Selling Services online is not an easy task in itself. The major barrier to selling services online is that you do not have direct communication with your customers. So, you must make sure that you develop a healthy and informative communication process with your customers. Your selling process must be smooth, informative and satisfactory for your customers. You must make sure that your customers know what you are offering and if they have any questions, you must give them a proper platform to help them clarify their doubts.
Now, the question arises How you can sell services with WordPress? If you are willing to sell a digital product on your WordPress Website, then you must install a plugin which offers to create a digital product store on your website. There are several fantastic plugins available in WordPress that lets you sell digital products easily and efficiently. With the help of these plugins, you can quickly create a store of your own and start selling services with WordPress. I will explain to you What all you require to sell services with WordPress and How you can achieve it in the most effective manner.
What all you need to sell services online?
Contact Form:
The first and foremost thing while selling a service to your customer is the communication process. For that, you will be required to connect your website with a contact form. Your potential customers can fill out that form and can even ask questions regarding your services. The best plugin that can help you to create forms is Gravity Forms. Gravity Forms gives you the ability to set pricing fields as part of your forms. You can also tie it to your payment gateway. With its various add-ons, you can also accept payments as a part of these forms.
eCommerce Plugins
There are a plenty of eCommerce plugins that can help you sell services in the most efficient manner. These plugins let you create a digital store online where you can easily sell your services. Let us give a look at some major eCommerce store plugins and see how they work.
1. WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is one of the best plugins to help you create an eCommerce store with WordPress. You can sell almost everything with the help of this plugin and its amazing extensions. You can sell services and book appointments with the help of its WooCommerce Booking Extension. This could be great for service businesses such as appointments, Coaching classes, training sessions and other products that require set time commitments. You can sell digital products with WooCommerce. This plugin provides you a product type called Digital Products that can help you sell digital products such as music, audio, video, images in your store.
One of the best features of this plugin is it offers tons of payment gateways to sell your products. You can sell subscriptions, memberships, digital products, virtual products and more with this plugin. You can check this article for setting up your own WooCommerce Store.
Now Sell Services Via Your WooCommerce Store:
WooCommerce only offers features to sell digital and physical products online, but does not provide you extended option to sell services with features like real-time communication, feedbacks, order status, order mail and more. This can only be achieved with the help of Woo Sell Services which is a dedicated WooCommerce addon allowing a vendor to sell services just like a product. Moreover, this add-on offers features like a dedicated conversation section, option to add multiple requirement questions, adding ratings and reviews for services, email notification for services, service status widget and more.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
A free and flexible plugin to set up and amazing Digital Store with WordPress. This plugin is specifically built for freelancers who want to sell services online without engaging themselves in other aspects of an online store. Easy Digital Downloads was built to provide an easy way to sell digital products with WordPress.
With EDD, you can even sell Ebooks, Digital Music, Graphics, Photographs or Images, Any sound such as ringtones and caller tunes, services such as consultancy, beauty and a lot more. Even with EDD Digital Downloads, you can sell web-based services, website templates, mobile apps, video games and much more. This plugin also provides various different extensions that can help you enhance your selling experience. EDD also offers many payment extensions This plugin is free and the best choice for selling digital products online.
Payment Gateways
Another most important aspect of selling products online with WordPress is the payment process. With services, it becomes essential as these are intangible. Will the customers pay right now? Or will they quote a price for the service they wish to receive? Or whether they will pay when they book an appointment? All these questions need to be answered when you are selling services in your store.
So you are required to set up payment options for your customers. You can do so in the best possible manner by setting up a PayPal or Stripe Account and integrating it into your store. Both the plugins above provide various payment gateways which you can use to accept payments from your customers. You can as well accept Recurring payments from customers with the help of extensions offered by these plugins.
Managing Order
Creating a store to sell services is not all. You are as well required to manage every order effectively so that your customers feel satisfied and happy. You must know how you can track customer’s order, view their information, add internal notes, view their reports, communicate when required and much more.
WooCommerce and EDD both provide you options to manage orders in their way. WooCommerce provides options to View Orders, edit Orders, manage customer information, order status, refunds, internal notes, etc.
On the other hand, Easy Digital Downloads lets you know the payment history, EDD Reports that enables you to view earnings data and other data, Order status, Total sales and more.
Conversation Options
If you are selling a service online, then you must be having some questions as to the customer’s requirements. Communication becomes essential between a vendor and customers. Your customers might also have some issues in mind regarding the services they wish to purchase. Therefore, to sell services with WordPress, you also require effective communication with your customers.
Easy Digital Downloads provides a complete conversation box with its latest extension EDD Sell Services. This latest add-on allows vendors to sell services as a new product type with EDD. Vendors can also add the questions they want to ask customers and customers can easily answer them with the help of a conversation box provided by this add-on. Customers can ask questions in this box and vendors can easily reply to the same thread.
Conclusion
So these were some basic requirements that you need when you sell services with WordPress. You must make sure that you fulfill all of these requirements while selling a service online. WooCommerce is no doubt an amazing plugin to sell products but if you wish to sell services and digital products alone then you must definitely go for Easy Digital Downloads and the various extensions that it provides.
