How did the Gillette video impact search traffic?

Over the past couple weeks there was a lot of media coverage, in both traditional and social mediums discussing the Gillette “The Best a Man Can Be” ad.

The ad has a lot of layers to it.

But for the search engine marketing crowd, we know one of the most important questions is, “What was the impact on search traffic?”

What impact does creative like this have on a brand and that brand’s search volume?

This is especially interesting as we get closer to the Super Bowl. Brands have sunk millions of dollars into the ad spot and the creation of the ad itself.

Why do they make these investment choices? What is the impact to search traffic and volume?

In case you haven’t watched, here is the original video from Gillette.

Also worth watching,  Saturday Night Live parodied the video using Kool-Aid as the brand.

Now that we’ve seen the ad, let’s look at the corresponding searches.

How did the Gillette video impact search traffic?

I started by looking at Google Trends for the term “Gillette.”

As expected, it spiked over the past 90 days and was the highest since 2004.

Okay, maybe this is just people looking for the commercial, or information about the Patriots since they play at Gillette stadium.

So, I took a quick look at “Gillette Razor.”

Boom! Highest search traffic volume in 5 years, and not just be a little bit, but a massive spike.

So people were also specifically driven to look for the product by branded name.

This is where the magic really happens.

Taking a look at forecasted metrics from Google’s Keyword planner over the last 12 months, you can see that the average CPC is ~$1 less per click.

If you stack that up over the course of any given day or week you will save thousands of dollars.

Gillette is probably like a lot of us and read the articles about Nike and the Colin Kaepernick ad.

This ad had a similar affect. It was divisive and took a stand, but the end goal impact to shareholders was a 31% increase in sales.

The ad launched on September 3 and the Times published an article about it on September 10.

As you can see, Nike stock was on its way to a 52 week and all-time high, and has outperformed the Dow Jones over the past 12 months.

This is the type of impact that powerful branded ads can have on people.

The challenge for many of us is that we don’t have big branded budgets. We don’t work on brands that have the ability to take these types of risks.

So what information can we apply to this work in our own world?

Here are three things to consider when creating branded ads that might drive search traffic

1) Focus on quality

It doesn’t have to be a branded controversial TV ad, it just needs to be good.

Look at what Dollar Shave Club has done. They came from nowhere on the back of a quality YouTube spot which now has over 25 million views.

This is true for so many other brands who have launched themselves on Facebook, or driven significant sales on a purely direct response budget to start.

2. Are you filling a consumer need with value?

Here is where a lot of brands have stepped in to challenge legacy brands, or leveraged their ability to solve problems by taking the friction out of something.

This is a big focus now with “digital transformation,” but there is a lot of truth to this when thinking about what value your ads are driving for customers.

Value can simply be selling them something they need like an iPhone charger, or removing friction from something that was previously painless, such as Uber/Lyft, or Pop sockets for phones.

Focus on the value your product is bringing and the corresponding ad space where that value is to be transacted.

This could be as simple as providing location extensions when someone is searching “running shoes” so your store can quickly and easily be found.

Help consumers get to the answer they are looking for quickly. Provide value by removing friction.

3) Are you monitoring attribution?

Watching how consumers move between tactics, and branded and non-branded keywords, is a great way to understand the impact of your advertising.

There are even some great ways to measure foot traffic now to help with “traditional” mediums like TV or Billboard. Doing your best to understand the measurement and inter-connectivity of your advertising will help justify these types of branded ads.

Takeaways

Overall, it doesn’t really matter if you liked or didn’t like the Gillette ad. The fact is it worked. It got people talking, and it drove up search traffic. Even if it has half of the impact that a similar ad had for Nike, the sales will follow.

So as much as we in search rely on consumers searching, remember there is still a lot of value in branded advertising, big and small, across mediums.

The post How did the Gillette video impact search traffic? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/01/31/gillette-video-search-traffic/

Dev Shortie: A Better Process for Styling Websites

One thing I’ve noticed a lot lately with websites is that no matter how it looks, the style sheet is full of redundant, duplicate, or unnecessary styles. A lot of that, I imagine, comes from updates after a website goes live, where engineers that weren’t initially involved in its development are coming in blind. Another part of that might revolve around planning or distribution of tasks for a website’s construction. Truth be told, there are probably dozens of reasons that the styles may not be as organized or clean as they could be. We can’t see the future and we can’t always be in constant communication with one another, but I’ve learned a thing or two over the last decade that I think might help keep things clean, organized, reusable, and readable.
Before We Start
A few setup notes here: I write my styles with SCSS. This is my preference. There are many other options out there—Less or Sass to name a couple—which will work in more or less the same way. I also typically use webpack or Gulp on older projects to compile and minify, auto-prefix, and concatenate my style sheets.
Organization and Breakdown
The organization is really up to the
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18349/dev-shortie-a-better-process-for-styling-websites

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/dev-shortie-a-better-process-for-styling-websites/

How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide)

You want to make extra money on the side, so you looked into several online business ideas and decided that creating an online store is the way to go.

The next step is where beginners often struggle the most: choosing which products to sell on your online store.

In this ultimate guide, we will explain how to easily choose the best products to sell online by following our step by step process.

1. Basics of Choosing Products to Sell on Your Ecommerce Store

Before you start looking into products that you can sell, there are some basics that you need to keep in mind. Let’s look at some of the most important ones first.

1. Choosing Your Ecommerce Platform

First you need to choose a platform that you want to use to sell your products.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform is important because it would affect your choice of products and how you do business.

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. It is easy to use, and you can use it to sell all kind of products while accepting payments using multiple payment gateways. See our guide on how to start an online store to get started with WooCommerce.

However, WooCommerce is not the only platform out there. There are some great WooCommerce alternatives that could be better for you depending on what you are trying to sell.

If you lack technical skills and want a quicker way to build an online store, then you may want to look into Shopify. It is a fully hosted solution that takes care of all the technical stuff. The catch here is that you will be paying a little more, and your costs will grow as you make more sales.

For a side by side comparison, see our article on Shopify vs WooCommerce with the pros and cons of both platforms.

2. Shipping

Shipping has a huge impact on the success of an eCommerce store. A study conducted by Business Insider discovered that higher shipping costs are the #1 cause of all abandoned shopping carts online.

You would obviously want to select products that you can ship at lower costs or for free. If you only plan to sell digital products (music, video, software, ebook, etc), then you don’t have to worry about shipping because the products will be downloaded by customers online.

3. Inventory

Do you want to manage inventory and keep products stocked? For that, you will need storage space and inventory management through your eCommerce software. Keeping products in stock will increase your cost of business.

On the other hand, drop-shipping solves this problem. You can select products that are shipped directly by the manufacturer or supplier.

4. Price

You’ll need to find products where you can offer a competitive price to your customers. If the product you are selling is more expensive than your competitors, then obviously that would discourage many first time buyers.

2. Types of Products That You Can Sell Easily

There are many different kinds of products that you can sell in your online store. Let’s narrow them down into two major sections.

1. Commoditized Products

These are products that everyone needs and are sold by many small and large stores without any difference in quality. For example, everyday products like soap, detergent, cereal, and more.

These products are made by some of the largest brands in the retail industry and are available widely with little to no difference in price.

This makes it harder for you to compete with giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. They can offer those products at lower costs, free shipping, and other perks.

This rules out a large number of products for you.

2. Niche Products

These are products that are unique or hand-made, available in limited stocks, and from specific suppliers. Think of home-made soaps, novelty t-shirts, ceramics, gift items, software, and countless other products.

Since these products are not widely available, they give you a competitive advantage.

There are even unique platforms like Etsy stores where you can find small vendors who make beautiful products and would love to partner up with other stores.

You can also find suppliers abroad using websites like AliExpress or Alibaba.com. These suppliers can make those niche products to your specifications and deliver them to you.

Niche products are available in almost any product category imaginable. You’ll find tons of unique ideas as you do your product research.

This brings us to our next tip.

3. Doing Product Research On Your Own

Don’t use your best guess to select products you sell online. Back it up with data so that you know there is a demand for these products and customers are looking for them.

The first tool you are going to use for your research is Amazon.

It is the world’s largest eCommerce store with thousands of products. Luckily, it is also a treasure trove of free data that you can scrap and make your decisions.

Go through different product categories to find out top performing products in each category. Keep narrowing down your search to sub-categories to find targeted sub-niches of products.

Let’s suppose you wanted to sell kid’s toys, narrow down your search to very specific toy categories. This excludes popular products, and you get a very focused set of products as you filter through.

Switch to the ‘Bestsellers’ view to find the top performing products on Amazon under each category.

SEMRush is another great tool that you can use to gather data from competitors or any eCommerce store you want.

It shows you where those eCommerce stores are getting most of their traffic, which products they are promoting through paid advertisements, what are their most viewed products, and more.

It also shows your competitor’s product listing ads from Google. You can see their best performing product listing ads, keywords, and other data.

Here are some other tools you can use to gather product data from other websites.

• Ahrefs – A powerful competitor research tool that will show what’s popular on the websites of your competitors.
• AdPlexity – A popular eCommerce research tool that helps you collect eCommerce data from across the web, from competitors, or any other website.
• AmazeOwl – It is an Amazon product reseach tool available as a free desktop application.

4. Use Customer Personas to Find Product Ideas

A customer persona is a fictional profile of an ideal customer that you want to target. You create this profile by answering simple questions about an ideal buyer.

This is your target audience and personifying them helps you understand them better when you are doing product research.

If you have an existing store, then you can use eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics to build an ideal buyer persona.

If you are just starting out, then use your best guess to build a customer persona. This exercise helps you understand your customer’s needs, questions they may have, and what kind of products they would like to buy.

To learn more about buyer persona, see this guide on creating a concrete buyer persona with ready-made templates and examples.

5. Find Products You are Passionate About

As career advisors say, ‘Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’.

Similarly, choosing products that you are passionate about helps you sell them more effectively.

These could be products that you personally love and passionately recommend to your family and friends. These could be products related to a hobby or activity that you are passionate about.

Nothing drives more passion when you build something useful and want others to use it.

Following your passion allows you to look deeply into products and find ideas that offer real value to your customers.

We hope this article helped you learn how to choose the best products to sell online. You may also want to see our article on tips to grow your business online without spending a lot of money.

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 How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide) appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-choose-the-best-products-to-sell-online-beginners-guide/

YouTube SEO: Optimizing your channel in 5 steps

Here at Search Engine Watch we have written quite extensively over the years about how to optimize your YouTube videos to make sure they really stand out.

Ann Smarty’s top 5 tips from last year is a handy list. And for YouTube best practice, Pius Boachie’s post is a great read too.

As 2019 gets going, video is still growing as a great way to ensure visibility online and to provide web users with useful and engaging content.

It is also an increasingly competitive medium.

YouTube doesn’t disclose how many creators use the platform. And there’s obviously quite some difference between someone who posts daily and has 100k+ followers, versus anyone who’s ever once uploaded a video. Estimates, though, range from 50m to upwards of 150m.

We do know that YouTube has more than 1.8 billion monthly users — nearly rivaling Facebook’s 2.27 billion.

Optimizing your YouTube channel, then, should not be an afterthought.

Those who are really succeeding on YouTube have great channels. They look good, they showcase their best videos and they connect with others in their niche. They are a destination in their own right.

And they promote better engagement and more views of the videos there. This is massively important when it comes to having your videos rank in YouTube’s (and Google’s) SERPs.

Here are five pointers for ensuring your YouTube channel is optimized.

1. Add channel art

Channel art in the case of YouTube refers to the banner that stretches across the top of the page in-between the search bar and the title of the channel.

It goes without saying that this should be eye-catching and on-brand – as well as being sized to the optimal 2560 x 1440 pixels – but it can be so much more.

It can also be a place to share important information about the channel, such as what day of the week videos are uploaded. Sam The Cooking Guy is a good example:

As you can see, this banner is prime real estate for getting some key information across with Sam telling us what days of the week he posts new content. He also has a Call To Action (right hand side) for persuading us to subscribe, as well as links to his merch store, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter right in the banner too.

2. Featured video or channel trailer?

YouTube also gives you the option to have a featured video or – for users who aren’t yet subscribed – a channel trailer.

Many successful channels opt to place a video they see as good example of the rest of their content. But, of course, it is possible to have more success with getting users to subscribe by making a for-purpose trailer about your channel.

Either way, be sure to use the description box to full effect by including around 100 words (or about 500 characters) to signal to visitors and the Google/YouTube algorithm what your channel is all about.

In the above example, Binging with Babish is very kindly linking out to Vulfpeck. But I would also recommend there being a CTA with links out to your website from here – it’s a really visible part of the page.

3. Playlists

Once you really start building up your YouTube content, playlists certainly help make things more navigable.

Grouping together popular videos or those with a similar theme are good options. You will know your content best when it comes to working out what videos work well together. There’s no hard and fast rule here.

Remember, from an SEO point of view, videos which are getting good traffic and engagement tend to rank better.

So, make videos as easy to find by grouping and linking out to other similar videos/playlists in your channel from each video description. This will make things easier for viewers.

Don’t just rely on YouTube to get your content next in-line after other similar videos.

Be bold with playlists and link to them.

4. Don’t forget the ‘About’ tab

It’s not the most visible page, but YouTube does provide an ‘About’ tab for you to add a description for your channel.

By the looks of things, you can be as wordy as you like here. You can also add a business email and links to website/social media/etc.

Links within the body text there aren’t clickable – but there’s a designated link area at the foot of the page.

5. Link to other relevant channels

Linking out to the competition might seem a little odd, but it is in keeping with the community spirit of YouTube.

I find it best to think about it in terms of giving value to you visitors/subscribers. Make it easy for them to browse other great and relevant content.

Be part of the conversation.

Make sure you are uploading the best content that you can. And you might just find other channels start linking to you.

Takeaways for YouTube channel optimization

YouTube channels can really be used to great effect to ensure your video content is as visible as possible.

Good channel art, putting your best content front and center, and making your growing collection of video content more navigable via playlists and links are really important.

Graham Charlton points out in his piece How to optimize your videos for better ranking in YouTube that there are a great number of ranking factors that go into YouTube’s algorithm.

I’d argue a well-optimized channel is a good way for pushing up some important ones.

Other YouTube ranking factors

• View Count – “Still an important indication of popularity,” according to Graham. Better visibility in a well-optimized channel may give a new video a view boost before having too much time to rank. This may help keep the counter ticking up well after the video is established. In turn, this signals to YouTube that it’s still important.
• View Density – Graham says: “View density matters to YouTube. If your video receives a lot of views in a short space of time, it’s more likely to be pushed up the rankings.”
• Likes – “These provide an indication of the engagement around a video,” Graham says. And, simply, the more visible your video is thanks to your channel, the more potential there is for likes and positive sentiment. (Assuming your content is brilliant!)
• Comments – “A way for YouTube to gauge the authority and relevance of videos,” according to Graham. And more likely to give you the opportunity to respond, generate buzz, and keep YouTube’s community spirit alive.

Note: the YouTube Creators Academy is also a great resource. Check it out!

YouTube is quite generous in what it allows you to do.

If your video content is strong and well optimized – you owe it to yourself to make sure the channel in which it resides shines too.

The post YouTube SEO: Optimizing your channel in 5 steps appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/01/31/youtube-channel-optimization/

How to Create a Membership Pricing Table in WordPress

Setting up a pricing table for your membership site is an efficient way to highlight each subscription plan’s features and make it easy for potential customers to compare the available options. A well thought membership pricing table can positively affect your site conversion rate.
You can easily highlight things like access to members-only store, a premium members forum or exclusive content.
Below we’ll go into the steps required to create a pricing table that shows each subscription plan options for your site.
Creating the Membership Plans
The main purpose of setting up pricing tables is to easily display information and the differences between each membership plan.
We’ll be using Paid Member Subscriptions, an easy to use membership plugin for creating the different membership levels. The main plugin is free and allows you to easily create subscription plans, restrict content and accept payments.
After installing and activating the plugin, we’ll go ahead an create 3 subscription plans: “Free”, “Silver” and “Gold”.
For each subscription plan, you’ll be able to set a price, duration as well as renewal type. After entering
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18348/how-to-create-a-membership-pricing-table-in-wordpress

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/how-to-create-a-membership-pricing-table-in-wordpress/

How to Add The CodeMirror Editor to any WordPress Plugin or Theme

CodeMirror is a versatile JavaScript component that turns any HTML textarea into a full-featured code editor with out-of-the-box support for over 120 (programming) languages. It’s neither the first nor the only such component, but it’s the one that was added to the WordPress core in v4.9 to improve the code editing experience; specifically, syntax highlighting, linting, and code competition. Live code editing is frowned upon by many, but it’s also used by even more users who need to do just a bit of tweaking on their site. That tweaking (and CodeMirror) is available in Appearance – Editor where you can edit theme files, in Plugins – Editor where you do the same with plugins, and in Customizer – Additional CSS. Since CodeMirror is available in the core and super-easy to add to any plugin or theme, we’ll have a look at how you can make your plugin better and more user-friendly with just a few lines of code.
Do I need this CodeMirror thing?
If your plugin has any input fields where users enter code snippets, then you most surely need CodeMirror. Even if it’s just a few lines of custom CSS, the improvement in user experience that you’ll
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18347/how-to-add-the-codemirror-editor-to-any-wordpress-plugin-or-theme

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/how-to-add-the-codemirror-editor-to-any-wordpress-plugin-or-theme/

How to Create a Custom WordPress Dashboard (Yourself or Clients)

Want to create a WordPress custom dashboard at your site? You might want to create a more customized experience for your clients or third-party users (like freelance writers or bloggers). Or, you could be working on your own site and just looking for a way to create a more streamlined admin experience that matches your workflows.
No matter why you want to create a WordPress custom dashboard, this post is going to help you out. In it, you’ll learn how to customize all aspects of the WordPress dashboard, including how to:
We’ll start off by showing you how to use an all-in-one plugin that does a little bit of everything. Then, we’ll share some more niche tools to more deeply handle the specific customization areas we mentioned above. Let’s start customizing!
Fair Warning Regarding Performance
Before we dive into the tutorial, it’s important to remember that heavily customing your WordPress dashboard may result in slower back-end performance (or in some cases, it may load faster depending on what you’re doing). This will typically only impact those that are logging into your site, not the front-end. The front-end of your site should be serving primarily
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18346/how-to-create-a-custom-wordpress-dashboard-yourself-or-clients

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/how-to-create-a-custom-wordpress-dashboard-yourself-or-clients/

What’s the best WordPress theme for SEO?

We look at considerations you should have when selecting a WordPress theme for SEO. What factors matter when evaluating a theme? Does the built-in skim a mark up that some seems output make a huge difference? All these answers and more in this episode. https://www.lockedownseo.com/
Plugins mentioned:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpre…
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-seo-…
#LockedownSEO #seo #wordpressSEO
Follow me on my other social media platforms:
Facebook: LockedownDesign
Twitter: Lockedown_
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18345/what-s-the-best-wordpress-theme-for-seo

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/whats-the-best-wordpress-theme-for-seo/

Modern Ways To Reach New Relevant Audiences For Your WordPress Product

Any WordPress plugin or theme without engaged and relevant audiences of users will have a very hard time justifying the resources that are being put into developing & maintaining it. In this article, I’m going to focus on several innovative ways which will enable you to reach new audiences for your WordPress product business. These ways do not include the common & widely familiar ones like SEO, content marketing, old-fashioned social media marketing, etc. Instead, the focus here will be set on presenting you with paths you probably have not encountered before in the WordPress business sphere! “Stealing” Your Competitors’ Customer Data
I obviously realize how potentially problematic this section’s subheader may appear, but let me reassure you by saying that the idea & method described here are perfectly legal and morally sound, just as long as you follow the information provided and not take it in some other, less decent directions. Let’s get to it:
1 – Broad Audience Targeting
As a seller of WordPress plugins and themes you may or may not have heard of a thing called “Dynamic Product Ads” by Facebook. If you haven’t
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18344/modern-ways-to-reach-new-relevant-audiences-for-your-wordpress-product

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/modern-ways-to-reach-new-relevant-audiences-for-your-wordpress-product/

Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which is the Better Platform? (Comparison)

Are you thinking of starting an online store? Not sure whether you should use Shopify or WooCommerce?

Shopify and WooCommerce are the two top eCommerce platforms in the world each with their own pros and cons.

As a business owner, choosing the right eCommerce platform that fits your business needs is crucial for your success.

In this guide, we will show you a detailed comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce. The goal is to break down their advantages and disadvantages to help you choose the best option for your eCommerce store.

Since this is a detailed comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce, here’s a quick table of content:

• Overview: WooCommerce vs Shopify
• What to look for in your eCommerce platform?
• Cost comparison
• Ease of usse comparison
• Payment methods
• Add-Ons comparison
• Dropshipping comparison
• Scalability comparison
• Support options
• Conclusion: WooCommerce vs Shopify – Which is better?

Overview: Shopify vs WooCommerce

Before we start with our in-depth comparison of the two most popular eCommerce platforms on the web, it’s important that we cover the basics and highlight what makes these platform stand out.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that makes it easy for you to create an online store, accept payments, and manage your inventory all from a single platform without ever worrying about the technical aspects of managing a website such as web hosting, security, caching, etc.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin built for WordPress. It allows you to leverage the most powerful content management system (CMS) and use it to run an online store. Because of the open-source nature, you can customize every aspect of your store and easily build custom extensions.

The decision to choose between the two platforms depend entirely on your needs and skill level.

What to Look for in Your eCommerce Platform?

There are few things that you absolutely need to keep in mind when starting an online store. These key factors will help you decide which platform is better suited for your needs.

• Budget – The initial cost of starting a fully functional ecommerce store.
• Ease of use – It should be easy to use even for absolute beginners.
• Payment Methods – It should have support for multiple payment methods (e.g. PayPal, Stripe, other merchant processors).
• Integrations – Number of services and third party tools you can integrate to grow your business.
• Scalability – The platform should be able to scale as your business grows.

These are the very basic requirements that all online store owners must consider. However, depending on your needs, you may also want to look at other options like shipping, inventory management, invoicing, taxes, dropshipping, etc.

Our goal with this article is to take an in-depth look at how Shopify and WooCommerce stand on these basic requirements, and which one of them is best suited for your needs.

Cost: Shopify vs WooCommerce

Cost is often the most important consideration for eCommerce website owners. You need to evaluate the cost of getting started while also keeping in mind the variable costs for add-on services and software.

The true cost of using Shopify

Shopify makes it super easy to start your online store. Their basic plan starts at $29 per month, and you can upgrade to the Shopify plan for $79 or the Advanced Shopify plan for $299 per month.

Each of these plans includes domain name, SSL certificate, and web hosting.

The basic plan comes with enough features to set up a new online store. You can add unlimited products, 2 user accounts, unlimited file storage, and more.

However, this pricing doesn’t include third-party tools and add-ons that you will need to take your Shopify store to the next level. As your business grows, these costs will start adding up, and you’ll soon be paying a lot more than the basic plan.

Payments are another factor that affects your costs. Shopify offers their own Shopify Payments solution which costs 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction.

If you want to use third-party payment gateways or your own merchant account, then you will be charged a flat fee of 2.0% for all transactions. You can reduce this fee to 0.5% by using the Shopify Advanced plan which costs $299 per month.

These payment processing fees are fairly steep when using external payment gateways. However, if you’re just starting out and want to use the Shopify payment solution, then the fees are fairly comparable to popular platforms like Stripe and Braintree.

The true cost of using WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress.org (also known as self-hosted WordPress). It is open source and freely available as a WordPress plugin.

However, you’ll need a domain name, SSL Certificate, and a WordPress hosting account to start a WooCommerce store.

Typically, a domain name costs $14.99, SSL Certificate costs $69.99, and web hosting around $7.99 / month. This is not cheap, particularly when you are just starting out.

Thankfully, there are several hosting companies who are now offering specialized WooCommerce hosting plans which significantly reduces the cost.

Bluehost, an official WordPress and WooCommerce recommended hosting provider, has agreed to offer our users a free domain name, free SSL certificate, and a discount on web hosting.

This will help you start your online store for as low as $6.95 / month.

→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←

As you can see, the cost of starting a basic WooCommerce store is significantly lower than Shopify. WooCommerce also doesn’t charge you a percentage fee of your transactions which is a very nice perk.

But the WooCommerce costs start adding up as you purchase paid extensions. Your hosting costs will also increase as your online store grows.

However, one clear advantage of using WooCommerce is that you can often find free alternatives to the paid extensions. You can also keep your costs in control by only purchasing the tools and plugins as you need them.

With the number of free themes and free add-ons available for WooCommerce, it’s definitely the winner when it comes to cost.

Winner: WooCommerce

Ease of Use: Shopify vs WooCommerce

Most users starting an online store are not web designers or developers. Even users who are familiar with basic concepts need a platform that is easy to use and gets out of their way.

Let’s see how Shopify and WooCommerce stack up in terms of user-friendliness.

Shopify – Ease of Use

Shopify is a fully hosted platform which means you don’t need to install, manage, or update any software. You also don’t need to worry about security, performance, backups, and compatibility issues.

As soon as you sign up, it helps you pick a design for your website. After that, they walk you through customization and then help you add products.

Shopify comes with an intuitive drag and drop interface. Managing your products, sales, and inventory inside Shopify is a breeze.

One downside of this guided, polished, and highly optimized user experience is that it limits your control. You can only use the design and development tools provided by Shopify or add-ons available in their marketplace.

However, this is not as bad as it sounds. For most users, the large selection of extensions and themes available in Shopify, is more than enough to get started and grow your online store.

WooCommerce – Ease of Use

WooCommerce is not a hosted platform like Shopify. This means you will need to install WooCommerce, manage updates, keep backups, and make sure that your website is secure. There are plenty of free and paid plugins that can automate most of these tasks for you.

WooCommerce is super flexible when it comes to customizations. You have full control of the whole platform. You can add any functionality imaginable to your website with the help of more than 55,000+ WordPress plugins.

However, there is no built-in drag & drop design builder. You can use one of the WordPress page builders like Beaver Builder, but it adds to your cost.

The biggest downside of the flexibility is that it comes with a learning curve and requires a more hands-on management of your website. You also have to signup for a merchant account or similar service like Stripe / PayPal.

While the WooCommerce guided setup wizard is helpful, it does not come close to the onboarding and ease of use of Shopify.

Winner: Shopify

Payment Methods: Shopify vs WooCommerce

There are many payment gateways that you can use to accept payments online. Some payment methods may not be suitable for you, and others may not be available to your customers.

This is why it’s important that the platform you choose offers multiple payment options. Let’s take a look at how Shopify and WooCommerce compare when it comes to payment integrations.

Payment Options in Shopify

Shopify offers plenty of payment options that you can use to receive payments from customers. It has its own payments solution called Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe) as well as all popular third-party payment gateways.

The problem is that Shopify charges an extra 2% fees on each transaction made through third party payment gateways. This is on top of the transaction fees charged by the payment gateway. You can reduce the fee to 0.5% by paying $299 per month for Advanced Shopify plan.

Shopify Payments has flat credit card fees, but no other transaction fees. Credit card rates start from 2.9% + 30¢ for the basic plan and get lower for other plans.

Payment Options in WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers PayPal and Stripe payments by default. It also supports all other popular payment service providers through add-ons.

For payment gateways, WooCommerce even has support for many regional and less popular payment services. Since there is no barrier to entry, any payments company can create add-ons for WooCommerce and provide support for it.

As a self-hosted platform, you are only charged transaction fees by your payment gateway or your bank. WooCommerce never charges you a % fee on your store transactions which is a major plus.

If choosing your own merchant account and using a third-party gateway is important for you, then you will save A LOT of money by using WooCommerce. But if you’re a small store and willing to use Shopify Payments which has the same credit card rates as Stripe / Paypal, then it makes no difference.

Winner: Tie

Integrations and Add-ons: Shopify vs WooCommerce

No matter how robust an e-commerce platform is, you’ll always need third-party tools and services to grow your store. For example, an email marketing software, lead generation tool, analytics tools, outreach services, etc.

Both Shopify and WooCommerce have a massive extensions directory, and they integrate with many third-party services.

Shopify Add-ons and Integrations

Shopify comes with a powerful API and an App Store where you can buy third-party add-ons for your Shopify store. They have hundreds of apps in the store covering every feature you’ll want to add to your store.

For lead generation, they have integrations with software like OptinMonster which helps you grow your email list and reduce cart abandonment. They have apps for SEO, product reviews, discounts, countdowns, and more.

Shopify’s app store contains both free and paid apps. Free apps are usually created by third-party services that have their own pricing, and the app only integrates your store to their APIs. Pricing for paid add-ons varies and most apps offer monthly subscriptions.

WooCommerce Add-ons and Integrations

WooCommerce is open source and built on top of WordPress. This gives you access to more than 55,000 free WordPress plugins and many more paid plugins.

You can use these add-ons to add payment gateways, lead generation, SEO, performance optimization, and almost any feature you can think of.

Due to the low barrier of entry, there are a lot more integrations and add-ons available for WooCommerce than Shopify. Almost all third-party tools and service providers have their own plugins to seamlessly integrate with your WooCommerce store.

You can also hire a developer to create an integration or plugin just for your own website. However it’s important to keep in mind that WooCommerce is a lot easier to customize. Having personally gone through the process of submitting a plugin for WordPress and submitting an app to the Shopify store, we can say that the process is extremely harder on Shopify vs WooCommerce.

Winner: WooCommerce

Shopify vs WooCommerce Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an online business where an eCommerce store doesn’t keep the products in stock. Instead, it fullfills order by purchasing products from vendors and then shipping them directly to the customers.

Due to its low overhead, dropshipping has become popular around the world. Many of our users asked us to compare WooCommerce vs Shopify for dropshipping and which one of them is better for a dropshipping business.

Dropshipping with Shopify

When building a dropshipping business, the front-end of your website will look just like any online store. Your users will be able to browse the products, add them to cart, and make payment, just like they would do on any other eCommerce store.

Depending on the vendors you choose, you will then have to place user’s order for shipping.

Shopify also has integration apps for several popular dropshipping marketplaces like AliExpress, Oberlo, Printify, and more. However, each of these product marketplaces has their own membership fees, shipping, and other charges that you need to keep in mind when building your dropshipping website with Shopify.

Dropshipping with WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a popular choice among dropshipping businesses. Mainly because WooCommerce allows you to install extensions that make order fulfillment a breeze.

You can easily find extensions that allow you to instantly import products, fulfill orders from your website, and more. You can even create your own eCommerce marketplace allowing other vendors to sell on your website.

Keep in mind, that your supplier and vendor may have minimum order requirements, membership fees, and other charges. You need to keep those in mind when adding products to your WooCommerce dropshipping store.

Winner: WooCommerce

Scalability and Growth: Shopify vs WooCommerce

You have probably heard the term “growth-pains” from various CEOs. As your business grows, you will need more resources to handle new challenges and goals.

Shopify and WooCommerce can both be scaled to handle large amount of traffic and orders, but they’re not created equal. Let’s take a look at how these two eCommerce platform compare when it comes to scalability.

Scalability on Shopify

Shopify handles the technical parts of your store which means you don’t ever have to worry about performance, security, and scalability. Once your business starts growing, you can simply upgrade your Shopify plans.

Their infrastructure can easily handle your growing business without you having to worry about downtimes, backups, updates, or security. They also offer enterprise services as part of the Shopify Plus plan.

This takes out the painful part of the growth, but it also adds to your cost of business. Your expenses will grow, and you’ll have to plan accordingly.

The good part is that your costs will be offset by you not having to hire / manage a technical team in-house.

Scalability on WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform which makes you responsible for maintaining updates, backups, and security of your website.

Your starter WooCommerce hosting plan would run out of resources as your store starts getting more traffic.

The good part is that you have plenty of options to manage growth as you are in full control of your website. Starting with better management of resources with caching to upgrading your hosting plan to more powerful servers.

Your WooCommerce hosting costs will increase, but you will have better control on resources, and you can make sure that you are not paying for resources that you don’t need. You can use a managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine or LiquidWeb to help scale your WooCommerce store.

Despite the control that WooCommerce offers, some business owners simply prefer a hassle-free solution.

Winner: Shopify

Support Options for WooCommerce vs Shopify

Both WooCommerce and Shopify are quite easy to use. However, sometimes you may need help to learn how to do something new on your store.

Let’s see how WooCommerce and Shopify handle support and what are your options to get help when needed.

Support Options on Shopify

Shopify is a fully hosted platform, which means they control the software and they are the ones who know their platform the best.

Shopify provides 24/7 support via live chat, phone, email, and Twitter. For users who want to fix things on their own, Shopify offers extensive documentation, how-to guides, knowledge base, video tutorials, and forums.

It also maintains a directory of Shopify Experts that you can hire if you need extra help or if you want to integrate a third-party solution.

Shopify doesn’t provide support for any third-party apps or themes that you are using.

Support Options for WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform, which means there are tons of support options that you can utilize when needed.

The official website has extensive documentation, tutorials, and guides that allow you to help yourself. They also have support forums where you can get help from other WooCommerce users and experts.

WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform, which means your hosting provider is responsible for providing support for issues with your server.

For your WooCommerce theme and extensions, those developers are responsible for answering support questions regarding their products.

Due to its immense popularity, it is quite easier and often cheaper to find developers to help you fix issues with your WooCommerce store. You can find developers on freelancing websites to fix WooCommerce issues.

Winner: Shopify

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which is the Best eCommerce Platform?

Shopify and WooCommerce are both powerful platforms to start your eCommerce store. It truly comes down to your personal skills and preferences.

Shopify is a lot easier to use. It doesn’t require you to install anything, and you can get started quickly. Setting up payments is easier, and they have easy to understand pricing plans.

The disadvantage of Shopify is that you don’t have full control over everything. Your costs can go high with transaction fees, add-ons, and integrations. Your upgrade options are limited to select plans, and you cannot manage costs on a pay-as-you-grow basis.

WooCommerce is open source and gives you full control of your website. It costs a lot lower to start an online store with WooCommerce specially with these WooCommerce hosting companies.

The disadvantage is that you’ll have to maintain the software. It comes with a bit of learning curve. However, millions of beginners are already using it, and they get over the learning phase quite quickly.

If you are looking for a cost-effective solution, and you want to have full control of your online store, then WooCommerce is the best platform for you.

If you want something that’s completely hassle-free that has infinite scalability, then Shopify is the better platform for you.

We hope this article helped you compare pros and cons of Shopify vs WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best website builder.

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 Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which is the Better Platform? (Comparison) appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/shopify-vs-woocommerce-which-is-the-better-platform-comparison/

Why SEO and front-end developers are the perfect search marketing team

If you work in digital marketing, then you will have already heard a lot about the role of SEO and front-end development in creating popular websites.

SEO and web development are often considered as incompatible as iOS and Android devices.

Both have similar goals, but take vastly different approaches.

However, technological progress has facilitated change.

These two different web specialties have now come as close as they have ever been.

So close, in fact, that they could now be considered the perfect ensemble. Together, they can outsmart more conservative approaches in the search marketing industry.

Here are five reasons why SEO and front-end developers make the ideal search marketing team:

1. Coding knowledge is a future-proof asset for SEOs

Even beyond SEO, the demand for coding skills is on the rise.

According to the Evan’s Data Corporation, the number of developers globally will increase by at least a 20% in the next 5 years. If this doesn’t sound much, imagine adding more than 4 million jobs to the industry.

SEOs have a lot to gain from getting familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as well.

As depicted by Ian Laurie in his piece “Why all SEOs should learn to program,” a basic understanding of front-end coding offers a variety of benefits.

To start with, SEOs benefit from understanding the coder’s mindset — an extremely valuable, transferable skill.

It can also give a better understanding of APIs.

And finally, the coder’s mindset gives a better idea of what can realistically be done to fix technical issues. This in turn helps in making more sensible and feasible recommendations.

2. Hybrid roles are on the rise

In the past few years we have seen a rise in technical SEO roles, all including a basic understanding of front-end languages.

Why? Static HTML websites are a memory from the past. Now, focus is all about creating interactive, fast websites that perform well on a variety of devices.

With the majority of visitors coming from mobile devices, the attention to page load speed has never been higher.

The new trend of progressive web apps is gaining momentum too. These enhancements can be achieved just with a deeper understanding of front-end languages — hence the growth in demand for technical roles.

Machine learning is another big topic on the rise. It allows companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple to better respond to search queries and predict the next steps in user behavior.

Python is key in building machine learning applications. It has become the fastest growing programming language, making it a necessary learning step for both SEOs and developers.

3. Collaborative environments speed up projects

Setting up collaborative environments and re-thinking internal project management through agile working could also help in speeding up (and improving) the output of projects.

Through team and process re-organization, we can break complex projects down into small chunks.

This provides the invaluable benefit of a continuous feedback loop.

Continuous feedback loops offer an extremely helpful approach in making sure that each milestone is delivered on time, and according to the end-user’s needs.

SEO can also be seen as an umbrella function (it is related to marketing, site structure, product and development).

Thus, we can easily understand why big organizations are setting up collaborative environments where SEO is considered like a product function, rather than a specialty.

To give an example, the London-based fintech startup TransferWise has taken this approach to the next level, scaling SEO by building products.

They’ve created independent teams with SEOs, developers, analysts and content specialists all collaborating together in the same group.

This approach has shown to be highly successful. Teams develop products quicker and with better results, taking away the pain of SEO efforts being delayed due to technical barriers.

4. Teamwork encourages healthy risk-taking

As search technology advances at a lightning pace, organizations need to embrace a more tolerant culture about risk-taking and failure.

The reward of dominating web niches (e.g. voice search) represents a high return investment for a great number of companies.

Big tech firms such as Google, Apple, and Amazon have already seen great results by using this kind of approach, trying to expand their capabilities on top of their natural expertise.

Sometimes, we have seen some downfalls (e.g. Google+). Other times, we’ve seen exceptionally good results, such as Amazon with cloud infrastructure services.

Developing a model of “smart” risk-taking is highly beneficial in SEO and web development as well.

For example, to stay ahead of the competition, Google has had to experiment with new services and solutions to be even more user-friendly, and keep the users using its services.

This inevitably creates new niches and opportunities, with “smart” risk-takers making the most out of them.

5. Team collaboration leads to better communication

As studies suggest, a deeper collaboration among teams can boost effective communication in the workplace. In addition, the ability to communicate effectively with colleagues, superiors and other teams is a skill that nowadays is indispensable, even for technical roles.

Communication skills such as presenting with confidence, empathy and listening abilities have become increasingly important. Key factors such as job satisfaction and employee retention are now indispensable to run complex projects.

This means that SEO and development teams could only benefit from this collaboration. And it could eventually lead to higher productivity, lower stress levels and — most importantly — a better working environment.

To wrap up

As we have seen, there are plenty of reasons to consider SEO and front-end development as the perfect search marketing team.

Coding skills are in great demand, and the rise of hybrid roles is making SEO a bit more technical day-by-day.

In addition, this structure can also benefit the team dynamics, enhancing communication, performance and healthy risk-taking.

To summarize, it appears clear that blurring the line between SEO and front-end developers has a positive impact across the overall search strategy.

So, why not spend some time improving team dynamics and fostering new skills, and start grabbing the low-hanging fruits straight away?

The post Why SEO and front-end developers are the perfect search marketing team appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/04/why-seo-and-front-end-developers-are-the-perfect-search-marketing-team/

Why You Should Use WordPress as CRM

A CRM, or customer relationship management program, is a special application that is designed specifically to store, analyze and use data for all of your business contacts or clients. While it can basically be used as an easy reference tool for retrieving contact information, this type of application usually has more profound analytical and integration applications.
Who Needs to Use a CRM?
Before you invest in a CRM and start using this technology regularly, you may be wondering if this type of technology is well-suited for your business activities. Regardless of your business model and target audience, you likely must maintain a client list and use it for different purposes.
With this in mind, a CRM may be used by many business types across most industries with great results. However, it may be most beneficial for businesses that:
Must maintain a client list that can be accessible by multiple people
Have a business process that puts customers in contact with multiple staff members
Need to improve customer service
Need to improve consumer loyalty
Need to improve data management and analysis
You may think that your business does not currently need a CRM because it is relatively small.
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18343/why-you-should-use-wordpress-as-crm

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/why-you-should-use-wordpress-as-crm/

Stackable Is Now in GitHub

In order to build an open and strong community, we’ve decided to move Stackable from a private code repository, to a public Github repository. Hooray for Open Source Software
Stackable is open source software, which means that the code that’s used to build it is freely available for everyone. Anyone can get the code, read it and learn from it.
However, the source code was only included with the plugin itself. If you open the plugin zip file, it’s all there. The methods to build the Stackable though, weren’t. All of those were in our private repository.
So if you found a bug and wanted to help us fix it, or if you wanted to add something custom in Stackable, you’ll have to ask us in the Support Forum to do it.
We had the build scripts in a private repository mainly because we thought it wasn’t ready yet. We didn’t have our standards really drilled down before.
For the past few versions, up until this version 1.12 release, we’ve been doubling down on our standards, performing a code-wide cleanup, and we’ve finally organized our build tools. Now, we’ve moved all our code in GitHub!
Help us improve Stackable
Moving to a public
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18342/stackable-is-now-in-github

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/stackable-is-now-in-github/

Spam Injector Disguised as License Key in WordPress Website

Here at Sucuri, we clean WordPress websites every day. There are various types of common malware, but when we stumble upon a different scenario, our research team likes to dig deeper and conduct a complete investigation. A license key is a place where a webmaster might not expect to find an infection, however, in this particular case, this is where we found one.
A Spam Injector Resembling a License Key
A client opened a malware removal ticket reporting some weird spam URLs injected onto their WordPress website. After further investigation into the files in the website, we discovered a hidden encoded spam injector malware in the following theme file:
./wp-content/themes/toolbox/functions.php
The attacker formatted the encoded injector to look like a theme’s license key in order to distract the eyes of a less-trained security analyst from suspecting this to be malicious code.
Here is the malware that resembles a license key inside a WordPress theme:
Layers and Layers of Encoding
Not only did the attacker add malware to an “unsuspicious” file, but they also hardly used any encoding to ensure it was well hidden.
The injected code contained a few layers of encoding to further
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18341/spam-injector-disguised-as-license-key-in-wordpress-website

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/spam-injector-disguised-as-license-key-in-wordpress-website/

How Page Builders Can Help Your Team Create Better Websites

WordPress Page Builders have a controversial history. Early visual design tools for WordPress were clunky and, behind the scenes, outputted code that was slow-loading and poor in quality. Not only that, Page Builders were often bundled together with WordPress themes, which made it very difficult to change themes or reuse any of a page’s copy and imagery without rebuilding. It’s no surprise that many developers and WordPress veterans avoided Page Builders and opted to hand-code pages using HTML and CSS. These days, things are very different. Page Builders have matured and instead of slowing down content creation workflows, they speed them up and enable more people to be involved in the website building process. This might sound like a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation, but as companies and teams grow, individuals that make up those teams tend to specialize.
With a visual design tool, like a Page Builder, your copywriter can work on writing while a designer imagines the aesthetics, branding, and visual direction. A marketing team can A/B test and optimize funnels while a translation team works on localization. Anyone that’s involved with the website
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18340/how-page-builders-can-help-your-team-create-better-websites

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/how-page-builders-can-help-your-team-create-better-websites/

Hey WordPress Theme Developers, Are Your Themes Ready for the Gutenberg Block Editor?

Before WordPress 5.0 arrived I came across a few premium WordPress themes already advertising that they were ‘Gutenberg-ready’ or ‘Gutenberg-compatible’. Huh. But how could a theme not be compatible with the new block editor (formerly known as Gutenberg)? Surely themes just render whatever is in the post content with the theme’s own styling? Turns out there’s a bit more to it than that. In this post I’ll walk through what is necessary to make existing themes or create new themes that fully support the block editor.
Gutenberg is the new snake oil. There should be no reason why any existing WordPress theme won’t work with Gutenberg.
Gutenberg compatibility should not be a selling point for a premium theme
— Iain Poulson (@polevaultweb) December 2, 2018
After venting on Twitter about theme shops using Gutenberg compatibility as a marketing tactic (pro tip: don’t tweet hangry), I was kindly educated by Rich Tabor about the extra layers of support themes can add to make the experience of the block editor even better.
Admittedly I’ve been in the plugin development world for so long (I even wrote about making plugins ready for Gutenberg),
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18339/hey-wordpress-theme-developers-are-your-themes-ready-for-the-gutenberg-block-editor

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/hey-wordpress-theme-developers-are-your-themes-ready-for-the-gutenberg-block-editor/

How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

Do you want to add social share buttons in WordPress? Social media websites are where people spend a lot of their time on internet.

You can use social media to build user engagement and bring new users to your website. The simplest way to do this is by adding social sharing buttons to WordPress posts and pages.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add social share buttons and display share counts in WordPress. We will cover couple of different ways to do this, so you can add social buttons above and below post content or make a floating share bar..

Why You Should Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress?

Social networking is one of the most popular online activities today. It is estimated that by the end of 2019, there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe. (Source)

That’s why social media marketing is now a crucial part of any businesses’ growth strategy. If you want to reach more potential customers, then social media platforms are highly effective channels to communicate with them.

The problem is that when you share your content on your own social media profiles, tit only reaches a limited number of your own followers.

The best way to reach people who don’t follow your business on social media is by adding social sharing buttons to your WordPress site.

Social share buttons prompt your website visitors to share your content on their social media timeline. This allows your content to be seen by their friends and followers who can then add comments, like, and re-share it.

Adding social sharing buttons to your website can help you:

• Get more traffic to your website
• Increase your social media following
• Generate more leads and sales
• Build social proof and brand recognition

Having said that, let’s see how to easily add social share buttons in WordPress.

Adding Social Share Buttons in WordPress

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Shared Counts plugin. It is the best WordPress social media plugin available on the market.

Using this plugin, you can easily add social share buttons in your WordPress posts and also display the share counts. The best part is that it is optimized for performance and doesn’t slow down your website.

Unlike other social sharing plugins, Shared Counts uses a unique caching method to have minimal impact on your website’s speed and performance.

The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Shared Counts plugin. For detailed instructions, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After you’ve installed the plugin, you need to go to Settings » SharedCounts menu to configure plugin settings.

Next, you need to scroll down to the ‘Display’ section and choose the share buttons you want to display. By default, three buttons are selected (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest).

You can click on the white area in the field to add additional share buttons that you want.

Next, you can choose the share button style from the dropdown menu labeled “Share Button Style”. Shared Counts plugin comes with 8 beautiful button styles.

After that, you’ll need to select the theme location where you want to display the social share buttons. You can choose from 3 options: Before Content, After Content, and Before and After Content.

Lastly, you need to select the supported post types. It has ‘post’ selected by default.

If you want to display share buttons on your pages and other post types, then you can check the box next to page option.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Once done, you can visit any post on your website to see the social sharing buttons in action. Here’s how our demo website looks with the ‘Classic’ button style on default Twenty Nineteen theme.

How to Display Social Share Counts in WordPress?

As the name suggests, Shared Counts plugin can also show your social share counts without slowing down your website.

To enable social share counts, you’ll need to go to the Shared Counts settings and set up the share count source.

On the Shared Counts settings window, you’ll see the ‘Share Counts’ settings at the top.

By default, you’ll see the None option selected for ‘Count Source’ which means that share counts are not being retrieved and displayed.

To show the social share counts, you can choose from two sources.

The SharedCount.com is the recommended option for the plugin. If you choose this option, the counts are retrieved from the SharedCount service API. It allows fetching all counts with only 2 API calls which is the best for performance.

If you choose the ‘Native’ option, share counts are retrieved from the respective social service, like Facebook API for Facebook counts, Pinterest API for Pin counts. This method can slow down your site because it will require multiple API calls.

We recommend choosing SharedCount.com as your count source. Next, you’ll see a field for SharedCount API key.

You can get the SharedCount API by signing up to for a free account on SharedCount.com website.

Enter your email address and a password. Then click Create Account.

The website will now send a confirmation link to your email address. You need to click the link to verify.

Once your email is verified, you need to log into your SharedCount account and navigate to your account at the top right side of the screen. There, you’ll see your email address and a dropdown icon next to it.

Next, you need to click the drop-down menu and select ‘Settings’. From here you’ll find your SharedCount API key.

You need to copy the API key and go back to your plugin’s settings page on your WordPress site. Now, go ahead and paste the API key in the ‘SharedCount API Key’ field.

Below that, you’ll see some other settings related to social share counts. You can review and change them if you like.

If you want to show the total counts, then you can check the box next to ‘Count Total Only’ option.

We also recommend checking the box to hide empty counts instead of displaying a zero (0).

Next, you will see a new ‘Total Counts’ field in the Display section. This allows you to show total share counts alongside your share buttons.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see the social sharing buttons with share count for each blog post.

Adding Social Share Buttons on Selected Pages

Typpically social share buttons aren’t usually added to WordPress pages however sometimes you may want to enable them on some specific pages.

If so then, you can use the Shared Counts shortcode: [[shared_counts]].

You can add this shortcode anywhere on your website to display the share buttons.

To add shortcodes in WordPress, there is a shortcode block in the WordPress block editor.

You can simply add the block to your content area and then paste the Shared Counts shortcode.

Using the shortcode, you can add social share buttons really anywhere on your site.

Adding Floating Social Share Bar in WordPress

The Shared Counts plugin allows you to add social share buttons above content, below content, or both above and below content. These share buttons are static and not visible all the time.

Another popular way to display social sharing buttons is by adding a floating social sharing bar. It is a social sharing menu that sticks on users’ screens as they scroll down.

Unlike the standard sharing buttons, the floating social share bar will be seen the whole time a user reads your article. Making them more noticeable and helping you boost social sharing.

Some user experience experts argue that it makes your website look bad as it fills out the white space. However, if you can keep it clean, then it can be quite useful.

For the floating social share buttons, you need to install and activate the Sassy Social Share plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Sassy Social Share’ to your WordPress admin sidebar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s settings page.

First, you need to choose an icon style. The plugin comes with square, rounded, and rectangle buttons. You can choose styles for both the floating social share bar and the standard share bar.

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Standard Interface’ tab. From here you can enable or disable the standard static social sharing buttons.

We recommend using either floating or static social buttons. Using both of them will be an overkill and may create a bad user experience.

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Floating Interface’ tab and check the box next to ‘Enable Floating sharing interface’ option.

After that, you need to choose the social media websites you want to display. You can add or remove buttons and rearrange them by simple drag and drop.

Once you are finished, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see floating social share buttons in action. Here’s how it looked on our demo website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add social share buttons in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to add social media icons to WordPress menus and how to add the social icons to the sidebar.

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