Upgrade Your Online Store with iThemes Exchange Addons
Recently we looked at iThemes Exchange, a simple way to start selling products online with WordPress. This free e-commerce plugin proved to be a great choice for anyone looking for a quick way to build an online store, or add this functionality to their existing WordPress website.
The core plugin is free to use and includes enough features and functionality to allow you to list physical and digital products for sale on your WordPress website, manage your inventory, and collect payments from your customers. However, there are a number of add-ons available for Exchange which can enhance the capabilities of your store significantly.
As your online store starts taking off and generating revenue, or you discover you have more advanced needs than you first thought, it can be a good time to start looking at the add-ons available for Exchange.
There is a good chance that these add-ons can help you save time, effort, and money, when it comes to managing your online store. In this article we will take a look at some of the most interesting and useful Exchange e-commerce add-ons, in order to give you a better idea of how you can upgrade your online shop to make it easier to manage and better at serving your customers.
The Best iThemes Exchange Add-ons For Improving Your Store
Although there are plenty of add-ons available for iThemes Exchange, this list highlights some of the options that can help you recover potentially lost sales, manage your shipping rates more efficiently, add membership components to your store and site, and even let your customers name their price when purchasing your products.
If you are looking for a way to make your store more efficient and turn it into a more effective revenue generating machine, these add-ons can help you archive that.
Abandoned Carts
This is perhaps one of the best features an online store owner can add to their website in order to increase sales and revenue. The Abandoned Carts add-on for Exchange has the ability to automatically email any of your customers who add items to their shopping cart, but fail to check out and purchase those items. According to the Baymard Institute, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is a massive 68%.
There are many reasons why someone might abandon a shopping cart on your website. Maybe they got called away, didn’t have their payment details to hand, or were distracted by an email or other notification. Whatever their reason, provided your potential customer has entered their email address at your store before abandoning their cart, this add-on has a great chance of helping you recover some of those lost sales.
The emails that are send out by this abandoned cart add-on can be fully customized to suit your brand. However, by default they will include a link direct to the recipient’s shopping cart to make it as easy as possible for them to complete their order.
Table Rate Shipping
The Table Rate Shipping add-on gives you a way to set up and manage complicated shipping rates. If you are selling a range of products, each with their own size and weight, that are being delivered to a wide selection of locations, you can now create a range of shipping rates that can be automatically applied to your sales to meet the needs of your store.
By using this add-on you can automatically add shipping costs to an order if the price is above or below a certain amount; or based on whether the customer has ordered a certain number of items or products. Furthermore, their location can also be factored in when determining if and how much their shipping rates will be.
If you want to add flexible and responsive shipping rates to your store, based on what items the customer has in their cart, the Table Rate Shipping add-on is indispensable.
Customer Pricing
The Customer Pricing add-on allows your customers to enter a custom price when checking out. If you are selling digital products, such as ebooks, and you want to let your customers name their price, then this premium add-on gives you the ability to do so. Another use for this custom pricing add-on could be for accepting donations via your website.
As this is a flexible Exchange add-on, you can enter a selection of price points for your customers to choose from. Alternatively you can simply give them the option of entering what they think the item is worth to them. If you do let your customers name their price, you can set a lower and upper limit to give you some control over the amount they can pay. You can combine all these options to give your customers plenty of choice when entering a custom price.
While this add-on won’t be suitable for all websites and online stores, there are plenty of applications for it that can help foster great relations between you and your customers.
iThemes Exchange Membership
While there are plenty of good membership plugins for WordPress, if you are already using iThemes Exchange, you can leverage this plugin to add a membership area to your website by installing this premium add-on.
This add-on includes all the advanced features you need to offer free and paid memberships for your site. This includes multiple membership plans, drip-feeding the release of membership content according to membership plans, and making products only available to members.
The Membership add-on includes access to the Recurring Payments extension. This then gives you the ability to collect membership payments on a regular schedule from your members. As its possible to add multiple payment gateways to your Exchange-powered online store, this gives you plenty of options for collecting those recurring membership fees.
Conclusion
As your store grows in scope and popularity, these iThemes Exchange add-ons can give it more power to help you sell more products, generate more revenue, and automate some of the tasks you were previous completing manually.
Many of these add-ons are available either individually, or as part of the Pro Pack, and you can view the full list of available options here. While the free iThemes Exchange store builder plugin is ready to go, right out of the box, it’s good to know that your store can be upgraded in the future, when and as you need.
What features do you think are essential for an e-commerce store? What add-ons would you like to see made available for iThemes Exchange or the other e-commerce plugins for WordPress? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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