCommerce?”

That’s the question I get all the time from handmade artists and makers who want to expand beyond Etsy with their own store. And for a long time there hasn’t been a good answer.

But today there are several options, some free, and some costing over $100. So which one is the best?

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Payment Processing Problems at Etsy: Lessons Learned

Payment Processing Problems at Etsy: Lessons Learned

The first half of 2016 saw two major disruptions in Etsy’s payment processing system, Direct Checkout. One came just before Valentine’s Day and another at the beginning of July. Orders were delayed, customers asked for refunds that couldn’t be processed, and uncertainty filled the forums where Etsy sellers tried to figure out what was happening to their shops. These outages hold important lessons for anyone running an online store. Chiefly, they underscore the importance of backups, communication, and planning.

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