15 Best WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales

Are you looking for easy and smart ways to automate tasks and increase sales in your WooCommerce store?

By automating tasks in your online store, you can save time and money while growing your business and increasing sales.

In this article, we will show you how to use WooCommerce automations to increase sales.

15 WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales

Why Automate Your WooCommerce Store?

If you are running a WooCommerce store, then you probably spend a lot of your time performing repetitive tasks. These can be anything from sending marketing emails for your online store to processing customer invoices.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could automate all of those tasks and focus on growing sales and your business instead?

Luckily, you can use the best WordPress automation tools and plugins to automate WooCommerce tasks. By doing this, you will save time, offer a better user experience to your customers, and ultimately increase sales.

With that being said, here are 15 WooCommerce automations to increase sales:

1. Use Automation to Personalize Your Email Marketing

Are you keeping in touch with your customers using an email newsletter? You may not be taking advantage of all the automation tools available in your email marketing software.

For example, the best email services like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, and Omnisend all have integrations with WooCommerce. They allow you to personalize your emails by adding the customer’s name and more.

They also let you set up a Welcome email series using a drip campaign. This is a sequence of automated emails that will go out automatically to new customers.

Choose an email automation

You can learn how to get started by scrolling down to the automated drip emails section of our guide on how to send automated emails in WordPress.

Additionally, if you are looking for a complete tool that offers WooCommerce email customization and automation, then we highly recommend using FunnelKit Automations.

Apart from letting you fully customize your WooCommerce emails, it also lets you set up smart, automated follow-up emails and workflows to boost your sales.

You can get started with FunnelKit Automations by selecting an automation from a library of handy templates.

Autonami Email Library for WooCommerce

For example, you can automatically send an email series to new customers, recover abandoned carts, send promotional emails to selected audiences, and more.

There is also an option to create your own WooCommerce automation from scratch. You will then see a visual email automation builder where you can make any customizations that you need.

Autonami Marketing Automation Email Analytics for WooCommerce

For example, the screenshot above shows the workflow for sending out a thank you email after a customer makes their first order. You can even see in-line analytics for each email.

You can learn more in our guide on how to customize WooCommerce emails. Make sure you scroll down to the section on FunnelKit Automations.

Tip: We recommend combining FunnelKit Automations with an SMTP service like WP Mail SMTP. This will make sure your emails are delivered to your customers and won’t get lost or end up in the spam folder.

2. Set Up an Automated Marketing Campaign With Push Notifications

You can also run an automated marketing campaign using push notifications instead of emails. These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device. This means they have a much higher engagement rate, similar to SMS messages.

The easiest way to set up automated push notifications is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software for WordPress, and over 10,000 businesses use it to send targeted messages.

Create a new drip autoresponder

For each notification, you can change the title, message, URL, icon image, and more by expanding it.

There is also a preview of how your notifications will look in the browser.

Edit your push notifications

PushEngage also lets you choose when to send each notification. For example, you can immediately send the first notification and select a different time for the following one.

For more details, see our guide on how to set up automated drip notifications in WordPress.

3. Let Customers Track Orders With Automated Transactional Emails

WooCommerce will need to send different transactional emails to your customers. These help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, and find out more information about your online store.

You can customize and automate these emails using FunnelKit Automations, which is a popular WooCommerce plugin for marketing automation.

The FunnelKit Automations dashboard makes it easy to create a new automation. You can simply click on one of the plugin’s many templates.

Funnelkit Automations WooCommerce Automation Templates

You can filter the list to quickly find the WooCommerce automation you wish to use. For example, you might want to send automatic thank-you emails to repeat customers.

You can then customize the automation using the visual automation builder, including the content of the email.

Funnelkit Automations Workflow and Email Customization

For detailed instructions, please see the section about sending automated transactional emails with FunnelKit Automations in our guide on how to send automated emails.

4. Quickly Update Your Customers With Automated SMS Messages

Many customers prefer to receive text messages to notify them about their orders. Plugins like YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications or FunnelKit Automations will automatically send SMS messages to your customers.

Yith SMS Notifications Plugin

SMS messages are an effective way to keep your customers up to date. They have a 98% average open rate, with 95% of messages being read in the first 3 minutes!

You can send automatic texts to your customers when their orders are dispatched or their status changes. You can automatically send SMS notifications to your customers or let them opt in at checkout.

Learn how by following our guide on how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users.

5. Automate All Invoicing and Payment Processes

As a business owner, there is a lot to manage. If you are still creating invoices manually, then you can switch to professional invoicing software that automates all invoicing and payment processes. Then, you will be free to focus on growing your business.

A plugin like WooCommerce PDF Invoices makes it easy to automatically generate invoices, collect orders, and manage your finances.

WooCommerce PDF Invoices

You can also save time by accepting recurring payments or adding subscriptions to WooCommerce. These WooCommerce automations will help automate the billing process and can save you time.

With automatic recurring payments, you don’t have to spend time manually sending invoices and waiting for payments from your customers.

Plus, adding subscription payments to your eCommerce business will give you a more consistent cash flow, fewer payment errors, and fewer payment delays.

Creating a recurring payment in WooCommerce

6. Use Automated Store Activity Notifications to Boost Sales

Automated FOMO and social proof notifications can also increase sales in your WooCommerce store.

FOMO, short for fear of missing out, is a marketing technique used to create excitement about a product. It uses psychology to encourage customers to make buying decisions faster.

Plus, social proof shows visitors that other customers have purchased your products. This can convince users that your online store is trustworthy.

The best way to add social proof to your website is by using TrustPulse. It is one of the best social proof plugins for WordPress on the market.

TrustPulse automatically monitors activity on your site. When potential customers are close to buying something, they will see a notification showing that another customer has just made a purchase.

By simply displaying social proof, you will give your visitors a small push to complete their purchase. To learn more, see Method 1 of our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.

7. Automatically Display Your Best Product Reviews

Would you like to automatically display the best reviews of your products from across the internet? You could copy and paste them manually, but that is a lot of work. Plus, there would be a delay before they appear on your website.

Luckily, Smash Balloon has a Reviews Feed Pro plugin that lets you automatically show off your best reviews from platforms like Google Reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.

Customer reviews, displayed on a WordPress website

It comes with pre-designed templates, so you can display your reviews in different layouts, including showcases, carousels, grids, and more.

The Reviews Feed automatically copies your website’s design so that the reviews look like a natural part of your website rather than content embedded from another platform.

You can follow our guide on how to show Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews to set up your own automatic review feed in WooCommerce.

8. Use an Automated Sales Funnel to Boost Sales Conversions

A sales funnel is the path a user takes on your website to become a customer. It is made up of the specific pages a user may visit before making a purchase.

For example, a new visitor might land on a blog post, then view a product page, then go through your checkout flow.

Unfortunately, only 10% of shoppers, on average, will add anything to their carts. After they do, 60-80% of them abandon their carts without completing the purchase.

Luckily, you can use FunnelKit, the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin, to change that. You can use the plugin to optimize each step, offer a better user experience, reduce distractions, and nudge users toward completing their purchases.

For example, it comes with a one-click Upsells feature, which allows users to add products to their carts on their way to the checkout.

WooFunnels One Click Upsell

FunnelKit also lets you customize the user journey with pre-checkout offers, custom checkout form layouts, beautiful templates, and more.

For instance, the FunnelKit Funnel Builder lets you add order bumps to boost profits if someone adds $X to their cart. You can also add one-click order bumps to your checkout page.

Edit design of your bump offer

To learn more, see our guide on how to make a high-converting sales funnel in WordPress.

9. Reduce Cart Abandonment With Popups and Push Notifications

As we said earlier, 60 to 80% of people who add items to their cart don’t actually buy them. This means if you have an online store, then you are losing out on a lot of sales.

Luckily, you can use automatic push notifications to reduce cart abandonment rates. For example, you can pop up a notification when a user is about to leave your website and offer a coupon or free shipping.

Or, if the customer already has discounted items in their cart, they may just need some reassurance that they are making the right decision. Push notifications like these can help you recover 3 to 8% of abandoning cart sales.

Smash Balloon exit intent popup

You can learn how to use OptinMonster to add exit-intent popups by following our guide on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales.

But what if the customer leaves your site before they see the popup? Push notifications can also help you connect with your visitors after they leave your website. These messages will display in your subscriber’s browser even when they are not actively browsing your store.

Push notification abandoned cart example

The easiest way to do this is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software on the market, and it is used to send over 15 billion push messages every month.

For more details, see our guide on how to add web push notifications to WordPress.

You can also significantly reduce cart abandonment by simply improving your online store and checkout process. We share plenty of proven tips with real examples in our guide on how to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales.

10. Send Automated Coupons to Bring Back Customers

It costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one. Over time, people may lose interest in your website, forget about your products, or start shopping with a competitor.

One way to bring those customers back is to automatically send them a coupon code via email. You can use automation tools to send a coupon to customers who have become disengaged, such as when they don’t place an order for 2 months or have stopped opening emails.

Scheduling an automated coupon code

You can learn how in our step-by-step guide on how to send automated coupons in WordPress to bring back customers.

Another good use for automated coupons is recognizing and rewarding customers when they engage with your online store. For example, you might send a coupon after a customer reviews one of your products.

This builds loyalty to your store and can get you more sales. It also encourages shoppers to review more products in the future.

You can also schedule coupons in advance so that they go out automatically on popular holidays like Black Friday, Christmas, New Year’s, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. This will leave you free to focus on promoting your offers and getting as many sales as possible.

See our guide on how to schedule coupons in WooCommerce for detailed instructions.

Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, you can also offer a coupon in a popup. Showing a coupon at the right time makes a huge difference in converting your website visitors into paying customers.

There are a few ways to do this, and we give you all the details in our step-by-step guide on how to create a coupon popup in WordPress.

11. Automate Your Social Media Channels

You can also use automation to post your online store content to your social channels. This lets you keep your social followers engaged with fresh content.

Uncanny Automator has integrations with all popular social platforms. It will let you publish new blog posts on Facebook, show off your latest product images on Instagram, advertise your sales on Twitter, and more.

Post a featured image to Instagram from WordPress

You can learn how to do this step-by-step by following our guides on how to automatically post to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

12. Automatically Display Social Media Content in WooCommerce

Are you looking for ways to show fresh content without doing any extra work? One way to do that is to automatically display your latest social media activity in your WooCommerce store.

This can save you time and keep your website content fresh and engaging for visitors. Plus, it can boost social proof by displaying your social media followers, comments, and like counts.

Smash Balloon automates your website content by displaying your latest social media activity. It is a popular social media feed plugin for WordPress that is used by over 1.4 million websites.

For example, you can add a Facebook feed to WordPress, and new posts will automatically appear in real time. Your customers can also like, share, and comment on your WordPress posts, which is a great way to get more engagement on Facebook.

An example of an embedded Facebook feed, created using Smash Balloon

You can change the feed’s color scheme, design a custom header, add ‘like’ and ‘load more’ buttons, and much more.

If you are posting beautiful photos and engaging videos to Instagram, then it makes sense to post that content to WordPress too.

An Instagram photo feed, created using Smash Balloon

You can even show other people’s photos on your site by creating a hashtag feed or displaying the posts that other people have tagged your account in.

In the following image, you can see an example of an online store that uses a custom Instagram feed to show user-generated content.

An example of Instagram user-generated content

For details, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add your social media feeds to WordPress.

Tip: For more tips on how to use social channels to grow your online store and increase sales, you can see our complete social media cheat for WordPress.

13. Make Your Forms Smarter Using Automation

You can use form plugins like WPForms to collect all kinds of information from your customers.

For example, you can use a form plugin to display a contact form, create a questionnaire, gather testimonials, or build a survey form.

The best thing is that WPForms easily integrates with many other tools and plugins, so you can easily automate any action after someone fills out your form.

For example, when someone fills in an order form, you can use conditional logic to send an email notification to the correct department, depending on the product that was purchased.

WPForms Conditional Logic for Sending Notifications

You can also send a confirmation email to the customer who filled in the form to let them know you will be in contact soon. This a nice gesture that lets your users know that you have received their information.

In addition, by using the Google Sheets Addon, you can send any form fields you want to a spreadsheet. This will allow you to use spreadsheet features to analyze the data and collaborate with others in your team.

Using WPForms' Google Sheets Addon

To automate your forms further, Uncanny Automator will let you connect WPForms and other form plugins to 100+ third-party services without having to pay fees to services like Zapier.

For example, you can create an Uncanny Automator recipe to send customer form data to Airtable. Then, your team will be able to access and use the data easily.

Using Uncanny Automator to Send WPForms Data to Airtable

To learn more, see our guide on how to create automated workflows with Uncanny Automator.

14. Automate Live Chat Using Artificial Intelligence

Automated chatbots are the future of live chat software because they allow you to engage with your customers 24/7. They can free up time by automatically answering common customer questions, generating leads, improving user experience, and making more sales.

Chatbot.com is the best AI chatbot software for WordPress. It lets you easily automate live chat on your website by setting up your own chatbot using a drag-and-drop builder. You don’t need to do any coding or have any special technical skills.

ChatBot live chat

It even comes with pre-built templates that you can use as a starting point to quickly get your AI chatbot up and running. These templates include different scenarios like selling products, customer service, recruitment, bookings, and more.

For example, you can use the eCommerce bot template to walk your customers through the entire buying process. There are even templates for specific industries, including a coffee shopbot, recruitment bot, and restaurant bot.

If visitors want to communicate with a real person, then you can easily forward them to your customer support agent, phone support, or any of ChatBot’s live chat software integrations, such as LiveChat.

15. Use Uncanny Automator for Even More WooCommerce Automations

This article contains many specialist tools that do specific automation jobs very well. By contrast, Uncanny Automator is a Swiss army knife that allows you to create all types of automation workflows without having to write any code.

It acts as a bridge so that you can get different WordPress plugins talking to each other, as well as loads of third-party services.

You create automation by building Uncanny Automator recipes, consisting of triggers and actions. The action will be automatically run when a user or WooCommerce triggers an event.

Uncanny Automator Triggers and Actions for WooCommerce

Here are some of the WooCommerce triggers you can use to run a recipe:

  • A customer viewing a product
  • A customer adding a product to their cart
  • A customer paying for a product
  • A payment failing
  • A customer reviewing a product
  • And much more

Then the recipe can automatically run any of these WooCommerce actions:

  • Creating an order with a product
  • Changing the price of a product
  • Generating and emailing a coupon code
  • Giving an order a specific status

There are dozens of recipes that you can create, allowing you to save hundreds of hours while running your online store more efficiently.

For instance, you can use Uncanny Automator to automatically create a new customer account when someone submits a contact form on your website, or send notifications to Slack.

Bonus: Track Conversions to Learn How to Increase Sales

To use any marketing automation platform effectively, you will need easy-to-understand reports that tell you exactly what is working for your business and what isn’t.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you get a clear picture of what is happening on your site and what you can do to bring in more sales.

It comes with WooCommerce conversion tracking, form submissions, outbound link tracking, and user tracking.

Its Reports page has an ‘eCommerce’ tab that shows your most important conversion metrics, including the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value. Below that, you will see a list of your top products with quantity, sale percentage, and total revenue.

Ecommerce report in MonsterInsights

You will also see your top conversion sources. You can use this report to attract more customers and offer exclusive discounts for customers from specific sources.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to set up WooCommerce conversion tracking.

You can also connect Google Sheets with WooCommerce to easily record and manage your orders and customer data. Once the information is in a Google Sheet, you can easily filter it based on factors like the order total, the customer’s location, coupons used, and more.

You can then share this information with your team, even if they don’t have access to the WordPress dashboard. For example, you can easily send this data to your suppliers, marketing departments, or other team members.

You are even able to turn this data into charts and graphs. All of this makes it easier to analyze the information and then use these insights to fine-tune your business and get more sales.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to increase sales using WooCommerce automations. You may also want to see our guide on how to add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 15 Best WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales first appeared on WPBeginner.

7 Best Countdown Plugins for WordPress (Easy to Use)

Are you looking to add a countdown timer to their WordPress website?

Countdown timers are a great way to build anticipation, excitement, and create a FOMO effect on your website. There are many different countdown plugins that let you create a countdown timer, so which one should you use?

In this article, we’ll share the best countdown plugins for WordPress and explain the key features of each.

Best countdown plugins for WordPress

What is a Countdown Timer Plugin & When You Need it?

A countdown timer WordPress plugin allows you to display a timer that counts down to a specific time or date.

Savvy marketers use countdown timers to build excitement and create a sense of urgency among their customers. It helps them take advantage of the FOMO effect to boost conversions.

There are many plugins that allow you to add countdown timers to your website. These countdown timers can be divided into two groups:

Normal Countdown Timers

A normal countdown timer, sometimes called a static or fixed countdown timer, is what most people think of when they imagine a timer. This timer counts down to a certain fixed time. That might be the launch of a WordPress website, the end of a sale, or another event.

The countdown clock’s endpoint is the same for everyone and doesn’t change depending on who’s viewing it.

Evergreen Timer

An evergreen countdown timer, sometimes called a dynamic countdown timer, is specific to each user. It begins counting down when the person arrives on your site. For instance, they might have 4 hours to take advantage of a special offer.

This can be a powerful marketing technique as it lets you create a sense of urgency.

Note that most WordPress plugins are designed to run normal countdown timers, and only some let you run evergreen timers.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best countdown timer plugins for WordPress.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a powerful popup and lead generation plugin for WordPress. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and paying customers.

With OptinMonster, you can create both static and evergreen countdown timers. You can make as many timers as you want and use different timers on different pages.

There are lots of ways you can position your countdown timer using OptinMonster. One of the best is to use a floating bar that sticks to the top or bottom of your page. That way, it stays visible at all times.

Here’s a countdown timer we created using the OptinMonster plugin:

Countdown timer preview

You’ll need the OptinMonster’s Pro plan or higher to use countdown timers.

They allow you to add countdown timers on popups, floating bars, full-screen welcome mats, scroll boxes, and inline widgets. On top of that, you can personalize the timers based on the user’s location, which page they’re on, where they’re visiting from, and more.

2. SeedProd

SeedProd website builder

SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder and landing page plugin. It is a great option if you want to add countdown timer animation to your landing pages.

SeedProd lets you easily set up a special landing page and put your site into coming soon or maintenance mode. Plus, it has a powerful drag-and-drop website builder. You can easily customize your WordPress theme without touching a single line of code.

With this plugin, you can create a normal and evergreen timer for your website. It offers lots of customization options, including pre-built templates for countdown timers.

Here’s a countdown timer we created using SeedProd’s Coming Soon Page Pro plugin:

Number counter preview

For more details, you can see our guide on how to show a number count animation in WordPress.

3. Countdown Timer Ultimate

Countdown timer ultimate

Countdown Timer Ultimate is another good option to consider if you want to create a normal countdown timer. It’s a simple plugin that allows you to show timers on the entire website or specific to individual site visitors.

You can use Countdown Timer Ultimate to make as many countdown timers as you want, and you can customize how they look to some degree.

Here’s a preview of the countdown timer that you can create using the free version of the Countdown Timer Ultimate plugin:

Countdown timer ultimate preview

The pro plugin gives you more advanced options. These include being able to show specific text when the countdown expires and extra design features.

4. Countdown Builder

The Countdown Builder plugin page

Countdown Builder is a simple countdown timer with multiple different styles built in. These include circle countdowns, flip clock countdowns, and even a coming soon page.

You can place your timer within a post or page in the WordPress block editor by selecting the ‘Countdown’ block or using a shortcode. You can also choose to display it automatically on specific posts or pages.

Here’s a preview of a countdown timer you can create using the plugin:

Countdown plugin timer preview

If you want, you can edit how your clock looks in detail, changing things like the font size, the labels, and the animation style. You don’t need to do this with CSS. There’s a built-in editor in the plugin.

5. Evergreen Countdown Timer

Evergreen countdown timer

Evergreen Countdown Timer is the next countdown plugin on our list. It lets you create evergreen countdowns, as you might expect from its name. You can also use it to create normal countdowns as well.

You can choose how the plugin detects visitors by a cookie or their IP address.

To add the timers to your page, you’ll need to enter a shortcode. You can simply copy and paste this from the Manager section of your countdown timer settings.

Once your timer hits zero, you can automatically redirect the visitor to a URL of your choice. For instance, you could send them to a registration page if you’re counting down to the launch of your new course.

Here’s a timer we created using the Evergreen Countdown Timer plugin:

An example timer created using the Evergreen Countdown Timer

There’s a pro version of the plugin, which gives you lots of extra options. It also lets you choose more colors than just black or white for your timer.

With the Pro version, you can provide a countdown for available spots, such as seats or tickets. This could work well if you’re selling places for a paid webinar or another live event.

6. HurryTimer

Hurrytimer

HurryTimer is a free countdown timer plugin that lets you create both evergreen and regular timers. The evergreen timer uses both cookie and IP detection to display the right timer to each individual user.

You can also set up timers to run a countdown between two fixed dates. This is useful if you want to get ready for an upcoming sale in advance.

The timer works with WooCommerce, though you don’t have to run WooCommerce to use it. You can display your timer several times on the same page if you want to.

Here’s a timer we created using HurryTimer:

An example timer created using HurryTimer

If you have the Pro version, you can set up a recurring timer. This is a timer that runs according to the rules that you specify. For instance, you could have a timer that shows shipping cut-off times.

With the pro version, you can also create an announcement bar that sticks to the top or bottom of the screen to keep your timer visible.

7. Sales Countdown Timer

Sales countdown timer

Sales Countdown Timer is designed for WooCommerce stores. It helps show timers for sale events, promotional offers, and the latest campaigns.

You can easily integrate the plugin with your WooCommerce products. Plus, it offers different customization options. You can change the style of the timers, edit the message, change the colors in the timer clock, and more.

Besides that, the plugin also lets you choose the location of the timer, whether you’d like to make it sticky, and also select which type of product pages you’d like to show the countdown timer.

Here is a look at the countdown timer we created using the plugin:

Sales countdown timer example

We hope this article helped you learn about the best countdown plugins for WordPress. You may also be interested in our tips to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales, and our list of the best email marketing services to grow your sales.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Countdown Plugins for WordPress (Easy to Use) first appeared on WPBeginner.