On the floor, promoting digital merchandise with WooCommerce doesn’t appear a lot totally different than promoting bodily items. You might want to create an internet site detailing your merchandise, drive related visitors to mentioned website, and convert the guests into clients.
Nonetheless, there are some key distinctions that require consideration. Whether or not you promote software program, audio information, NFTs, or written content material, you need to take these into consideration if you wish to promote your digital merchandise efficiently.
On this publish, we are going to have a look at easy methods to arrange digital merchandise on WooCommerce and the steps you’ll be able to take to optimize their gross sales whereas lowering efficiency and safety points.
Why promote digital merchandise by way of your ecommerce website?
Excessive margins
Digital merchandise can provide extremely excessive margins. The associated fee to supply one digital good is similar as producing 100. Which means that as soon as your gross sales ramp up, your margins progressively improve as income rises whereas your prices stay the identical. At a sure degree of gross sales, the marginal prices in your digital items can strategy a worth of virtually zero.
Less complicated logistics
With digital merchandise, you don’t have to handle any stock. This implies your logistics are simplified as you don’t have to fret about transport objects to clients or guaranteeing that you’ve got sufficient inventory available to fulfill your clients’ demand. On condition that logistics is usually essentially the most advanced facet of ecommerce, this may function an incredible enhance to what you are promoting’ well being.
Low overhead
Whenever you promote digital merchandise, you might be free from the a lot of the overhead prices sometimes incurred by brick-and-mortar shops and on-line shops promoting bodily items. For instance, uncooked supplies, workplace hire, warehouse charges, utilities, and workers wages are frequent prices to obtain, retailer, course of, and ship items.
None of those are vital when promoting digital items. The core of the enterprise revolves round creating and advertising the product and sustaining your web site.
Extra time
The simplified enterprise mannequin helps ecommerce sellers maximize the worth of their time. With digital merchandise, a lot of the work is completed upfront. Upon launching your product, getting guests to your website, and managing what you are promoting are the one areas it is advisable to work on for the enterprise to function.
This leaves you extra time to work on different components of what you are promoting whether or not that’s researching new merchandise or partaking clients to spice up loyalty.
Promote digital merchandise with WooCommerce
WooCommerce defines digital merchandise as digital merchandise. These merchandise can both be downloadable or not. Due to this, you’ll be able to add each transport and obtain particulars to the identical product, enabling you to promote downloadable and bodily merchandise from the identical product itemizing.
As an illustration, you can promote an album that comes with each a bodily CD and digital MP3 information.
This additionally means that you may promote digital merchandise that don’t must be downloaded. Frequent examples are memberships, providers, or teaching periods.
Downloadable merchandise settings
Earlier than you create digital merchandise, you wish to outline your settings for downloadable merchandise. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Merchandise and choose Downloadable merchandise.
The file obtain technique will decide how clients can entry their orders. This is a vital setting as defending file entry is essential to having a worthwhile digital downloads retailer.
If anybody can entry your downloads, you run the danger of somebody distributing the information or hyperlinks to those who didn’t purchase the product.
With the Power Downloads possibility, your server will drive downloads after the acquisition utilizing PHP. This technique prevents direct linking however can place pressure in your server.
With X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile, downloads are dealt with by the server, and information are protected by a .htaccess file. To make use of this technique, it is advisable to have the X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile module put in in your server.
The third possibility is to make use of redirect hyperlinks to the file. This technique is much less safe because the information are unprotected and anybody with the add hyperlink can entry them.
Under the file obtain technique, are settings to find out entry restriction. There, you might have the selection to grant entry to downloads instantly after fee. Which means that downloads will probably be obtainable to clients even when their orders nonetheless have a “Processing” standing.
You even have the choice to limit downloads to customers which can be logged in to their accounts. This will present an additional layer of safety to make sure that solely registered consumers can see your merchandise.
Creating downloadable merchandise
To create a digital product go to Merchandise > Add New. Enter the product particulars similar to title, description, and pictures, then scroll to the Product knowledge tab and verify the containers for Digital and Downloadable.
It will open new fields within the Product knowledge tab. There you’ll be able to add the downloadable information, set the obtain restrict and the obtain expiry. In order for you the obtain hyperlink to by no means expire, go away the expiry area clean.
Digital merchandise with variations
In some circumstances, it’s possible you’ll wish to create a number of variations of your digital merchandise. For instance, you can promote images with various kinds of licenses specifying how clients can use the visible belongings. Or, you can promote music through which each bodily and digital variations can be found.
To create a product with a number of variations, go to the Product Information tab and choose Variable product.
You then want to pick out the attributes to make use of for the variations. Attributes that you’ve got already added to your product database will seem so that you can choose. If it is advisable to use new attributes, you’ll be able to add them from the product web page by deciding on Add Customized product attribute.
With the attributes in place, go to the Variations part to create a variant. From there, it is possible for you to to outline the variant as a Downloadable product.
Obtain limits
What to set because the obtain restrict will rely largely on the kind of merchandise. For instance, should you promote ebooks or audio information, a excessive obtain restrict is right as it is going to enable clients to return again and simply entry the information once more if wanted.
When you promote video video games, you’ll possible wish to restrict clients to a single (or a couple of) downloads. These and different merchandise may warrant an expiration date.
Defending your obtain listing
WooCommerce makes use of a .htaccess file to guard your wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads listing. Nonetheless, this doesn’t assure full safety of the folder as the way you configure your server will finally decide how safe the listing is.
If you’re utilizing the X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile or Power Downloads obtain technique mixed with NGINX in your server, it is advisable to add an additional configuration for higher safety.
In such case, it is best to place the next config on the finish of the “server” block within the NGINX configuration:
location ~* /wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/ { if ( $upstream_http_x_accel_redirect = "" ) { return 403; inner;}
If you’re utilizing NGINX together with the Redirect solely technique, including an additional configuration can be vital. On this case, add the next config on the finish of “server” block in NGINX configuration.
location ~* /wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/ {autoindex off;}
Extensions to spice up digital gross sales
WooCommerce offers you the necessities for itemizing and promoting digital merchandise however you’ll be able to take your gross sales to the following degree with the assistance of some helpful extensions. Let’s check out a number of the greatest choices for rising your digital retailer.
Subscription downloads
The WooCommerce Subscription Downloads extension offers you the power to supply digital merchandise to clients which have enrolled in subscriptions whereas nonetheless sustaining particular person listings for the digital product. This lets you present the product to those who have already subscribed whereas giving new clients the choice to purchase the product by itself.
For Subscription Downloads to work, it is advisable to have subscriptions merchandise created by way of the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension. Each WooCommerce Subscriptions and Subscription Downloads are included free of charge in our Managed WordPress Ecommerce Internet hosting plan.
Whenever you activate the Subscriptions Downloads plugin, it provides a brand new area within the Product Information tab for downloadable merchandise. You need to use this area to seek for the subscription product to hyperlink to the downloadable merchandise.
As soon as the digital product is linked to a subscription, individuals enrolled within the subscription will see the file on their My Account web page. From there, they’ll obtain the file as usually as your settings allow.
Offload file storage with Amazon S3
As your retailer grows it could be prudent to dump your downloadable information to a unique server. It will cut back the load in your origin server, serving to to stop undesirable efficiency points. There are many high quality storage choices that work effectively with WooCommerce. One such storage platform is Amazon S3.
With the Amazon S3 Storage extension for WooCommerce, you’ll be able to simply serve digital merchandise which can be hosted by way of the S3 Storage service. To get began, have to create an AWS account by going to aws.amazon.com and finishing the sign-up course of.
After your account is ready up, go to the Administration Console to get the credentials wanted to attach your AWS account to the WooCommerce plugin. Choose Your username > Safety Credentials.
Go to Entry keys (entry key ID and secret entry key) and choose Create New Entry Key.
Copy the Entry Key ID and Secret Entry Key as you will have them when finishing the setup in WooCommerce. Return to your website and go to WooCommerce > Amazon S3 Storage. Paste the Entry Key ID and Secret Entry Key and save the modifications.
Within the settings, additionally, you will see a area for URL Legitimate Interval. This era defines how lengthy the obtain URLs will work for accessing the file. It helps to maintain your information hidden from non-buyers when utilizing the Redirect solely obtain technique. The default is one minute. You possibly can change the worth to fit your wants.
Create S3 Bucket
After you join your WooCommerce retailer to Amazon S3, you can begin importing your information. Out of your AWS account, go to Providers > Storage > S3.
If you’re new to S3, you will have to create a bucket. This can be a distinctive identifier that’s set to a selected area. Amazon makes use of regional buckets to decrease prices and supply higher latencies. Choose Buckets from the left-hand menu, after which click on Create Bucket. Give the bucket a reputation and select a area for the place it is going to be hosted.
Subsequent, you’ll have the choice to dam public entry to the bucket. It is suggested to dam all public entry as it will preserve others from importing undesirable information to your storage account.
As soon as that is full, you can begin including information to the bucket. To seamlessly add the file hyperlinks in your downloadable merchandise, it is advisable to add the next shortcode to the product’s File URL area: [amazon_s3 bucket=MyBucketName object=MyFileName.ext].
Streamline downloads with WooCommerce Bulk downloads
Clients that buy a number of digital objects in the identical order want an environment friendly solution to obtain their merchandise. With the WooCommerce Bulk Downloads extension, clients have the power to rapidly create and obtain a ZIP file that features all of the objects.
Whenever you activate the plugin, the My Account web page will now function checkboxes and obtain ZIP button within the Out there Downloads part. Customers merely want to pick out the information to incorporate the ZIP and click on the button. The plugin additionally provides the choice to create a ZIP for bulk downloads on the order affirmation web page.
The obtain file is generated within the customized wcbd_zips folder, created within the /wp-content/uploads/ listing on plugin set up. The information are routinely deleted each hour.
If you wish to customise the show, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Merchandise > Downloadable Merchandise. Underneath WooCommerce Bulk Obtain, you will note the choices to vary the button textual content in addition to the choose all textual content.
Able to promote digital merchandise with WooCommerce?
Promoting digital merchandise is an efficient solution to develop ecommerce income — all with out the challenges of conventional order achievement. That mentioned, an efficient technique and a product that solves buyer wants continues to be required should you hope to search out success. Be aware of the steps on this information in order that your downloadable store affords the identical high quality and comfort as some other ecommerce website.
