5 Effective Tools to Help You Automate Your Shopify Business

Automating any business, e-commerce businesses in particular, helps its owners save money and time as well as increase sales. Automation gives companies real value when they start growing and require larger inventories and more efforts directed to customer retention and support.

Instead of hiring new people to deal with the increased workload and spending money on their salaries and benefits packages, a business can simply take advantage of specialized software that handles the same tasks as, or even more efficiently and costs far less.

Although Shopify is probably the easiest e-commerce platform to set up, new merchants may find themselves at a loss when faced with a multitude of business tasks, from finding products to sell and email marketing to reporting and profit calculations.

Unfortunately, the Shopify core doesn’t provide all automatic business management functions. Not to panic, though. You can find a wealth of tools on the official Shopify App Store. All of them have gone through strict verification and quality checks and can now be safely integrated into your e-commerce website.

The number of apps in the App Store is huge: 3,645 at the moment of writing the post. To save you some trouble, we’ve prepared a review of five apps in five different categories that you can try out to automate some of the most common business processes.

CATEGORY: WORKFLOW AUTOMATION

APP TITLE: Shop Workflow Automation

Before writing a line of code, the app developers had gone to great pains to survey a variety of Shopify merchants on which of their daily routines and workflows could and should be automated. That alone should make Shop Workflow Automation trustworthy.

Consider it your personal digital assistant, responsible for the smooth operation of your shop and promptly responding to any events that need attention.

One of its most appealing features is the automatic removal of out-of-stock items from the store. Simultaneously, the app notifies the store owner that a product is no longer in stock and needs to be restocked. Shop Workflow Automation also conducts the daily monitoring of the stock and redisplays products that it (or the administrator) has removed from the store previously.

Sadly, online merchants fall victim to the fraud of all kinds in 2019, just like they did in the years before. Fraudsters constantly find new ways to cheat and steal. To counteract them, Shop Workflow Automation automatically detects suspicious orders and sends emails to the store owner with the relevant details. This way, the merchant has a chance to study the order carefully before fulfilling it to avoid a chargeback in the future.

CATEGORY: INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

APP TITLE: Simile | Smart Bundles

The Frequently Bought Together bundle you see on many e-commerce websites, including Amazon, is a good way to boost your upselling and cross-selling efforts. You can automatically add a bundle like that to your products too. The Simile | Smart Bundles app performs just this function.

The app looks into your database for past purchases and then applies an artificial intelligence algorithm to create a bundle for each product automatically. Normally, three items are included in a bundle. What’s more, new e-commerce sites with no purchases made yet can have this algorithm applied as well.

With Simile | Smart Bundles you can also add a discount to the items in a bundle, which encourages your customers to buy more products. All of the items in a bundle and only they will get a reduction in price. Once a consumer removes at least one item from a bundle, the discount on the products left in the cart is canceled.

Another feature worth mentioning: as soon as a customer adds a bundle to the cart, they’re immediately taken to the checkout page. This is very beneficial in regards to the speed of the shopping process and contributes to a higher conversion rate.

CATEGORY: REPORTING

APP TITLE: Lifetimely: Profit & LTV

How can you make your sales more effective? By analyzing the data about your purchases and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly. This is where you’ll find the Lifetimely app invaluable.

With this advanced analytics toolkit for Shopify, you’ll be able to track your customer lifetime value and see your best-purchasing customers’ shopping patterns. You’ll also be able to watch your profits in real time by looking at the data from your Shopify store, shipping data, costs, and marketing data (Google, Facebook, etc.) in one centralized location — profit dashboard.

The provided Lifecycle Grid will help you understand your customer base better over time by letting you see what has changed in it. Thus, you can determine the groups of customers that no longer visit your store.

You can also see what products, channels, or categories are more or less profitable and export the customers or segments for the email service of your choice. The app integrates with Google Ads, Adwords, and Facebook Ads.

CATEGORY: ORDERS AND SHIPPING

APP TITLE: MassFulfill

This app should save a lot of your time on fulfilling orders. If you have a large number of files with tracking data, you can upload them to the app and have them fulfilled in bulk instead of adding the data to your orders piece by piece.

Also, if you ship different SKUs from different suppliers or locations, you can specify the SKUs of that place in the file you upload and thus will be able to fulfill only the line items that correspond to the SKUs.

The app developer has provided the Google Sheets integration feature. You can make a spreadsheet with your orders and send it to your supplier. You can easily fulfill the orders the spreadsheet contains.

How do you know you’re going to fulfill the right orders? You can see what is about to happen on the confirmation page, thus completely eliminating the possibility of an error.

Among other notable MassFulfill features are mass tagging by order number and bulk unfulfilling of orders, should you suddenly realize you’ve done something wrong or need to add products to a file.

CATEGORY: CUSTOMER SUPPORT

APP TITLE: Automated RMAs and Returns

There are a number of reasons why consumers return goods to retailers. An item has a defect, its description on the site is different from what it really is, or it is a size too small or too large. The list goes on and on.

Having to accept returns from your customers is something you simply can’t avoid. What you can do, though, is automate this process. The Automated RMAs and Returns app will take most of the load off your shoulders.

Instead of contacting you in person, a customer provides the information about the order, specifies the products they’d like to return, gives the reasons for their decision, and leaves their email address — all through the app.

After that, they get a prepaid label for dropping off their no-longer-wanted items at the shipping carrier you’ve chosen. Emails with relevant return data are delivered to you and the customer. That’s how it looks in a nutshell. However, the feature list is long. Here are some other benefits:

You can completely customize the messages you send to your customers.
You can set rules to return goods to a different location.
You can automatically keep your customers updated on the status of their return at each stage of the process.
You can export the full list of your returns to an Excel spreadsheet for reporting purposes.
You can accept money from your customers for return postage via Stripe.

CONCLUSION

Shopify makes it easy to automate various e-commerce business processes through hundreds of apps on its App Store. If you’re new to this great e-commerce platform, why not start with the tools we’ve suggested above, exploring the rest of your options in the meantime?

If you have any questions related to running your Shopify store, want a unique theme designed to stand out from your competitors, or need a custom app to perform your business-specific logic, The Site Slinger developers are always here to provide the best services on the market.

Drupal 8 Modules to Make an E-Commerce Website More Profitable

These days, fewer consumers want to waste their time standing in lines or roaming around shopping malls in search of things they need. Why all that trouble? Just open up an e-commerce website, make a few clicks, and get nearly everything under the sun delivered right to your threshold.

Among numerous e-commerce solutions, Drupal is gaining more significance with every passing year. Although it doesn’t include e-commerce features by default, unlike such platforms as Shopify or Magento, Drupal 8 makes up for it with a well-developed system of modules.

If we run a search on the official Drupal website, it returns 1,756 e-commerce modules at the moment of writing this post. While that’s a huge number, you don’t need to install all of those extensions. Just find out what consumers value in an e-commerce solution above all and pick one module for each requirement.

What Do Customers Need in an E-Commerce Site Above All?

While many aspects are important for online stores to succeed, we believe that some areas are really crucial:

SEO. Customers need to know about your offerings and should be able to find your store in the vast space of the Internet.
Convenient purchasing procedure:

The checkout process should be short and intuitive.
There should be a number of payment channels for customers’ convenience.
Prices should be calculated in all possible currencies.
Customers should know exactly how much they will have to pay for shipment depending on their location.
Customers should get a detailed invoice right after they’ve made a purchase.

When your e-commerce site is easy to use, it contributes to higher customer satisfaction, generates more traffic, and ultimately increases the conversion rate. Now, let’s review the top Drupal 8 modules that can make an e-commerce website more lucrative.

Our List of Top Drupal 8 E-Commerce Modules

SEO Checklist

This module helps Drupal site owners remember every SEO task required to improve their online store’s search engine visibility. The SEO Checklist will ensure you don’t forget to clean duplicate content, use keywords in headings, optimize images with descriptive ALT tags, or perform many other essential SEO tasks. You’ll be notified whenever you’ve missed one of the items on the list.

Moreover, if you’re not sure about the best way to handle a certain SEO task, the module will helpfully suggest the best options for you. The same thing happens if you’ve done something wrong from SEO’s point of view. The module will “complain” and tell you exactly what’s amiss.

We all know how frequently Google loves changing its search algorithm. With SEO Checklist, though, it’s not an issue, since it gets updated on a regular basis. Any of Google’s new rules are immediately reflected in the module’s list.

Ubercart

If you’re a small or mid-size business owner, you’ll find this module simply indispensable. It helps you create a ground-level shopping cart system in no time and with a minimum amount of effort.

You can use Ubercart for any type of business, starting from selling physical merchandise like furniture or electronics and ending with downloading digital products like PDF files. This module enables you to do the following:

Add products to a configurable catalog
Create and edit orders
Automatically generate accounts
Add multiple images for the same product
Track stock and get warning messages when some items are about to run out

This list is far from complete. One of the most appealing Ubercart’s features is a one-page checkout — every e-commerce website owner’s dream. Customers don’t have to go through several forms on different pages until they can finally call something their own.

Ubercart also includes an integrated payment system. It lets you select various payment options such as credit card or check, as well as payment processors, including PayPal, CyberSource, and others. That’s what we meant when we stressed the need for several payment channels on an e-commerce site.

Currency

If your own country has suddenly become too small for your growing online business, you may want to move up to the international level. Then, you’ll have to adapt your online store for displaying prices in different currencies. That’s exactly what the Currency module is for.

Convert currencies and present them in the appropriate format depending on a customer’s locale
Show the necessary information about specific currencies

With Currency, you get the entire world covered. More profits without hassle!

Conclusion

The success of any e-commerce site depends to a large extent on a smooth user experience. If a customer can find an online store easily, have one checkout page instead of six, and pay in any currency via a gateway of his or her choice, the chance that he or she will become a regular is higher.

While the e-commerce modules we’ve described in this post are a great help for any Drupal-powered online shop manager, building a truly secure, SEO-friendly, and feature-rich site requires professional assistance.

The Site Slinger’s experienced Drupal developers can take care of many Drupal-related tasks including PSD to Drupal development. Just get in touch with us and let us turn your ideas into a perfect e-commerce solution.

6 Reasons for Choosing Shopify to Build a Successful Dropshipping Business

The share of e-commerce in total U.S. retail sales in the first quarter of 2019 has reached 10.5%. That’s a 6.3% increase compared to the first quarter of 2010. The total amount of money that U.S. consumers are expected to spend online should reach over 740 billion dollars in 2023.

It means that e-commerce is likely to replace traditional retail operations almost entirely in the not so distant future. These days, an increasing number of businesses and individual entrepreneurs conduct transactions via online storefronts using the dropshipping retail fulfillment method and various e-commerce platforms.

What is dropshipping, why is it so popular, and why is Shopify the best e-commerce solution for building dropshipping online stores? Find the answers below.

Dropshipping — Business for the Masses

What Is Dropshipping?

Consider the traditional business model of selling physical products. A retailer buys goods from a manufacturer, stores them in a warehouse, and then sells them to customers through brick-and-mortar retail outlets.

The dropshipping model works differently. Instead of storing goods in a warehouse, a dropshipping company purchases the items a customer wants from a third-party supplier and has them delivered to the customer’s location through the same supplier or a delivery company.

As such, a dropshipping business only accepts orders via its online storefront and arranges the shipment of goods to customers’ addresses. The warehousing stage is missing. Here’s what the workflow looks like in a nutshell:

Dropshipping is not a new concept. Many big, well-established companies have been using it for a long time. Amazon is probably one of the most notable examples.

How much can dropshippers make? It depends on the niche. If you’re selling items of mass consumption such as T-shirts or shoes, don’t expect large profits because of fierce competition. On the other hand, when offering expensive merchandise like jewelry or brand watches, dropshippers’ profit margin can reach as much as 100%.

Benefits of Dropshipping

The popularity of dropshipping is growing by the hour, and for a good reason. Here’s why we can call it a retail fulfillment method for the masses.

Almost No Upfront Expenses

Dropshipping means no need to purchase goods. Therefore, a business owner only has to cover the hosting expenses for the online store and pay for additional web development services like themes, apps, and so on.

Immediate Start

This is a very straightforward business. Dropshippers don’t have to go through the routine of conventional retailers: running a warehouse, preparing goods for shipment, ensuring that the stock is full, and performing other “old school” retailer’s tasks.

All they need to do is strike a deal with a reliable shipper, pick an affordable and efficient e-commerce platform, fill the website with the information about items for sale, and begin accepting orders. This may take just a few weeks.

No Fixed Business Location

With dropshipping, you’re not limited in space. You can easily combine traveling with business. In essence, there are only two things you need:

A laptop
Internet access

A Wide Assortment of Goods

Dropshippers can offer any products to their customers as long as they can find appropriate suppliers for them. A dropshipping business may focus on one particular niche, such as sportswear or on a variety of different products. Sell children’s toys along with books, building materials, and electronics. Why not?

Make Your Business Bigger Whenever You Need

Every business wants to grow, naturally. Traditional retailers often struggle with expanding their operations. More manpower, more money to invest, and more space in the available warehouses or new warehouses to rent.

Dropshipping makes this all unnecessary. New orders are simply forwarded to a supplier for processing. A dropshipper may only have to spend more time on customer service. The supplier takes care of the nitty-gritty of order-handling.

One of the most important aspects of the dropshipping business is choosing the right e-commerce system. According to Statista, the largest market share among e-commerce software platforms in the United States in 2019 belongs to Shopify. Here are 6 arguments why you should choose this platform for your dropshipping store.

Shopify, the Best E-Commerce Platform for Dropshipping

Statista: Projected market share of e-commerce software platforms in the United States in 2019

Reason #1: No Advanced Technical Skills Required. Good for Beginners

Shopify is a SaaS (Sofware as a Service) solution. It’s hosted in the cloud and maintained by the Shopify development team. There’s no need to watch out for updates. Just focus on the store itself and let the vendor take care of all the technical aspects. You only need to pay a monthly fee.

Shopify is especially good for small companies and individual entrepreneurs who want to start their online stores quickly without having to slog through the details of the CMS. The dashboard is easy-to-use and intuitive. When adding a new item, you can specify all of its attributes (price, quantity, and so on) in one central location. Very convenient.

Reasons # 2: A Multitude of Apps to Complement a Store’s Functionality

The Shopify App Store contains over 3,381 items at the moment of writing this post. These applications help online store owners get closer to their customers via a live chat, keep their bookkeeping records neat, automate marketing campaigns, and address other important issues.

Among those 3,300+, you can find around 150 specialized dropshipping apps, both free and commercial. For example, Oberlo facilitates finding products to sell on Shopify. All these apps are valuable time-saving tools for dropshippers.

Reasons # 3: Dozens of Payment Gateways to Choose from

Shopify is the champion when it comes to payment options. Over 100 gateways! The closest competitors are still way behind Shopify in this respect.

Customers can choose among many third-party providers, such as Amazon Pay or Skrill, according to their geographic regions. Here is a list for the United States. Fees for using these services apply.

You can also use Shopify’s own gateway called Shopify Payments. You don’t have to pay fees for using Shopify Payments. Just conduct a transaction with your card (credit or debit).

What’s more, you can sell your goods in different currencies through Shopify Payments. The system will identify the customer’s country and convert the price to that country’s currency in accordance with the current exchange rate. The only downside is that Shopify Payments is available in a limited number of countries.

Reason # 4: Easy Shipping Options Adjustment

Setting different shipping rates based on the weight and value of goods, customers’ locations, or delivery time is crucial for any dropshipping business. Shopify excels at this too.

Besides, Shopify has partnered with the world’s leading shipping companies like DHL and UPS. So, if you decide to purchase goods from a manufacturer and choose your own courier service, Shopify is there for you as well.

Reason # 5: Excellent SEO Capabilities

What’s the use of building a store if no one can find it on the Internet? Shopify does a great job of improving search engine visibility. It has a plethora of useful SEO functions, like customizable titles, meta-tags, keywords, alt text, and many more.

In addition, the e-commerce platform provides Integration with the largest media channels like Facebook. With all these SEO bells and whistles, your chances that Google will fall in love with your dropshipping store become much higher.

Reason # 6: Care for Mobile Users

When an online store owner ignores mobile users, the business is bound to fail. An ever-increasing number of customers today prefer shopping from their handheld devices.

The Shopify team is well aware of this trend. It has ensured that all websites based on their platform look great regardless of screen resolution. Besides, mobile commerce features allow both consumers and business owners to work with their Shopify-powered online stores on mobile devices in the same way they work with the web version.

Bottom Line

Dropshipping is an easy-to-set-up and profitable business that requires a minimum amount of upfront investments. It attracts entrepreneurs with its flexibility of selecting products for sale and without having to be tied to one specific location.

Most dropshippers prefer Shopify as the e-commerce platform behind their online stores. It’s simple in operation, requires no technical expertise, is easy to scale, and provides many useful functions, such as adjusting shipment options and accepting payments through numerous gateways.

While Shopify is a great solution that anyone can get up and running fast, making it really beautifully designed, SEO-friendly, and secure is a job for professionals. The Site Slinger’s Shopify development team is always at your service, whatever idea you have for your online store. We perform PSD to Shopify conversion and can customize your Shopify themes to look great on any device.

7 Tips on Making Your WordPress Site Hack-Proof Without Changing a Line of Code

According to the latest statistical data, the number of WordPress-based websites in the United States is over 9.6 million. WordPress is the most popular open-source platform in the world, boasting a share of over 50%. It powers numerous types of websites, starting from blogs and job boards and ending with business directories and Q&A websites.

Such tremendous popularity, though, comes at a cost. Cybercriminals of all kinds try to break into WordPress-powered websites and, unfortunately, succeed far too often. The WPScan Vulnerability Database currently lists over 16,700 WordPress core, plugin, and theme vulnerabilities—enough for any hacker to feel hopeful.

The WordPress Security Team

That said, the WordPress Security Team is very strong. It includes 50 top professionals who constantly monitor the WordPress security shield and eliminate any weak spots in it. Watch this video to learn more about the Security Team’s working process.

Over the years, WordPress has become more stable and secure. However, making the system’s core less vulnerable to attacks is only part of the solution. The Security Team’s duties don’t include checking the themes or plugins available at wordpress.org. Anyone who’s willing and has enough time can review those. As a result, security breaches through plugins and themes are quite frequent.

The Most Common Threats to a WP Site from Hackers

Installing malicious software. Cybercriminals implant their code into a WordPress site’s files and use it to collect confidential data secretly.
Cross-site scripting. A hacker tricks a WordPress site user into loading pages with JavaScript code. The code steals private data from the site user’s browser and sends it to the hacker over the Internet.
Injecting SQL code. Once a criminal breaks into a WP site’s database, they can inject SQL code for creating a new user. Then, they can log in at any time and use the site’s files in any way they want without the owner suspecting anything.
Including PHP files. PHP is the programming language that allows WordPress to do all the great stuff it does. A hacker can find a way to upload their PHP scripts into a WP site’s directories and use those for their criminal purposes. This is the most common method of taking control of the crucial WP file wp-config.php
Brute force attacks. These mean bombarding the login screen with millions of nickname/password combinations in order to stumble upon the right credentials. What’s sad — this savage approach often yields positive results for the hacker.

While cybercriminals’ tricks may seem too clever for a layman to counteract, you can prevent many of them by applying 8 simple techniques we’ve described below. No knowledge of coding is required.

Essential Tips on Protecting a WordPress Site from Intrusion

1. Avoid Using a Weak Password

Let’s start with the essential measures to avoid brute force attacks. We can’t stress enough the importance of a good, hard-to-guess password. A password that only includes 6 random digits or characters is the surest way to losing your valuable data sooner rather than later. With powerful modern technologies, any hacker will be able to crack a password like that in no time.

A strong password means a well-mixed combination of digits, letters in lower and upper case, and special characters. View Google’s recommendations, for example.

Make your password unique and as unrelated to your life as possible. Avoid including your apartment number, spouse’s name, child’s birthday, or any similar information. Many people prefer coining a lengthy phrase instead of an arbitrary array of characters or numbers to make a hacker’s task more difficult.

Does coming up with a strong password seem an excessively challenging task? Then, use one of the numerous password generators like this one. Find it hard to remember passwords? Then, take advantage of this free tool to store them securely.

Finally, a password is not something carved in stone. Depending on how sensitive your data is, consider changing your password weekly or monthly.

2. Bring the Number of Login Attempts to a Minimum

Another way to protect your site against brute force attacks is to allow users to make just a few login attempts in a row. By default, WordPress doesn’t restrict users in the number of times they may try to sign in. Hackers adore this feature, as they can enter a multitude of username/password pairs into the login form in the hope of breaking inside.

Leaving one login attempt is not enough. Sometimes users forget to press the Shift key when necessary or enter a hyphen instead of an underscore. So give your users a chance to try to log in three-four times. If they fail, block them for a certain period.

How can you achieve that? Install the Limit Login Attempts Reloaded plugin. Then, go to Settings, select the plugin, and change the values in the fields under the Lockout category. You can increase the lockout time if more unsuccessful attempts are made after the first time a possible hacker has been blocked.

3. Select a Hosting Provider with a Strong Security Mechanism

When it comes to hosting, any business faces a big dilemma: pay less but get fewer features and weaker security, or pay more and get more features and stronger protection. If your budget allows it, we highly recommend spending more money on hosting that offers several security layers.

Otherwise, you’re running a risk of losing your data or letting crooks redirect your traffic to other sites. High-quality hosting companies perform daily scans for malware and monitor any attempts to gain unauthorized access to the hosted sites.

4. Implement an SSL Certificate

Transmitting data from a server to a browser over the Internet without an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate is like leaving your personal diary in a public place for everyone to read. An SSL certificate, on the other hand, allows you to encrypt all your data, making it impossible for cybercriminals to decipher.
There are two ways you can get an SSL certificate:

Purchase it from a provider.
Use the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate offered by your hosting company.

The paid option is preferable if you have enough financial resources. To get a better insight into the difference between a paid and free SSL certificates, read this post.

Installing an SSL certificate not only makes your WP site more secure but also improves its search engine visibility. Google considers ‘https://’ at the beginning of a URL an important factor and ranks the site higher.

5. Make Regular Backups of Your Site

Hackers are very inventive. Whatever measures you take to protect your WordPress site, there’s always a potential crack in the armor through which a criminal can get inside. So, it’s advisable to have a working copy of the website safely stored in a place where no one can get hold of it, like an external hard drive.

How often do you need to make backups? It depends on the scale of your business activities. For small and medium-sized companies, a monthly backup is probably sufficient. The sensitivity of information is also important in this respect.

There are some excellent backup plugins that make copying a site’s files easy and fast. One of them is BackWPup. It’s simple in operation and comes with a series of training videos to get you up to speed. You can plan and schedule backup jobs and push backup archives to an external storage service if you don’t want to store them on the same server.

6. Keep Everything Up to Date

Have a look at the long list of WordPress versions that have been released since 2003. Every new version added something to the core functionality of the CMS including security patches.

That’s the reason why updating the WordPress core as well as its plugins and themes is so important. It helps you avoid dangerous security breaches. In the same video about the WordPress Security team, Aaron Campbell says that the Team postpones the announcements about new security improvements closer to release dates so that hackers couldn’t use that information to their advantage.

While WordPress automatically performs minor updates, dealing with major ones is the user’s responsibility. So, keep track of the WordPress versions and update plugins and themes. To do this, go to the Plugins page and click the Update Now link next to a specific plugin if this link is available.

7. Monitor Your Website for Malware with a Security Plugin

Finally, installing a security plugin to monitor your website for any malicious software installation is a must. A person who’s not versed in coding may not even understand that a hacker has infected their WordPress site with bad code. A plugin, on the other hand, is capable of analyzing the files and detecting any code injected by hackers.

In our opinion, one of the best plugins for this purpose is iThemes Security. It has been installed on more than 900,000 sites and performs a wide range of functions. It blocks bad users, monitors the site and reports suspicious changes to the file system and database, hides common security vulnerabilities (e.g., changes the URLs for WordPress dashboard areas, including login and admin), regularly updates the WP database, and does other useful things.

Conclusion

The security of a WordPress website is not something to be taken lightly. Cybercriminals are always searching for new loopholes and trying to exploit them. The techniques we’ve listed above are essential for the health and safety of your site.

To make your WP site even more secure, tweaking its code is necessary. That job should be left to professionals. The Site Slinger’s highly skilled and experienced WP developers can help you with many WP-related tasks such as PSD to WordPress conversion. Tell us what you need and we’ll get it done.