Cart recovery
The next feature is called cart recovery. It’s a really powerful tool that lets you follow up with visitors who’ve browsed your website, added a few items in their cart but didn’t finish their order.
To “recover” those lost orders, you can send an email automatically to offer your website visitors to come back to your website and finish their purchase. You’d be surprised at how many sales you are able to recover this way and how many people are actually willing to come back to your website and finish their order.
If you’re using Shopify this feature is built-in to their $29 plan. If you’re using WordPress and WooCommerce there’s a plugin that you can purchase and download to add this feature to your store.
product reviews
The last feature that you need to have on your online store is “product reviews”.
Did you know that 70% of customers look at reviews or ratings before making a final purchase? Sadly, a lot of shop owners disable this feature when they’re just starting out because they think that it looks a bit weird if it stays empty and no one actually writes a review. But the day someone is ready to write one, you need to have this enabled.
Pro Tip: Make sure to ask your customers if they’re willing to write a product review. You can do that in a post-purchase email (Eg.: “Did you receive your order? How did we do? We’d love it if you could take the time to write a review”).
There’s plenty more features you can add to your online store to boost your sales as you grow, but these are the four essential ones. If you’re just starting out and need to know what to focus on, this is it!
Take some time to set this up properly, and you’ll have a very solid foundation for a very successful handmade shop.
Don’t forget to check out the free resource library for makers and handmade shop owners.