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The dbdc Resource Library contains dozens of articles to help you build a profitable and sustainable business. You can find most recently updated articles right here, or if you’re interested in a specific topic click on the category names below.

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Managing Customer Expectations with Custom Out of Stock Messages for Shopify

More than ever, customers expect items they order online to ship right away. Businesses that sell mass-produced goods have to meet that expectation in order to compete with the Amazons and Wal-Marts of the world, but businesses selling one-of-a-kind or made-to-order items have to be careful to set customer expectations to avoid disappointment, returns, or chargebacks.

Continue reading “Managing Customer Expectations with Custom Out of Stock Messages for Shopify”…
Delivery Trucks on a Mountain Road

Adding the Colorado Retail Delivery Fee to WooCommerce

As of July 1st 2022, any order that’s subject to Colorado Sales or Use Tax and will be delivered by a motor vehicle will also be subject to a 28¢ Retail Delivery Fee to help offset the emissions, traffic, and wear and tear on Colorado’s roads from all of those Amazon, FedEx, UPS, and DoorDash drivers. WooCommerce’s hooks and actions system makes adding the Colorado Retail Delivery Fee at checkout (fairly) painless—here’s how:

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How-To: Send WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails Only to Specific Customers

The Follow-Ups WooCommerce extension is a powerful tool for increasing customer engagement and encouraging repeat purchases. It lets you set up automated emails or Tweets to customers to follow up on purchases, recover abandoned carts, or ask for product reviews. It has such an extensive feature list that I was surprised when I discovered something it couldn’t do, at least not out-of-the-box, which is sending follow-ups to only certain customer types or user roles. Fortunately a quick look at the plugin’s code revealed a solution.

Continue reading “How-To: Send WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails Only to Specific Customers”…

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?

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A neon sign reading ”Thank You“.

How to Start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce Business

“Are you a member of our Loyalty Program?” It seems that everywhere I shop, those are almost the first words out of the cashier’s mouth, right after “Did you find everything you were looking for?”. First it was the coffee shop with punch cards and free drinks. Then the grocery store, with special members-only discounts on everything. Then the drug store. And the hardware store. And the auto parts store. And the liquor store. So what about you? Are you ready to start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce business? Continue reading “How to Start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce Business”…

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.
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