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Home Archives for Simon Tomkins

After graduating from Trinity College Dublin, Simon worked with some of the biggest brands in Ireland, designing and improving UX on websites and applications. He has led the design process for many large scale websites and co-ordinated the execution of projects from mockups right through to the final front-end code.

He is interested in modern, functional design with a focus on speed, clean typography and conversions. Lately he has been primarily building sites and mobile-first apps for WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS.

In 2014 Simon co-founded MadeInContext and has since designed and produced a number of best-selling WordPress eCommerce and Business themes under the banner of CommerceGurus and from 2016 CreateandCode.

Top 15 Sales Goals for a New eCommerce Business

If you’re yet to establish your eCommerce store as a force in the market, generating your first sale(s) can seem like climbing a mountain. However, as the old adage states, “The journey of 1000 miles begins with 1 step.” and so the best thing store owners can do, is to focus on the small sales goals in order to build something big.

Now, that’s all very well, but in terms of eCommerce, what exactly do those early sales goals look like, and what incremental “wins” can you set yourself in order to climb the ladder of business success?

With a view to setting the record straight, we have documented 15 sales wins that your eCommerce store can aim for.

26 Quick Ways to Improve your Store (With Examples)

Managing an online store is like spinning plates. While the first iteration of your site might have been state of the art, if you don’t keep your eye on the ball, it doesn’t take long for the market to move on and for your eCommerce site to get left behind.

More to the point, if you have been left behind, bringing your online site, and all of its sales channels, up to standard, can seem like a mammoth task… but it doesn’t have to be.

So, in the spirit of keeping your site on its A-game, here are 26 eCommerce store updates that you and your support team can implement quickly, courtesy of the CommerceGurus team.

Be sure also to check out 17 Product Page Best Practices (with examples) for tips on improving your PDPs more specifically.

eCommerce Customer Service Platforms

Customer service is at the heart of all business, and eCommerce companies are no different. As a result, in order to maximize customer loyalty and streamline the customer experience, the vast majority of eCommerce businesses rely upon the function of online customer service software.

But what exactly does eCommerce customer service software offer – and which is the right one for your business? To help answer these questions, CommerceGurus has produced the following guide to 13 of the best eCommerce customer service software packages.

eCommerce Listings Pages – 10 Top Examples

One of the keys to a successful eCommerce store is reducing user bounce rates (customers entering your website and rapidly returning to search engines).

Essentially, the longer you can keep site visitors on your listings/product pages, the more likely they are to convert from passive users to proactive customers. But how exactly can you refine your product listings pages to minimize bounce rates and maximize user interest and conversion rates?

eCommerce Copywriting

It’s often said that marketing is the greatest art form of the 21st century, and so, in order to ensure that their eCommerce website fulfills its potential, online store owners need to tap into the marketing power of eCommerce copywriting.

Yes, high-quality eCommerce copy can help drive a potentially unlimited amount of traffic to your online store and, crucially, help to convert that traffic into sales. So, what copywriting tips and tricks can you use to transform your content into a lucrative art form?

Shoptimizer 2.5 and CommerceKit 2.0 Revealed – Huge Update!

We’re thrilled to announce the arrival of Shoptimizer 2.5 which includes version 2.0 of our CommerceKit plugin – the all-on-one conversion solution for your WooCommerce store.

This is a major new update and forms a key part of making Shoptimizer the de-facto tool to create a world class eCommerce store with WooCommerce.

This update includes features which ordinarily would require the purchase of multiple plugins, costing hundreds of dollars. Instead, they’re all in this feature-packed update! We’ve wrapped an incredible amount of functionality within Shoptimizer and CommerceKit. We think it’s a game-changer when it comes to WooCommerce.

There are a lot of new features to discuss so let’s get started!

Adding Product Filters to WooCommerce

If you’re selling products with varying features and attributes, displaying product filters is essential. They help customers drill down to find what they’re looking for quicker, which is particularly important on catalogs with a lot of items.

Not being able to filter results restricts the ability of users to browse your store the way they need and will affect conversions.

I’m going to explain how to include product filters to WooCommerce. This will first cover WooCommerce’s default filter widgets but I’ll also show you how to add more sophisticated filter controls, including color swatches, and filters which dynamically update the results set without a page refresh.

Plus, I’ll describe how to include horizontal filters on your catalog which negate the need for a separate sidebar. This can be ideal for certain kinds of stores which prefer having products front and center. As we’ve seen from Baymard’s research on the topic, a horizontal filter can outperform the traditional sidebar layout. This is a relatively new UX pattern but it’s a great choice if you only need to display a small number of filters.

Let’s get started!

Add custom fields to WooCommerce Products using ACF

A pretty common request for WooCommerce sites is the need to include additional field inputs on the single product page and output them on the front-end. I’m going to explain how to do this using the excellent Advanced Custom Fields plugin (free version).

There will be a little bit of coding involved but don’t worry, it’s all very straightforward. And there’s the added satisfaction of knowing you can now extend WooCommerce in a powerful way.

I’ll explain a number of different use-cases with examples for each. I’ll be using our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme but the code snippets should work for any WooCommerce theme.

Let’s get started!

5 WordPress Multilingual Plugins for your Website

If you find yourself reading this article, you’ve probably been wondering what is the best of the numerous WordPress multilingual plugins out there.

Translating your website is a surprisingly easy way to reach and attract new audiences and scale into new markets by offering additional languages on your site. It might be tempting to keep your website in its original language (most likely English), however you might be interested to learn that only a quarter of Internet users communicate in English.

It’s also unlikely that a non native English speaker will engage with your website because alarmingly 72% of website visitors spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language.

However for WordPress users there isn’t actually a built-in feature – you’ll need to install a WordPress multilingual plugin to achieve a fully translated website.

Luckily there are a number of excellent multilingual plugins to choose from that easily allow you to add multiple languages to your website. In this article we’ll take a look at what you should be looking for when selecting a WordPress multilingual plugin, plus show you five popular plugins, to help you choose the one that best fits your needs.

CommerceKit Plugin Released – A Suite of Conversion Tools

We’re really pleased to announce the release of our CommerceKit plugin. CommerceKit is a suite of eCommerce conversion tools and will form the basis of much of what we do going forward. It is being released in two stages.

  • Stage one is a WordPress plugin, exclusively for our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme initially.
  • Stage two is a separate (paid) SaaS feature-set. The first of these will be an AI powered automated eCommerce reviews engine, built in Laravel.
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