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Emotional Barriers to Growth - It's All in Your Mind!

Emotional Roadblocks to Growth: Breaking Through the Top 5

Sooner or later every solopreneur runs up against some emotional roadblocks to growth that threaten to hold their business back. Two common roadblocks are not feeling like you’re ready to make a big change or give up control over part of their business’s operations, and feeling like you don’t have the money (or aren’t comfortable taking out a loan) to invest in products or services that their business’s future will rely on. Even if you know that both steps are necessary to keep your business growing and thriving they are HUGE mental and emotional humps to get over. So what’s a solopreneur to do? Continue reading “Emotional Roadblocks to Growth: Breaking Through the Top 5”…

Should you sell on Etsy or other Marketplaces or on Your Own Website?

Marketplaces vs. Your Own Website: Where Should You Sell?

“Should you sell on Etsy or another marketplace? Or should you sell on your own website? Or should you sell on Etsy and your own website?”  I visit a lot of forums for artists and makers, and there always seems to be at least one thread on the front page devoted to some variation of this question. It’s a source of anxiety for a lot of handmade businesses, a kind of amped-up FOMO: a fear that wherever you are selling you’re not selling in the right place. So what do I say when someone asks me one of those questions? I start with my favorite answer: “it depends…”

Continue reading “Marketplaces vs. Your Own Website: Where Should You Sell?”…

Troubleshooting Apple Pay for WooCommerce

Apple Pay for WooCommerce using Stripe: Troubleshooting Errors during Setup

WooCommerce users recently got some long-awaited news: WooCommerce now supports Apple Pay through the free Stripe payment gateway, and they’re planning on adding Apple Pay support to other gateways soon. Why is this a big deal? According to Stripe themselves customers check out 58% faster than with other payment methods, and apps using Apple Pay have seen conversion rates increase by as much as 250%. WooCommerce and Stripe have made enabling Apple Pay as easy as possible, but given the huge variety of WordPress and WooCommerce installations out there you might run into some hiccups. Here’s how to troubleshoot Apple Pay for WooCommerce and get it working on your store. Continue reading “Apple Pay for WooCommerce using Stripe: Troubleshooting Errors during Setup”…

How dbdc Helped Double Chocolate and Steel Jewelry’s Order Volume

Chocolate and Steel is a handmade jewelry business started by the owner, Christine Street. They sell a variety of products, from earrings to bracelets to quote necklaces. Their existing site dated back five years and was no longer meeting their needs in terms of brand identity and current technology. In addition their web host had become unreliable and slow, hurting their WooCommerce performance.
Continue reading “How dbdc Helped Double Chocolate and Steel Jewelry’s Order Volume”…

Custom WooCommerce Development for JollyBod

Custom WooCommerce Development for JollyBod

It all started with a simple idea: let customers add gift tags with a custom note to individual items in an order. But then the questions started coming. How will we display the gift tag designs available? How about the grandparent who wants to send a product with a note to 8 grandchildren in 6 states—do they have to place 8 separate orders? And how can we make all 8 orders count towards the free shipping threshold? That’s when JollyBod knew they needed some custom WooCommerce development and got in touch with dbdc.

Continue reading “Custom WooCommerce Development for JollyBod”…

Why You Shouldn't Use Stripe (not the painted kind)

Why You Shouldn’t Use Stripe

Stripe is, hands-down, the best payment gateway out there for most online stores and eCommerce sites. Stripe is the default payment gateway for both WooCommerce and Shopify for several reasons: they’re the easiest to use, have great customer service, and don’t cost an arm and a leg. It makes you wonder why there are over a hundred other payment gateways out there—why shouldn’t you use Stripe?

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WordPress Security Decoded

WordPress Security Decoded

WordPress security is a topic that gets a lot of attention, both good and bad. If you listen to some people they’ll tell you that WordPress isn’t secure and using it will leave you wide open to hacks. True, WordPress sites are constantly being targeted by hackers but not because WordPress itself is inherently insecure.

WordPress is a target for two reasons: one, it’s used more than any other website platform, and two, there are some common but easy-to-fix mistakes that people make when it comes to WordPress Security. Here’s how to fix them to make sure that hackers have no luck on your WordPress site.

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Using WooCommerce for Wholesale

The Best Plugins for Using WooCommerce for Wholesale, Reviewed

Using WooCommerce for wholesale is an effective way to make your online store work harder for your business. By expanding to wholesale, you can get your products into physical stores in your area or all around the country without taking on the risk and expense of starting a physical store yourself. To start using WooCommerce for wholesale you’ll need some plugins to add wholesale-specific features. This article reviews and ranks four plugins and plugin suites that are designed to make using WooCommerce for wholesale simple and easy. Let’s find out which one makes it to first place. Continue reading “The Best Plugins for Using WooCommerce for Wholesale, Reviewed”…

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?

Continue reading “Getting Started with Facebook Messenger Chat Bots for WooCommerce”…

Griffins aren't real, and neither are these myths about building your own website.

Five Myths Etsy Sellers Hear about Building Your Own Website

There are dozens of reasons that you should be building your own website if you’re an Etsy Seller. A website of your own lets you decide who to market to, how to price your work, and how to present your brand. It also protects your business in case anything ever happens to Etsy or to your shop. But there are some myths that Etsy sellers hear about websites that keep them from taking this important step in growing their businesses. Read on for five of the most common ones—and why they’re nothing to be afraid of. Continue reading “Five Myths Etsy Sellers Hear about Building Your Own Website”…

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