woocommerce Archives - SEO, Adwords, Woocommerce

August 21, 2016

How to Report WooCommerce Checkout Errors as Events in Google Analytics

For a while now, I have wanted to have visibility into what really happens on the WooCommerce Checkout page. More specifically, the goal is to determine why almost 50% of those visitors leave the site from the Checkout page?

Survey pop-ups could be one way of determining why they are leaving the site. However, personally, I consider those intrusive. Why not have a behind-the-scenes way of reporting the exact error(s) the user might be encountering?

At first, I envisioned that I could insert some JS code (specifically the GA Send Event JS code) within the relevant WooCommerce filter. In this case, it was going to be the “woocommerce_add_error” filter. However, that was not going to work, as I found that out after a bit of experimentation. Somehow, the JS code was being appended to the “checkout.min.js” file instead of being added inline. Later, I discovered that you can not add JS code in Filter Hooks. See this Facebook post in the Advanced WordPress group for that discussion.

The Solution

As I looked for how to solve this issue, another alternative method came to mind. What if I could trigger on the addition of the “<ul class=”woocommerce-error”>….</ul>” element to the DOM?

This way, the solution would be generic and can be extended for other notice types (warning, notice, message etc) as well. It could easily be used outside of the WooCommerce context as well. Ofcourse, you will have to change the correct class/id of the element being targeted.

Code Changes

Explanation:

The code changes are split into 2 parts:

Load the new JS file from within the functions.php of your child theme.
ga-send-error-event.js should be located in the “js” folder of your child theme. If the “js” folder” does not exist, you will have to create it.

Testing

Once you make these changes, you can test it yourself in Google Analytics. But first, you will have to conduct your testing in an Incognito window (Google Chrome).

Visit your Checkout page (preferably in an uncached and incognito browser session)
Open your Developer Toolbar from the Browser (Chrome Dev Tools or FireBug)
Leave all fields empty.
Select a Payment Method and click on Continue
You should see the messages printed above the Checkout Form
Log into your GA interface
Navigate to Real-Time->Events->Events (last 30 minutes)
You should see new events generated under the “WooCommerce Error” category.

See screenshots below

New Category of events called WooCommerce Error

In my case I had left the Billing First Name and Billing Last Name empty. Additionally, I had also left the “Terms & Conditions” checkbox unchecked. The Event Label got truncated, but if you hover over it, the full label is :

“Billing First Name is a required field.,Billing Last Name is a required field.,You must accept our Terms & Conditions.”

So this is how I solved the issue of reporting error messages on WooCommerce checkout page. I am not sure how helpful this will be (I am hoping it will lead to better insight into the actions of the user on the Checkout page). Hopefully, it will reveal weaknesses in the UX.

What do you think? Is this something useful for you? Go ahead and use the code. Let me know if it works well for you. You can also easily extend this code to any part of the site (it does not have to be WooCommerce related).

June 4, 2016June 4, 2016

WooCommerce: Replace “Add To Cart” with “Ask” Form for Custom Products

When you Google the phrase “replace Add to Cart WooCommerce” (or any variants thereof), there are a lot of SERP’s suggesting the same way of hiding/not displaying the Add To Cart button. The idea is to remove the “woocommerce_template_single_add_to_cart” action.

Replace “Add to Cart” for Custom Products

However, in my case, I wanted to do this for only certain specific products. I have products that are marked as “Custom”, i.e. not stocked products. These are products that can be customized as per the customer/client. They usually take 6-8 weeks from order to delivery. The idea for the landing pages for these “Custom” products is not for them to make the purchase outright, but get them to contact the store owner. This way, the process of designing the custom product can be taken offline.

How to Designate a Product as “Custom”

The first step is to identify the products as “Custom” in WooCommerce. Following this guide by Remy Corson, I added a Checkbox under the General tab in the Product Edit Screen. When this Checkbox is checked, it means that the Product is “Custom”.

As you can see in the image above, this product is defined as “Custom”.

Next up, we have to hook into the correct action for marking all “Custom” products as not being allowed for Purchase. We will use the is_purchaseable() hook for that purpose.

Alternative CTA for “Custom” Products

I wanted a form to take the place of the “Add To Cart” button. In my case, I use Contact Form 7 for my forms. I just added a small form specifically for the purpose of this CTA. The visitors will see this form in place of the Add to Cart button. The store owner receives an email containing the lead.

We are simply checking if the Product is “Custom”. If it is “Custom”, we will set it as being non-purchaseable. This will hide the “Add To Cart” button for such “Custom” products.

Full Code Listing

Here is the full code. Notice that 2 other custom fields were added. You do not need those, so you can easily delete the relevant lines of code.

Questions/Comments? Type away in the comments below.

April 23, 2016April 23, 2016

How to setup Swiftype Crawler Based Search Engine for WooCommerce

I first started using Swiftype late last year (2015). The user experience offered by SwifType is phenomenal. It makes searching fun and not guesswork.

I started with the regular SwifType Search Engine along with the WordPress plugin from SwifType. While it provided basic functionality, the array of results did not include all potential matches. Digging deeper, I discovered that the WordPress plugin did not index pages that WooCommerce generates on the fly. Examples of these include the Product Category Archives and the Product Tag Archives. In addition, it would also not index the Brands archive either. Any custom taxonomy that was added was not being indexed. When I inquired about this, I was told that any pages that are dynamically generated by WooCommerce, are not indexed.

That explains why certain pages would not show up in the SwifType Search Results box. In a quest to get this working, I approached SwifType for guidance.

With help from SwifType, I added some code that solved the problem. With this code, SwifType indexes the entire site, including all dynamically generated pages. Please do note that you will have to create a new Search Engine in your SwifType account and select it as being “Crawler Based” versus WordPress plugin-based.

Be sure to replace the <unique-code-from-swiftype> with the actual code you are assigned by SwifType. Similarly, replace the <name-of-search-engine> on Line 11 with the actual name of your SwifType Search Engine.

Let me know what you think of this. Did it work? Did it help you? Did it break anything?

April 17, 2016

[WooCommerce] Checkout Progress Bar

As you read articles/posts on ecommerce optimization, specifically checkout optimization, a popular theme emerges: The Checkout Progress Bar. The idea is to provide your visitors some kind of visual feedback that they are making progress. It tells them how far along they are before the purchase is complete. Conversely, it tells them how much longer before they can own the product/service they are vying for.

With this in mind, I googled for a free plugin that would accomplish just that. My search ended fruitless (almost). I did hit this gem of a plugin called Progress Bar. This is a simple plugin that can be used anywhere on a WordPress site.

Steps

In this article, my aim is to create your own customized checkout progress bar without the use of any paid plugins. You will need

Download the Progress Bar plugin from the WordPress plugin repository
Make some code changes (PHP and JS included). Download from github.

The code changes are shown below. The first change is in your theme/child theme’s functions.php file. Two things are happening here:

Hooking into the “woocommerce_checkout_before_customer_details” action hook to display the Progress Bar. We use the shortcode for the Progress Bar because it allows to send in parameters for styling and appearance.
Loading the JavaScript file that will manipulate the Progress Bar based on how much of the Checkout Form has been validated.

The second file is the JS script that checks in real-time which mandatory fields have been validated. Then it calculates the progress (in pixels) by simply dividing the “number of fields validated” by the “number of fields that require validation”. It also accounts for the “Shipping Address Same as Billing Address” checkbox.

The end result is you get a progress bar for your WooCommerce Checkout Page.

Notes on Customization

The CSS for the progress bar can be easily customized. Follow the instructions on this link. Also, note that the plugin has quite a few options that can be used for customizing the look and feel of the Progress Bar.

September 17, 2015February 3, 2016

[SOLVED] How to trigger emails of Failed Orders in WooCommerce

Update on February 3rd, 2016:
As of version 2.5 of WooCommerce, this functionality is now built into the WC Core. This plugin is not needed. See the WC 2.5 Changelog for more details.

Following the lead from this blog post by SkyVerge, I set upon to create email notifications when an order fails. Essentially, any time the credit card fails or the order processing is not successful, WooCommerce should notify the store owner that the order has failed.

Currently, WooCommerce is silent about Failed Orders. Note that there is a built in setting in WooCommerce for notifications about Canceled Orders, but not Failed Orders.

My first attempt at trying to modify this plugin by Justin Stern, failed. I tried to adapt the plugin for “Failed” instead of “Cancelled”. However, just replacing the instances of “Canceled” with “Failed” did not accomplish my objective.

After a lot of experimenting, I gave up and sought the help from the WooCommerce community. One of the most helpful WooNinjas, Caleb Burks, lent me a hand for this one. I take no credit for this. All I can say is that guy knows his coding very well.

In the future, I will try to explain the code. For now, here is the link to the completed plugin that sends out emails immediately after an order transitions into Failed status. To test this, simply change the status of an order to “Failed”. Emails should be fired off to the store owner.

Good luck to you. Let me know if it works or if you experience problems. This does work on my setup: WordPress 4.3.1, WooCommerce 2.4.6.