Basket abandonment rate for eCommerce websites can be frustratingly high. The average rate for abandoned baskets sits around 65%, but for some sectors it can be as high as 80%!Costly delivery and the customer not being ready to purchase top the list of reasons for basket abandonment. However, website UX design is also a major influence. According to Invesp 11% of abandoned baskets are attributed to a complex checkout or basket process and 24% of shoppers are saving selections and deciding l...

If you have a WooCommerce store, it's designed to be mobile friendly out of the box (just one of the many reasons we love it) but there’s still so much more you can do beyond the basics.Did you know that 60% of time online in the UK is now spent on mobiles? Mobile usage overtook desktop in 2014, but plenty of online shops are still playing catch up. Here’s what you can do to make your WooCommerce site as amazing as possible for mobile visitors... Test your WooCommerce store on mobile devi...

We’re massive fans of WooCommerce for a whole host of reasons. It’s easy to use, highly customisable, secure and amazingly, it’s free! Recently WooCommerce got even better thanks to the addition of Apple Pay as a payment method. Why add Apple Pay? For users with iPhones, Apple Pay provides one of the easiest and quickest ways to make a purchase.The more obstacles you can remove on the path to purchase, the better. With Apple Pay, buyers don’t have to get up to find their credit ca...

Thinking about buying an off-the-shelf WordPress template or wondering if a bespoke Wordpress theme would be better? In this blog we cover the pros and cons of both. Turnaround time Wordpress templates can be a great option for small businesses just starting out. Those that are tech savvy could have a simple site up and running within a few hours, providing they have the content ready. On the other hand a bespoke theme would take longer to develop, but it would be entirely tailored to your ...

Before you can set up your WordPress store you’ll need to setup your Wordpress website and install an ecommerce plugin. Our plugin of choice is WooCommerce. Once you've done that, here’s a checklist for getting your WordPress store up and running. WordPress store checklist 1) Product descriptions Write product descriptions that are clear and easy to read. They should include everything your prospective customer will need to know to make a decision about buying your product, including: ...

Want to sell more from your WooCommerce shop? Here are four ways to improve your product pages. 1. Write a good product description When you’re selling online, you are relying on your product description to do the selling for you, so a good description of your product is crucial. Make sure it is... Unique Google doesn’t like duplicate content, so it is important for search engine optimisation to write a unique description, especially if you sell the same product as another online shop. ...

We’ve already talked in detail about why we prefer to work with WooCommerce. In this blog post we’ll look at the advantages of WooCommerce for our clients, after all, they’re the ones that will be using WooCommerce on a daily basis. WooCommerce review 1) It’s easy to use WooCommerce is as easy to use as WordPress. WordPress is one of the most intuitive content management systems, and WooCommerce uses the same interface, making managing your products and stock easy and stress free. Ad...

Here at Cognique, we are big fans of the WordPress content management system. It is simple and easy to use, yet has the framework available for enhancements allowing the core features to be built upon to create very complex websites. However the world of WordPress ecommerce has always been a bit of a grey area.  We have evaluated many e-commerce plugins over the years, including WP eCommerce, MarketPress and JigoShop. However we have never found a solution we felt was a true competitor to the d...

Since we published this article in November 2015, things have moved on considerably. Read our latest blog on the subject for a more accurate answer: Is 2017 the time to go HTTPS with an SSL certificate? Last year in our blog we wrote about how Google were starting to prioritise secure websites (https) over unsecure websites (http) in search rankings. This was part of Google’s wider campaign for https to be used everywhere, and for all information on the web to be transmitted securely. Since ...