Okay, business owners, it's time to start thinking about building a website that allows you to show your availability for bookings, and allow your customers to make reserve slots, pay online, and manage their own reservations themselves.  You don't have the staff you used to anymore, and you need to be able to set it and forget it, and this means making sure your customers are able to cancel, change time slots, re-book, etc. via your website all on their own.  This video shows you how to use the WooCommerce Bookings plug-in to turn your WordPress WooCommerce store into a reservation management website, and use the WooCommerce Bookings Availability plug-in extension to display your bookable products in nice, elegant Schedule Blocks and Calendar Blocks.  This solution is perfect for any business. Hotels, Restaurants, Lawyers, Accountants, Consultants, Fitness Gyms, Yoga Studios, Therapists and other Telehealth Professionals, and virtual versions of any of the above. :)

Most eCommerce store owners and merchants will agree that their online store needs to be perfectly SEO Optimized in order to have any chance of success.  One area that eludes many small business owners with eCommerce stores, whether Shopify or WordPress WooCommerce is getting the Product Structured Data Schema implemented correctly.  This show tells you how to add SEO Product Schema Structured Data in WordPress for your WooCommerce Products using the Plug-in WP SEO Structured Data Schema - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-seo-structured-data-schema/

WordPress WooCommerce continues to prove why it's head and shoulders above Shopify, Magento and it's other eCommerce competitors. Time and time again I've been asked by Shopify merchants how they can drive more conversions via traditional digital marketing tactics. Shopify merchants are relying too much on things like Facebook Ads and Google Ads, when traditional blocking and tackling needs to happen first.  WooCommerce continues to provide add-ons/extensions (plug-ins) that allow store owners to grow their business organically first, then build on top with ads.  1. Featured WooCommerce Extension #1: Smart Coupons - think of Smart Coupons like digital gift cards, vouchers, discount codes all rolled into one. This is the way to add Gift Cards to your WooCommerce Store. Packed with features that I go over in-depth in this video, the one I think I like most is the ability to add a future gift card automatically along with the purchase of a product. This double-incentivizes your customers by giving them a reason to buy the first time, and a reason to make a return purchase. Another solid feature is the ability to buy and send a gift card to a friend.  2. Featured WooCommerce Extension #2: Follow-Ups. This is a big one. Better than running ad campaigns, add this for $99/year and use it to send thank you messages via Twitter and Email to your customers. Follow-Ups come with their own ability to send coupons, so you wouldn't need #1 and #2, just #2. Follow-ups is like having your own email marketing automation system inside your WordPress site, so you really wouldn't need to mess with Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Constant Contact or Emma, etc. The ability to focus in one platform and keep it simple can help you as a small business owner.  3. Featured WooCommerce Extension #3: Google Product Feed - For organic searches alone, this is huge. Shopify merchants have come to me for years to implement this via a simple add-on in their stores and now WooCommerce has it's own version. Watch the video to see how much organic real estate the Google Product Feed gets in terms of SEO search results, and you need it anyway if you want to run Google Shopping ads, which the data says work better than contextual ads for physical products that ship B2C. Why? Likely because they're visual AND show on the traditional Google SE Results page.

In this conversation with a friend, I had the opportunity to give an overview of my entire career, starting as an unpaid intern with the Detroit Pistons of the NBA, to building WordPress websites and creating content as a side hustle, to becoming Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Columbia State Community College, to working "in the agency world," in Nashville for several years, before starting Data Driven Design.  This is a raw conversation in which I unveil more behind my mission to provide the best WordPress websites for small businesses and why I'm so passionate about it.  I also talk a bit about adjustments made during the pandemic in 2020 and my vision for Data Driven Design moving forward as a successful, innovative, remote digital agency.

Many businesses want to collect simple payments on their website, whether for non-profit donations or for-profit digital services/content or physical goods.  WP Simple Pay is a great solution for one-time payments accepted via Stripe as the payment gateway. The free version, however, doesn't include the ability to create recurring subscription forms.

When I built a WooCommerce Store in 2015, it was a bit complicated to connect my client's account Quickbooks account to the WooCommerce Store and ensure seamless integration.  Now, it appears there's a better, easier solution, and it's FREE!  Quickbooks Sync for WooCommerce by MyWorks.Software

As an eCommerce merchant, life can get a bit hectic, and tax zones can complicate things. Not only are there complicated Country and State Tax laws (for US merchants), but depending on your product and location, you may have to take a bunch of different things into account.  Your eCommerce platform better be reliable and able to handle your needs. WooCommerce for WordPress has some very simple ways of handling taxes and tax returns.  This video shows you to how to:  1. Automate your store tax set up by using a plug-in by Jetpack - https://woocommerce.com/products/tax/ 2. Automate your tax return with a state-by-state breakdown using a plug-in by TaxJar - https://woocommerce.com/products/taxjar/ for WooCommerce.

I think the number one most missed thing by WordPress developers is properly thinking through and setting up Shipping Zones and Classes. It can be a bit of a headache, unless your store is simply including the price of shipping in each item, and touting "free shipping!"  Maybe this is why it's often "forgotten."  However, a solid alternative, especially for smaller, start up eCommerce stores, is to set up simple, Flat Rate shipping in WooCommerce.  This video shows you how.

On this episode of The WordPress Show, I show you how to customize your member registration form and profile fields for your members.  This is a continuation of "How to Build a Simple Membership Website" - where we went over how you can easily turn your WordPress site into a membership site for free.  The add-on covered in this video allows you to go further and add whatever profile fields you want, as well as create a member directory.

SHOW LESSIt's definitely not as daunting of a task as you might think to turn your simple WordPress site into a basic membership site. Let's say you have different layers of content, and you want to make your site accessible to everyone, but add a "premium content" layer. You can easily do so with a FREE WordPress plug-in called WP Simple Membership.  This you through the steps to get up and running, as well as gives you an overview of different functionality that the plug-in has.  It automatically creates log-in, registration and password reset pages for you, allows you to create different membership levels, allow for free levels or integrate with payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal for premium levels.  This is great for content rich sites or virtual event sites like the example in the video.  You can protect content at the category, post and page levels, both dynamically or individually.  This also shows the different add-ons available to extend the functionality of the plug-in.  For those not wanting or needing a more robust solution like MemberPress, Simple Membership is my recommended alternative.