This note shares five ideas related to WooCommerce. It follows the note on the hosted WooCommerce solution.

Why

Small store owners struggle with conversion from search visibility to sale conversion. Let’s shorten the path for them.

  • Store owners get a purchase action trigger directly in search results, potentially improving conversion rates
  • Google gets wider shopping integrations and more user data. At the margin, it also boosts competition against Amazon
  • WooCommerce1 provides an integration to their customers that counters brand recall of biggest retailers and marketplaces

How

Partner with Google to develop an open standard for defining purchase buttons in website markup

  • Purchase and fulfilment handled by Woo
  • Also integrates into Adwords, so ads can have a ‘buy now’ button parsed from landing page
  • Also integrates directly into Google Shopping

Offer as a free opt-in feature in WooCommerce and WooHoo.com

Next steps

  1. Partner with Google to integrate Google Pay and WooCommerce payments (below), so users can buy directly from search using Google Pay accounts.

  2. Extend partnership to also allow ‘Subscribe now’ buttons for premium subscriptions to content (WordPress2) and products (WooCommerce).

 

#2: Integrated payments

Why

Payment integration and logistics may be the biggest non-core activities for sellers. They are also the two activities that nearly all online store owners need to provide.

Let’s provide the sellers with a sensible, safe default integration, and remove the stress of comparing and integrating alternatives.

How

Bundle one payment provider integration3 directly into WooCommerce.

Provide store owners an integrated default setup to get started. Store owners may disable it and choose a different payments plugin if they desire.

Next step

Aggregate buyer payment profiles for participating sellers
Allows buyers to use a ‘saved card’ at all participating sellers—faster transactions and reduced abandoned carts.
Opt-in for both sellers and buyers.

 

#3: Integrated postage and logistics

Why

Same rationale as for pricing: shipping is an unavoidable but non-core activity for small creators. Help the sellers get started quickly with a sensible default.

How

Partner with logistics and shipping providers4 to develop best-in-class shipping packages. Bundle these shipping options directly into WooCommerce.

Store owners may still opt to integrate with a different shipping provider.

 

#4: Co-branded shipping packages

Why

Packaging for shipping is a core need for most sellers. It may not be a big cost for them, but it is a marketing opportunity for sellers and WooCommerce.

Cross-brand promotion on shipping boxes

Cross-brand promotion on shipping boxes

All brands owned by The Hut Group

All brands owned by The Hut Group

How

Provide store owners an option to buy shipping boxes from WooCommerce (standardised box sizes, fulfilled via a partnership).

  • All boxes come with discrete WooCommerce branding
  • Boxes come with store’s chosen brand highlighted—for orders above a meaningful volume, or for extra charge
  • Store owners may pay to participate as cross-promoted brands on all shipping boxes

Potential issues

  • Cross promoted brands may have conflict with each other.
  • Reputation risk to WooCommerce and other brands from cross-promoted brands’ actions

WooCommerce will need to establish manual verification process for participating sellers, and their art, to protect other participating brands.

 

#5: WooHoo.com + Jetpack

Why

Because this brings a uniform, hosted eCommerce solution to all WordPress users.

Because this makes Jetpack a single point of sale, support, and integration for all Automattic products.

Because it isolates non core-WordPress integrations in WordPress.com for easier integration and support.

How

Integrate WooHoo.com directly into Jetpack as an optional upgrade.

Transparent integration — no separate branding, no separate sign-up or integration required.

  • On WordPress.com, the integration will appear as WordPress.com’s eCommerce offering
  • For Jetpack users, it will appear as an Automattic/Jetpack product
  • Pricing for WooHoo.com would be built into relevant WordPress.com/Jetpack tiers

All opinion notes:

  1. We need to do something about the WordPress.com Reader
  2. Jetpack: the Automattic experience for WordPress
  3. WooHoo.com—a hosted, tightly-integrated version of WooCommerce
  4. Woo Two — More ideas for WooCommerce
  5. Earn with WordPress
  6. Pricing—more and less
  7. TBC: A publishing platform for today’s content formats
  1. Many of our direct competitors will benefit as well. Shopify and others will integrate their stores too. Independent store owners will be the beneficiaries, growing the pie for all of us. ↩
  2. Premium content subscriptions—to be covered in an upcoming update note. ↩

  3. Ideally pick a payment provider that provides best seller-friendly features and reach (geography, accepted payment options), rather than one that provides Automattic good rates.
    Rates can be renegotiated if the initiative succeeds, user trust is harder to regain.

    ↩
  4. Shopify seems to have taken this offering a step further. It offers a complete fulfilment service by partnering with warehousing and shipping companies. Amazon already does this for its Prime partners. ↩