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Originally Posted On: https://pressable.com/4-big-woocommerce-store-trends-for-2021/

WooCommerce is one of the most popular platforms when it comes to running an online business. As you might expect, though, you’ll need to stay on top of the relevant trends to make the most of it.

So, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide that outlines all of the WooCommerce store trends you should know. Let’s take a look.

1. Vibrant Design Is Essential

As you might expect, you will need to place a heavy emphasis on user experience when it comes to maximizing the number of sales that you make on your platform. By extension, this means that you need to focus on vibrant design.

Think for a moment the last time that you found yourself on a website that was cluttered, clunky, and difficult to navigate. Then, think about how much time that you spent on that site before leaving.

Chances are, you didn’t spend more than a few seconds on this page.

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If that site belonged to a commercial business and you were a potential customer, they would have just lost a sale as a direct result of poor user experience. Unfortunately, the same could easily apply to your online store if you don’t take proactive measures.

You also need to consider a metric known as a bounce rate. When somebody navigates your website and then immediately leaves, this will increase the bounce rate of your website. This essentially tells Google that the content you provide is either irrelevant, of low-quality, or both.

You might even find that your website begins to rank lower on Google, minimizing the number of people who can find you through the search engine. When considering the design of your website, there’s a handful of attributes that you will need to keep in mind.

Let’s briefly explore a few of the most notable.

Loading Speed

Interestingly, the average person now has an attention span that is shorter than that of a goldfish. This means that no page on your site should take more than two or three seconds to load, and it’s recommended that you do what you can to keep the loading times shorter than that.

You can achieve this by minimizing the size of images on your website, enabling browser caching, and using a content delivery network.

Mobile Formatting

A large percentage of today’s Internet users primarily browse with mobile devices. This is especially true for those who are looking to make online purchases.

As a result, you run the risk of deterring tens of thousands of users if your site is not properly formatted. More often than not, images won’t display correctly, the text will bleed outside of its designated area, and much of your site’s functionality will be difficult or impossible to use.

In many cases, users who navigate away from your website will choose a competitor instead.

The Overall Aesthetic

It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to neglect the overall aesthetic of the website while focusing on other attributes. But, how your site looks plays just as large of a role.

You will need to carefully consider your color scheme, fonts, and other details that influence the aesthetic of your site. Additionally, your design should be consistent throughout your entire website.

Otherwise, your site could feel clunky or disjointed and may adversely impact the quality of the user experience.

Consider allowing people you know to provide feedback on any changes you make to your site’s design. This will provide you with a valuable perspective on what works and what needs to be improved.

2. Content Is King

As Bill Gates once famously said, content is king. This statement still holds plenty of truth today and is highly relevant when it comes to e-commerce.

In recent years, the e-commerce industry has experienced explosive growth. A large portion of this growth occurred within the past year due to people being confined to their homes.

Unfortunately, this also means that it is now more difficult to make your brand stand out from your competitors.

For this reason, many e-commerce businesses are placing a heavy emphasis on the content that they publish on their website. In general, this includes both blog posts and videos.

The end goal is to significantly boost the search ranking of this type of content and attract more customers to the website. From here, measures are put into place to maximize the number of leads that convert.

While the type of content that you post will vary highly depending on what industry you work in, there are few tenants you should keep in mind.

Your content should always provide value to your users. But, it should also help establish your brand’s authority in your industry. A great way to accomplish both of these objectives is to publish a blog post or video that showcases your product or service.

Similarly, you could create a post that serves as a guide that helps your audience navigate a common issue that they might face. You could also publish content that provides a comprehensive analysis of certain industry attributes.

To elaborate, a real estate agent could develop an analysis for the local real estate market. This will provide their audience with valuable information and establishing them as trustworthy sources.

As long as your content is both high-quality and informative, you will find that you can draw a significant amount of attention to your brand.

3. People Want an Omnichannel Experience

For those unfamiliar with this term, users want their shopping experience to be the same under any circumstance. This means that your audience should be able to obtain the same experience when shopping from a desktop platform, mobile device, or even in-store.

Additionally, the post-sale experience is something that your brand should prioritize. In this case, a simple email thanking your customer for their purchase can go a long way.

The same can be said about offering coupons or discounts. As you might guess, you won’t be able to establish an omnichannel experience without a bit of effort. Like we mentioned before, mobile formatting is essential when it comes to keeping your audience on your website.

You will need to extensively test how your store appears and functions for mobile users to ensure that they have the best experience possible. You also need to perform the same amount of testing for your desktop formatting — many entrepreneurs overlook doing so since this is the first part of the customer experience they focus on.

Your end goal should be to provide a consistent experience for your audience no matter which channel they used to interact with your brand. Otherwise, you risk neglecting a large portion of your target demographic.

In turn, this leads to lowers sales performance and can impact the longevity of your company.

4. Cyber Threats Are Rising

Cybercrime and the Internet go hand-in-hand – there is simply no way around it. But, the risk of being affected by cybercrime increases as time goes on.

By the year 2025, the cybercrime industry is projected to be worth over $10 trillion. It should come as no surprise that one of the primary targets that hackers prioritize is e-commerce businesses.

In the context of WooCommerce users, hackers have been discovered exploiting vulnerabilities in WordPress software. More specifically, hackers are targeting vulnerabilities in WordPress themes and plug-ins.

If you don’t take the appropriate measures to protect yourself, you could easily experience a significant amount of downtime. Even a short period where your store cannot function properly could cause tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in losses. Under the right circumstances, this could even be impossible to recover from.

One of the most efficient ways to do so is to use secure managed WordPress hosting. Working with a reputable hosting provider – like Pressable – will allow you to safeguard your website against common threats like DDoS attacks, brute force attempts, etc.

Additionally, we offer 24/7 monitoring that can quickly discern suspicious activity and take the appropriate action to resolve it. So, keep this utility in mind when deciding the steps you plan to take to protect your business.

Start Your WooCommerce Store Off Right 

All of this information is important to keep in mind while building or updating a WooCommerce site. When you’re ready to launch, make sure to choose a hosting provider that has plans specially designed to deliver the performance, reliability, security, and support that a successful e-commerce website absolutely must have.

Pressable offers three pre-made hosting plans for WooCommerce sites, and our sales team can work with you to build a custom plan with the features and specs you need to make your vision a reality.