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Are you seeking best practices to build strategic and robust woocommerce pre-orders on your WooCommerce shop? In today’s highly competitive digital world, all e-commerce giants like Nike, Amazon, Apple, and Nintendo have one thing in common: capitalization on the pre-order strategy.
Why? WooCommerce pre-order is one of the most effective and innovative ways to market new products in advance, gauge the interest they generate in the market, and make decisions about stock or production. A pre-order means a store is offering a product that is not currently available either because it is out of stock or still in the process of production.
In other words, each platform advertises upcoming goods and sells products that still need to be in distribution. This way, they promote engagement with their users and maintain their solid customer base.
Potential customers pre-order their products and can purchase them in advance when they are available. Customers who book products in advance are ensured to get them first and have the “right of preemption” over those who will buy the same things later. This is the best e-commerce strategy used by every e-commerce store to create a sense of excitement and exclusivity, helping you build up interest in your products.
In this article, we’ll discuss why pre-ordering is essential for online stores and the best practices and tips that can help you manage your WooCommerce pre-orders more effectively. Let’s begin.
The benefits of an effective WooCommerce pre-order campaign
All e-commerce giants heavily rely on their pre-order campaigns, and they try to make them as effective as possible to provide your shop with several benefits. Pre-ordering helps attract people’s attention to a product before it’s released. The online store runs viral pre-sale campaigns to advertise and promote their new products.
Take the example of Apple, which runs effective pre-order campaigns months before the official release of its new iPhone model. Not only this but pre-ordering also helps you build customer loyalty. Special discounts for regular pre-ordering customers prevent them from buying anywhere else, thus maintaining your customer base.
Moreover, a robust pre-ordering strategy can help you generate cash flow by accepting pre-orders for upcoming products. Additionally, the critical advantage of pre-ordering is that it enables you to analyze and gauge market interest for online sellers because it allows them to measure customer’s interest in a particular product.
9 Best Tips and Practices to Run a Successful WooCommerce Pre-Order Campaign
1. Create a landing page for your pre-orders
To run a successful pre-order campaign in WooCommerce, you must create a landing page for your pre-orders. You can also create product pages, but landing pages are best for delivering more information to potential customers. Try to make your page compelling and visually appealing by uploading clear, high-quality photos of your product from various angles.
Make sure that color and size perfectly resonate with your brand. Also, add social proofs to make your brand authentic; for example, if you’re selling footwear, add pictures of people wearing your shoes. Craft compelling product descriptions, including details like measurements, ingredients, nutritional information, age ranges, etc., helping people make a purchase decision.
2. Install a Reliable Plugin
WooCommerce doesn’t have its pre-order feature by default. You must install and activate a dedicated plugin on your store for the pre-ordering function. Some popular pre-ordering plugins available online for WooCommerce stores are the WooCommerce Pre Order plugin, YITH Pre-Order for the WooCommerce plugin, and WooCommerce Pre-Orders by WooCommerce.
You can also check similar plugins like Conditional Discounts for WooCommerce. You can activate any of these to add a pre-order feature on your website. These plugins are available in both free and freemium versions. Free versions have limited features; however, you can buy their pro version to access its advanced features. After activation, you must set the configuration by clicking on the left-hand side.
3. Be specific about when items will ship
Be very specific about shipping your items. Your potential Pre-order customers are putting a certain amount of faith in you when they visit your site and make a purchase. Highlight where you can deliver your items once they are released or returned to stock. Also, clearly define the time and day when orders will be shipped and stick to it. In case of any delay, ensure you edit the Product Data admin panel, informing your customers of their order delivery.
4. Invest in Marketing and Promotion
Invest in marketing and promotion of your product to build awareness ahead of time. Regularly publish compelling blogs and create videos to attract the attention of your customers and site visitors. You may hire the services of professional digital marketers to run an effective marketing campaign.
Invest in paid advertising like Google and Facebook Ads. Also, harness the power of social media channels by periodically sharing posts on your accounts in the weeks leading up to pre-order availability. Also, leverage the power of email and influencer marketing to make customers feel special by allowing them to purchase your items early.
5. Focus on Communication
No one can deny the significance of communication in marketing. Online businesses with practical, customer-centric communication attract more visitors and generate more revenue. Make sure that your communication consists of four key ingredients: be transparent about any delays in shipping or delivery, always provide better customer support, focus on personalization, and effectively use your social media handles to engage with your customers. Your effective communication will result in better customer satisfaction and, thus, higher conversions.
6. Offer incentives and discounts
Customers love discounts and incentives. Therefore, offer them a bonus for your regular customers. Discounts are the best option for purchasing early. Free delivery is also the best business strategy. You can also sell an exclusive package consisting of multiple items that all go together, only available for your woocommerce pre-orders customers.
7. Create a Sense of Urgency
The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a powerful motivator and one of the best business strategies to create a sense of urgency in your pre-order customers. You may include a time-based countdown; pre-orders are open for a few hours or days, and customers will miss out if they don’t order within a specific time window. You can also add a button for the limited number of pre-orders you can accept, compelling your customers to purchase your new product ahead of time.
8. Use Key Performance Metrics to Track everything
To track your pre-order marketing, set up tracking on your website before you launch pre-orders. The key performance metrics will provide valuable information about the number of organic visitors visiting your site and purchasing your product.
You can use this to market to those customers and reach new, similar audiences. You can also install tracking codes from Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms to measure your performance on social media channels.
9. Use Supported gateways for automatic payments
WooCommerce offers its users a variety of payment gateways that support automatic pre-order payments. Your potential customers can use any of these to provide credit card information upfront during checkout, and their card will be automatically charged when the pre-order is available.
Conclusion
Pre-ordering is one of the most effective strategies that almost all e-commerce giants like Amazon, Apple, and Nike use. Running a pre-ordering campaign provides you with many benefits, including drawing your customers’ attention to your new products and knowing their feedback. This strategy also helps you build strong customer loyalty and generate more cash flow.
WooCommerce does not provide its users with any pre-ordering options by default. Fortunately, it provides plugins like WooCommerce Pre-Order to help you successfully develop and manage your pre-order campaigns.
In this article, we have provided you with a list of best practices and tips that you can use to set up woocommerce pre-order strategies on your WooCommerce shop. These tips and best practices will help you from replacing your add-to-cart option to providing your customers with different payment options to confirm their pre-orders and to be notified when the product will be back in stock.
Guest Post By: Inam Ullah Dar
Inam Ullah Dar is a content writer by passion and profession. He started his journey with Motif Creatives. He primarily writes for guest post articles falling under various niches. The main area of his interest and expertise is Web design & Digital marketing. He enjoys reading and writing about healthcare, mindfulness, and well-being to educate people about being happier and lively. His work has been published on many high-authority websites. He believes that writing is an effective way to communicate at better levels.