When you think of Black Friday, you might picture long lines of consumers waiting for stores to open at midnight. But, online shopping has quickly taken over this shopping holiday.
In recent years, 93.2 million shoppers were online for Black Friday, and online shopping sales hit an all-time record of $7.4 billion.
So, how to make sure your WooCommerce store is ready for the Black Friday rush?
Keep reading to learn about:
- How to use extensions with the WooCommerce plugin
- The 8 WooCommerce extensions to prepare your online store for Black Friday
Online Shopping and Black Friday
Your online store needs to have a seamless customer experience. You’ll want to make sure that customers can easily browse your product catalog and apply discounts.
Additionally, you can use tactics like product bundling and reward point offers to increase your revenue.
If you’re using the WooCommerce plugin, there are several extensions that can help you this holiday season.
WordPress Plugins vs. WooCommerce Extensions
Before we get started, let’s cover the difference between a plugin and an extension. A WordPress plugin is a piece of software that adds functionality to your WordPress website, and it’s typically developed by a third party.
WooCommerce is an open-source plugin that enables eCommerce on your website. It’s also one of the most popular WordPress plugins, thanks to its over five million active installations.
There are other WordPress plugins developed specifically to work with WooCommerce.
In addition to plugins, WooCommerce has its own marketplace of extensions. Extensions are developed by third parties, and they add new features to your WooCommerce store.
While the WooCommerce core software is available for free, some extensions are available at a premium.
Similar to plugins, when you add extensions to your WooCommerce store, you want to make sure you choose a trusted provider to avoid security risks.
Top 8 WooCommerce Extensions and WordPress Plugins for Black Friday
- One Page Checkout
One Page Checkout is an extension developed by the WooCommerce team that aims to increase revenue by simplifying the checkout process and reducing the number of abandoned carts.
With One Page Checkout, you can turn any page on your store into a checkout page. It includes checkout displays, custom landing pages, and several templates to choose from and customize.
Price: $79/year
- Smart Coupons
Smart Coupons by StoreApps is one of the most widely used and highly-rated WooCommerce extensions. It has you covered for any kind of Black Friday discount or promotion you want to run.
With Smart Coupons, you can manage discounts, coupons, product giveaways, promotions, and more. The plugin claims to increase revenue, repeat sales, and customer loyalty.
Smart Coupons’ top features include percentage discounts, free shipping promotions, and shareable links. When it comes to Black Friday, pay special attention to functionality around offering free shipping.
Price: $99/year
- Product Bundles
If you want to create personalized bundled discounts on Black Friday, look no further than Product Bundles by SomewhereWarm.
Bundling products is a great way to create upsell revenue, and the Product Bundles extension can handle grouping, shipping, and inventory management.
Product Bundles is flexible and enables you to offer discounts for the entire product group or individual items. For some extra festivity, you can also create pick-and-mix boxes with this plugin.
Price: $49/year
- WooCommerce Waitlist
Regardless of how carefully you prepare your inventory for Black Friday, you might not be able to avoid selling out of some of your popular products. In that case, you’ll want to install the WooCommerce Waitlist extension.
With WooCommerce Waitlist, you can quickly notify customers if they’re attempting to purchase an out-of-stock item. Furthermore, you can add shoppers to a waitlist where they can check the status of the item they want.
WooCommerce Waitlist is also a great extension to help you discover your most popular products and inform your inventory management decisions.
Price: $49/year
- YITH WooCommerce Zoom Magnifier
While YITH WooCommerce Zoom Magnifier is technically a plugin, not a WooCommerce extension, it’s still a must-have for Black Friday.
The Zoom Magnifier enables shoppers to hover over product images to view more details. It’s worth noting that you have the option to turn off zoom on mobile devices.
In addition to adding detailed product views, you can also add a thumbnail slider below your primary product image.
Price: Free
- WooCommerce Google Analytics
WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration is another WordPress plugin built for WooCommerce. The integration enables you to track your sales funnel through the purchase.
By connecting Google Analytics to your WooCommerce store, you can track each of your referral sources’ performance. So, when Black Friday is over, you’ll be able to find out which marketing campaigns generated the best results.
Price: Free
- SUMO Reward Points
When it comes to Black Friday, the online competition grows fiercer every year. Stores need to find ways to increase conversions and cart value.
Reward programs are an effective strategy and for a good reason. A reward program can increase average order quantity by 319% for e-commerce platforms.
That’s where SUMO Reward Points for WooCommerce comes into play. It’s the number one rated WooCommerce loyalty extension and includes a comprehensive set of features. With SUMO Reward Points, your customers can sign up for your program, earn points, redeem rewards, and review products.
Price: $49
- YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
Millions of people use Black Friday to shop for holiday gifts for friends and loved ones. The YITH WooCommerce Wishlist Plugin helps your shoppers easily create and share wishlists.
YITH’s wishlist plugin is one of the most popular wishlist plugins. It boasts more than 800,000 active installations. It’s available in a basic and a premium version. The premium version includes the ability to email customers that have created a wishlist.
Price: Free basic plugin ($99 for premium)
When Black Friday comes around, online stores need to be ready to handle extra traffic and transactions. If you want to take full advantage of the holiday rush, you should prepare your store with the right features and functionality.
The good news is that WooCommerce extensions and WordPress plugins can give you the flexibility you need to prepare your store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
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