Whether you’re a blogger, a developer, or fall somewhere between, you’re likely to discover something new and useful in this video.
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How to Create Personalized Customer Experiences in WooCommerce
Are you looking to improve your eCommerce store’s customer satisfaction by offering personalized experiences? With the rise of online shopping, customers have come to expect high levels of personalization when browsing and purchasing products. In order to compete in today’s market, it’s crucial to offer a personalized experience for your customers. In this post, we’ll show you a few ways to personalize the customer experience within your WooCommerce store. From product recommendations to customized checkout pages, we’ll give you the tools you need to create a truly personalized customer experience.
What is Personalization?
Personalization in eCommerce refers to the practice of tailoring the customer’s experience to their individual needs and preferences. This can include things like product recommendations, customized messaging, and tailored promotions. The goal of personalization is to make the customer feel like the experience is tailored specifically for them rather than feeling like they’re just another customer.
The demand for personalization is high. A recent survey found that 60% of customers would not be loyal to a brand that delivered non-personalized content. Despite this high demand, only 35% of business managers are satisfied with their level of omnichannel personalization. This shows that while customers expect a high level of personalization, many businesses still have a way to go to give their customers the level of service they expect.
The Benefits of Personalized Customer Experiences
Personalizing the customer experience has a number of benefits, including:
- Increased sales: Personalized product recommendations and targeted promotions can lead to increased sales and revenue.
- Improved customer loyalty: Personalized experiences foster a deeper connection with the customer and can lead to increased customer loyalty.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction: Personalized experiences can make customers feel valued and appreciated, leading to higher levels of satisfaction.
- Better customer retention: Personalized experiences can lead to repeat customers and lower customer churn.
- More targeted marketing: Personalization allows for more targeted marketing efforts, leading to higher conversion rates and better ROI.
Overall, personalization can be a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses, it can lead to increased sales and revenue, improved customer loyalty, enhanced customer satisfaction, better customer retention, and more targeted marketing. With the right strategy and the right tools, you can create personalized experiences that will set your business apart from the competition and help you build long-term relationships with your customers.
How to Personalize the Customer Experience of your WooCommerce Store
Personalizing the customer experience on your WooCommerce store can seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools and strategies, it can be done. In this section, we’ll take you through some of the best ways to automate the customer journey and create personalized experiences for your customers.
Segment Your Audience
Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your customer base into smaller groups based on specific characteristics. Audience segmentation is an important step in creating personalized customer experiences. It allows you to understand your customer base better and create targeted marketing campaigns and personalized experiences that will resonate with them, ultimately leading to more sales and happier customers
By segmenting your audience, you can tailor your marketing efforts and customer experiences to specific groups of people. For example, you can segment your audience based on demographics, such as age, gender, or location. You can also segment your audience based on purchase history, such as what products they’ve bought or how often they’ve bought from your store. Once you’ve segmented your audience, you can use this information to offer more personalized customer experiences through targeted marketing campaigns such as email marketing, personalized product recommendations, and more.
Offer Fully Personalized Services
Offering fully personalized services is perhaps the most obvious way to create personalized customer experiences. Services that are tailored to each individual customer can provide highly personalized experiences that meet every customer’s unique needs.
For example, businesses such as therapy and personal training are, by nature, fully personalized services. Even if your business is a product-based one like SaaS, you can add on personalized services such as custom set-ups and 1-on-1 training. These services can create high levels of loyalty among your customers and open the door to affiliate marketing, which can help to grow your business without much time and money investment from yourself.
For SaaS businesses, personalized services such as onboarding, training, and support can help to increase customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value. Offering personalized services can also help to differentiate your business from the competition and create a more loyal customer base.
Customize Your Checkout
Getting your checkout experience right is crucial for getting customers to convert. Every customer is different, so your checkout needs to cater to each person’s needs.
To meet customer needs, you can customize your checkout in a number of ways. For example, you can allow customers to save their shipping and billing information for faster checkouts in the future. You can also offer multiple payment options, such as credit card, PayPal, and Apple Pay, to make checkout as seamless as possible.
Additionally, if you’re selling to international markets on WooCommerce, there are many customizations that you can make to make it inclusive to a worldwide audience. For example, it’s important that customers can select different currencies so they can choose the one that’s right for them so they can pay in their preferred currency and be protected from exchange rate fluctuations.
Personalize the Post-purchase Experience
Personalizing the post-purchase experience is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and building long-term customer loyalty. After a customer has completed a purchase, it’s important to continue to offer a personalized experience in order to keep them engaged with your brand.
One way to do this is through email marketing. By segmenting your email list and sending targeted, personalized emails to different groups of customers, you can ensure that each customer is receiving relevant content that speaks to their specific needs and interests.
Another way to personalize the post-purchase experience is by using personalized invoices. This is particularly useful for businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B) as it helps to keep track of orders more easily and provides customers with the supporting documents they need while filing their taxes. You can create personalized invoices using an invoice plugin or a print plugin, which allows you to easily create personalized invoices and print them automatically, individually or in bulk.
Finally, consider sending hand-written thank you notes to your customers. Studies have shown that customers who receive thank you notes spend more money with the business. While this approach is particularly effective for smaller businesses that have the capacity to produce these notes, you can also use a print plugin to create personalized notes that look like they are hand-written. This can help to create a more personal and intimate touch to the post-purchase experience, which can help to increase customer loyalty.
Personalization Creates Unforgettable Customer Experiences
Overall, personalizing the customer experience is essential to competing in today’s eCommerce market. Customers expect high levels of personalization and will lose loyalty if they don’t receive it. This article has shown you some of the best ways to automate the customer journey and personalize the experience on your WooCommerce store.
By segmenting your audience, offering fully personalized services, customizing your checkout, and personalizing the post-purchase experience, you can improve customer satisfaction and drive growth for your business.
Remember, personalization is not just about recommending products or sending targeted emails, it’s about understanding your customer’s needs and going the extra mile to meet them. With the right approach, you can create a loyal customer base that will keep coming back to your store time and time again.
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5 Hidden Features of WordPress.com – WordPress.com News
Isn’t it amazing how you can learn new things about someone, even after years of knowing them? That’s how Jamie Marsland has felt in the last few weeks while diving deeper into WordPress.com’s capabilities. In today’s Build and Beyond video, he shares five incredible features built right into the platform that aren’t as well known as they should be. Whether you’re a blogger, a developer, or fall somewhere between, you’re likely to discover something new and useful.
Ready to build on WordPress.com? Start a free trial today:
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New WordPress.com Themes for March 2024 – WordPress.com News
Five of our favorite new themes.
The WordPress.com team is always working on new design ideas to bring your website to life. Check out the latest themes in our library, including great options for small businesses, sports fan, nostalgic bloggers, and more.
Feelin’ Good is a vibrant (to say the least!) blog theme with a bold vaporwave aesthetic. Its nostalgic atmosphere pays homage to the daring, over-the-top visual art and advertisements of the ’80s and early ’90s. We’ve combined a lot of elements that shouldn’t work together, but do. If you’re looking for a dynamic, attention-grabbing, eye-popping visual feast of a theme, try Feelin’ Good.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Low Fi is a simple blog theme featuring a narrow column layout that’s optimized for seamless browsing on mobile devices. With six style variations, you’re sure to find a palette you’re drawn to. Taking inspiration from the lo-fi beats music scene, the theme’s design cues, such as the square header image, offer a nod to album artwork.
The overall aesthetic is deliberately understated, with each element—from the muted color schemes to the textured background—crafted to evoke a sense of nostalgia and warmth.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Cakely is the ultimate WordPress theme designed specifically for passionate bakers, cake enthusiasts, and dessert lovers. Tailored for small businesses aiming to shine in the world of sweets, Cakely effortlessly combines style and functionality to showcase mouthwatering creations. Its vibrant pink color scheme exudes joy while maintaining a classy, clean layout with easy navigation. This theme ultimately strikes the perfect balance between professionalism and playfulness, making it an ideal choice for showcasing your delicious masterpieces.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Treehouse is a carefree, fun, and friendly theme ideal for Woo stores selling children’s products. With its unlimited customization options, Treehouse enables you to set up an online shop with just a few clicks. Utilizing a soft color palette, playful design details, and simplified layouts, your site will attract a wide range of customers, from young parents to over-the-moon grandparents. This theme is fully responsive and cross-browser compatible.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Major League Baseball’s 2024 season kicks off on Thursday, March 28. What better way to show your home team the love it deserves than with a baseball-themed fan site! With a somewhat old-school layout, this theme evokes some of the classic sports sites of the ’90s, back before fantasy leagues took over. The header and accent colors are customizable, ensuring that your favorite crew is properly saluted.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
To install any of the above themes, click the name of the theme you like, which brings you right to the installation page. Then click the “Activate this design” button. You can also click “Open live demo,” which brings up a clickable, scrollable version of the theme for you to preview.
Premium themes are available to use at no extra charge for customers on the Explorer plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $79/year each.
You can explore all of our themes by navigating to the “Themes” page, which is found under “Appearance” in the left-side menu of your WordPress.com dashboard. Or you can click below:
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How to Get Started: Investigating Payment Gateways Online
When investigating a website, app, or online shop, one of the key questions you may need to answer is ‘How are they making money?’
Investigating the financial transactions of an organisation can reveal details about its connections and funding. Furthermore, if the website or app is engaged in illicit transactions, tracing the payment gateway can help achieve accountability by identifying what sites they are using to earn money. Bellingcat has looked into the payment processors in previous investigations on far-right merchandise, Britain’s far-right influencers, and non-consensual deepfake pornography.
Payment gateways are a technology that takes a customer’s payment information, checks it with their financial institution, verifies that the transaction is legitimate, and then completes the transaction. As explained by Forbes, online stores need a payment gateway to be able to facilitate payments. Companies including PayPal, Stripe, and Square are commonly used as a payment gateway for online purchases.
Most mainstream payment gateways (like Stripe and PayPal) prohibit their services from being used in illegal transactions including the sale of illegal drugs, the promotion of hate or racial intolerance, and non-consensual adult content. Finding evidence that someone is violating the Terms of Services of these companies – and how they are doing so- can lead to the closure of loopholes and accounts. It can also provide additional information about an organisation’s revenue streams.
It is nearly impossible to conduct online transactions without a payment gateway. So it should be possible to find the payment gateway of an organisation earning money, even if it is not obvious at first. One resource that is extremely useful is Chrome’s built- in developer tools (other browsers also have similar tools). Below we’ll provide an overview of the tools to use and questions to ask when scrutinising payment systems.
How are they Taking Payment?
For online transactions, you’ll typically see websites accept traditional forms of payment including credit cards, debit cards and, more recently, cryptocurrency. Since cryptocurrency is not subject to the same regulations as traditional financial systems, cryptocurrency is often used to process payments for illegal services. Since this does not need to be ‘hidden’, websites will usually disclose which currency they accept and how to transfer funds into a crypto wallet. There are other ways you can track funding through cryptocurrency, as discussed in this guide.
If none of the above apply? Other sites that use a payment gateway will accept money directly via credit card payment, bank transfer, or through peer-to-peer payment apps (i.e., PayPal, Cash App, Zelle). If this is the case, you should be able to identify the payment gateway being used. In the case of the peer-to-peer apps, these services may be used by businesses and not just individuals’ transactions. They also require a bank account or credit card to use them. It is helpful to view transaction options on both the mobile app and web browser, in case the options differ. It is also worth checking the currency that payments are being taken in – if it is a US website taking payment in a foreign currency, that can also provide clues. Further, if a website is using different payment gateways depending on the currency, this can lead to additional leads in your investigation. Payment options may also change depending on what IP address you are using. In other words, setting your IP address in the UK and then changing it to the US may result in different payment gateway options.
Where are they Soliciting for Payment?
Organisations may solicit for payment via a website or a messaging app like Telegram. It is important to investigate all avenues where payment is being requested as each method may provide different clues for your investigation. For example, for some of the AI deep fake services we investigated here we found that companies would accept different payment methods depending on how you tried to pay – via their website, via a web browser or via Telegram. Sellers may want to direct their users away from their website to more private forums such as Telegram to facilitate transactions and avoid detection.
Is the Organisation Trying to Hide How Payment is Taken?
For some sellers, using a mainstream payment gateway may violate the terms of service of that company. To be able to use their services, these sellers may try to hide the nature of their goods from the payment gateway company.
A Walk Through Example
Some sites may not show their payment options without signing up first.
This was the case with the Nudify.VIP site which offers non-consensual AI Deep Fake pornography.
Initially, the website states that their services are free.
“With our service you can undress any person in a photo absolutely FREE!”
However, this is misdirection, as you are then prompted to log in or sign up. Only once you create an account do you discover that you need to pay to access the service and how much it costs.
You are then presented with an option to pay via crypto or via credit card, but it does not yet say what cards they accept or what payment gateway they use.
Clicking through to ‘Go To Payment’ gives us a new screen that lets the user pay via credit card (ie MasterCard, Visa), a US Bank account (ie Wells Fargo, USAA), or through Cash App.
There is no indication of the payment gateway they are using, but if we look at the URL on the checkout page, we can see that it no longer says that we are on a Nudify.VIP domain. This is a clue that users are being directed to the checkout page through another website. This method is used to hide the true source of purchases from payment gateway providers. There’s another clue that the domain has changed- in the fine print at the bottom of the checkout page. Via the Checkout Page using either Cash App or credit card options, it discloses:
“By providing your card information, you allow aiphotos.art to charge your card for future payments in accordance with their terms.”
This is another clue that the payment gateway does not know this belongs to an AI Deep fake service Nudify.VIP.
Use Browser Developer Tools to Investigate Further
All modern browsers have some form of built-in developer tools. You can search online for your specific browser (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Safari). If you are in Chrome, you can right-click anywhere on the screen to get a menu and an option to ‘Inspect.’ You can also use keyboard shortcuts which can vary between MacOS or Windows. For Windows, you can click CTRL + SHIFT + I and on MacOS you can click Option + Command + I on your keyboard. Any of these actions will open the developer tools which allows you to view the code of a webpage (such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript). This should appear on the right-hand side of your screen. While developer tools are designed to check for bugs or errors in a website, you can use them in your investigation.
There should be a list of tabbed options for you to view on the top menu bar. Clicking on ‘Sources’ shows you all the resources that the website is using.
This is a good place to start to look for any clues about what piece of code is being used in the checkout process. In the example below, one of the listed sources on the page is titled ‘js.stripe.com.’
Googling ‘“js.stripe.com” brings up documentation from the company, Stripe.
The documentation shows that ‘js.stripe.com’ is Stripe’s JavaScript library which is the code needed to facilitate payment processing.
This confirms that Stripe is the payment gateway being used by Nudify.VIP. In this case, Stripe was the payment gateway that facilitated transactions via credit card, US banks, and Cash App.
Using Browser Developer tools and following these simple steps, we were able to learn that Nudify.VIP created a decoy website to which they were redirecting their credit card payments to make Stripe think they were processing sales for a company called “Aiphotos.art.”
As you investigate payment gateways, you can begin to recognise the Javascript libraries used by companies.
Rummaging around the ‘Sources’ tab via the Google Chrome Inspect tool is a useful starting point to find out details about what sources a seller or organisation is relying on to run its website and process payment.
For example, we investigated the payment gateway for a candle company, Patriot Candle Co. At first glance at the Sources tab, it may look like they are only using WordPress related scripts. WordPress is one of the most common website building tools available. However, if you click through to expand the contents of the folders, in this case, if you click ‘wp-content’ and then click ‘plugins,’ we see a few libraries using ‘woocommerce.’ WooCommerce is WordPress’s open source payment gateway.
Some sites may have multiple payment gateways, so it is important to investigate the entire site and all the sources being used on the website.
A Few Minutes Research, Rich Rewards
We have outlined some very simple steps that take only a few minutes of work and produce clear leads for an investigation. In the case of Nudify.VIP, we were able to show the company had created a decoy website to which they were redirecting their credit card payments in order to make Stripe think they were processing sales for a company called “Aiphotos.art.” Stripe shut down the account, when we contacted them about it. It may take only minutes to go through this process, but it can provide important starting points for your investigation.
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Instagram here, X here and Mastodon here.
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