A lot of online stores evolve from a flat site made in WordPress, and where there is a gained interest and demand for a service or product - a desire to commercialize is a natural step. Evolving into an online business, setting up a shopping cart with the addition of a WooCommerce plugin. The only trouble is if the WordPress theme used is not a WooCommerce theme, Product Pages and the pages to transact with will be missing, therefore a new theme will be required. Here is a good approach to picking out your WooCommerce Theme.
Know your features
A theme is comprised of several types of features that range from product structure, content architecture, a call-to-action flow, content marketing, and best web design that reflect your company and products. The approach to selecting your theme requires good market research of your competition. Google searches for online business ideas, business models, affiliate marketing and is conducive to your marketing campaigns. Conversion rates being critical, your WooCommerce theme has to be in-tune with your audience.
Defining your Support features
While the focus is on increased conversion and sales, considering your FAQs, online Chat support with a virtual assistant and a knowledge base. Here is where your content architecture makes a big impact. Lowering your support costs is important, so the WooCommerce Theme must consider customers navigating your knowledge base, content, and being able to ask questions.
Checking the responsiveness
Given that a large percentage of the audience uses smartphones to perform search queries of their needs. Looking at the home page, product pages, landing pages, transaction pages, and all the various UI/UX features for speed and function. Free themes can be prone to be limited in some of the features that you might require, so testing the upgraded paid themes might have to be done on a trial basis.
Avoiding Theme Bloating
In order to have fast page-load speeds, WooCommerce Themes that are not well maintained through re-writing and optimizing their code often start to bloat and become inefficient. Search engines look at content, SEO, page speed, and backlinks for their authority score, and one area that should not be overlooked is speed.
Optimized for SEO
Sure, graphic designers can make your theme very attractive to your audience, however, SEO features make it attractive to search engines that help you reach your audience. Proper structure for a page is by default present in most WooCommerce themes, however, ensuring that all the SEO features being present on Product Pages, Landing Pages, Home Page, and Blogs.
Social Proofing
When engaging with Social Media experts, influencers, and engaging with your audience - presenting imagery and content within the Social Media spare is important to consider. Your WooCommerce theme has the ability to bring Instagram imagery back to your pages, use Facebook Messenger for being contacted, and Youtube videos. All of these bring value to your audience and demonstrate the capabilities of your products and services well. Engagement increases trust and confidence and is an integral part of your marketing funnel.
Customizing your Checkout
Whether it is a one-page checkout or one that suits your customers best in seeing their purchase, calculating their shipping/tax rates, and showing various payment methods - it is a crucial area to have a strong definition of what your business needs to convert your clients. You could be starting a business, or migrating from another eCommerce platform - either way, the review of the checkout features needs to be intuitive and easy for customers to transact with confidence.
Online reviews
In today's eCommerce stores, reviews have become critical for customers to read and boost their confidence when it comes to a purchase. How to integrate that content requires a choice of which reviews system will be used and how it will be integrated into the theme.
Cost of WooCommerce Themes
You can review Free WooCommerce Themes as a way to see how far you can go with the free category of themes, paid themes are Premium WooCommerce Themes and can range between $30-$100 which is a very low investment when you consider the portfolio of features you can attain with one click.
Conclusion
It is important to consider that your WooCommerce Theme performs for your audience and your online business. Both marketing and the functions of your online store come together to deliver an experience where your audience can then resonate with it to augment your online presence - it takes form in SEO, Social Media, Reviews, and influencers. When it comes to making a wise choice and needs an additional opinion reaching out to an eCommerce expert for a review such as a performance check, feature check, and test the overall structure to fit all the requirements. If you need assistance, feel free to check in with us at wish@thegenielab.com.