10 Vital Customizations to Make in Google Analytics

Google Analytics can do just about whatever you want it to. It has a ton of depth.

It can also feel a bit overwhelming once you get into it.

After consulting on Google Analytics for years, both independently and as the head of marketing at an analytics startup, I have 10 customizations I consider vital for every site I run.

Once they’re in place, you’ll have:

• Keyword data in Google Analytics. Yes, I’m completely serious. Keyword data is back.
• An account structure that will save you if you ever accidentally nuke your Google Analytics data.
• Metrics to help you drive your business.
• A roadmap to clean up your URLs to make your reports accurate. (They’re not as accurate as you think they are.)
• Alerts to help you catch catastrophic data failures within 25 hours.
• The Google Analytics tracking script installed like the pros.
• A method to filter out data from your office IP so your company doesn’t accidentally skew the reports.

Let’s dive in.

Connect Google Analytics to Google Search Console

Way back, Google Analytics used to have keyword data in all its standard reports. You were able to see which keywords sent traffic to which pages. And if you had ecommerce tracking or goals set up, you could see how much revenue each keyword produced for you.

It was amazing.

Then Google decided to remove the keyword data from Google Analytics.

So, instead of amazing keyword data, everything got lumped into the dreaded “not provided” group.

Google killed the keyword data in Google Analytics.

I thought the keyword data was done forever — I never expected to see it again. I resigned my fate to needing tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs for keywords.

Then a funny thing happened.

Google started investing a lot of time into improving Google Search Console. In the last few years, it’s gotten incredibly good. The data is a goldmine. Google also improved the integration between Google Search Console and Google Analytics so it’s now possible to get a lot of that missing keyword data back.

That’s right, keywords are back in Google Analytics. All you have to do is sign up for a free Google Search Console account and connect it to your Google Analytics account.

It’s pretty easy. There are only two steps:

1. Create a free Google Search Console account and verify that you have access to your site. The easiest way to verify is if you already have Google Analytics installed.
2. In your Property settings in Google Analytics, connect to your Google Search Console.

Here’s where to find the settings in Google Analytics to turn on Google Search Console:

After the accounts are connected, all the reports under Acquisition – Search Console will start populating. Keep in mind that they have a 48 hour delay so give it a few extra days before checking for data.

Create Multiple Views

I consider this a mandatory customization for Google Analytics.

Once data makes it into your Google Analytics reports, it’s permanent. Nothing can change it. Google has an entire processing pipeline for all the data it collects. Once data has been processed, there’s no going back.

So what happens if you use one of these Google Analytics customizations and accidentally nuke your whole account?

That data is permanently gone. When you fix the setting in your account, you won’t get any of your old data back. Only data from that moment onward will be clean.

Even if you just make your reports a bit messier with the wrong setting, there’s no going back.

In other words, the stakes are high.

We all make mistakes. And it’s a good idea to create two extra views for your Google Analytics profile as a backup.

On every one of my Google Analytics properties, I create three views:

1. Master View = This is the main view you’ll do all your analysis with.
2. Test View = Before adding a new setting to your Master view, add it here first. This allows you to test it out before impacting your real data.
3. Raw Data View = Leave this view completely untouched without any settings configured. If something goes horribly wrong, you always have this base data to work with.

Your Google Analytics views should look like this:

Set Up Events

Google Analytics tracks a ton of stuff without any customization which is why it’s so popular. There’s a ton of value right out of the box.

Sometimes, there are other actions that are also worth tracking beyond the standard sessions, pageviews, bounce rates, and time on site. You might want to track:

• Account creations
• Email signups
• PDF downloads
• Video plays
• Calculator or other tool usage
• Contact form submissions
• Webinar registrations
• Clicks on important links

Anything that’s important to your site can be turned into a Google Analytics event so you can track how often it’s happening.

To trigger events, you will have to add some code to your site that sends the event data whenever the action occurs. Most likely, you’ll need a developer to help you set this up. All the event documentation is here.

Define Goals

In my experience, folks go overboard with goals. Hitting 10 pageviews per visit is a goal, signups are goals, PDF downloads get goals, random events are goals, goals goals goals everywhere.

Usually when I start working on a new site, I end up having to delete a bunch of goals that don’t matter.

My rule: only 1 or 2 goals per site. And they should be goals that closely track to revenue. So if the goal goes up, I expect revenue to also go up. If the correlation to revenue is weak, use an event instead of a goal.

Some examples of good goals:

• Free trial sign up for your software
• New email subscription
• Demo request
• Consultation request
• Affiliate link click
• Webinar registration if this leads to a sales funnel. If it’s a normal content-based webinar, I prefer not to set it up as a goal.

Any event that leads to a sales funnel is a good candidate for a goal. There are really two ways to set up goals like these.

URL Goal

If your site is set up in a way that users always hit the same URL after completing one of these key actions, you can tell Google Analytics to trigger a goal every time someone lands on that URL. This works great for “thank you” pages.

No code is needed for these, you can set it up right away.

Event Goals

It’s also possible to have Google Analytics trigger a goal any time an event fires. This gives you the flexibility to trigger a goal whenever you like since it’s possible to trigger events whenever you like.

You most likely need a developer to help you set these up. Ask them to create a Google Analytics event for you. Once you see the event tracking correctly in the Google Analytics event reports, then go set up a Goal using the values of your event.

Why go through the trouble of turning an event into a goal? Why not just look at the event reports? It makes getting conversions data in your reports a lot easier. Many of the reports are pre-configured to show conversions based on goals. It’s trickier to get the same reports based on just events.

Implement Ecommerce Tracking

If you have an ecommerce store, Google Analytics ecommerce tracking gets all your revenue data into your reports. It’s amazing.

You’ll be able to see:

• Which traffic sources produce the most revenue
• Traffic sources that produce a lot of traffic but no revenue
• The pages that bring in new visitors who end up purchasing
• The user flows on your site that lead to revenue
• How users go through multiple traffic sources before they end up purchasing

Google Analytics doesn’t track any of your ecommerce purchases out of the box. You will need to set up some extra stuff.

There are only two ways to get this set up:

• If you can edit the code of your checkout flow, there’s extra JavaScript tracking that will send purchase data to your Google Analytics account.
• Some ecommerce tools have ecommerce tracking built in. All you have to do is turn it on, hook it up to your Google Analytics account, and the data will start showing up.

First, go check your ecommerce tool and see if it has a built-in integration. Shopify has one. And if you’re not on Shopify, consider migrating. It’s worth the switch.

If you need to set up ecommerce tracking by hand, all the developer documentation is here.

One last thing, remember to turn on ecommerce tracking in your Google Analytics settings:

You need to flip the switch before data will start showing up.

Content Groups

Out of everything on the list, Content Groups are the most situational customization. Most sites don’t need to set these up — they’ll amount to nothing more than busy work that’s quickly forgotten about.

But for editorial and ecommerce sites, they make an enormous difference.

Google Analytics considers all your URLs to be equal. It doesn’t lump them into subgroups at all.

If you have a large site and manage the site by sections, this becomes a real problem. You might have Money, Heath and Fitness, and Political news sections that are all managed by different teams. Or, maybe you have different merchandize groups for your ecommerce store. How do you track the performance of those different sections of your site?

You can’t do it with an internal spreadsheet; new posts and products go up too fast to keep one accurate. Even if you can make it work, it’s a real pain to keep updated.

Setting up unique Google Analytics views is one option but only really works if every category has a clean subfolder in your URL. Plus, creating unique Google Analytics properties for each section creates all sorts of extra problems with referrals and tracking everything in aggregate.

The solution? Google Analytics Content Groups.

Using either the Google Analytics settings or by appending your Google Analytics JavaScript with a bit of extra code, you can categorize your site pages into whatever groupings you want.

Once you’ve set up Content Groups, you can take any report in Google Analytics and organize all the data by any content group you’ve set up. For major editorial and ecommerce sites, it saves countless reporting hours.

Clean Up Parameters

It’s pretty common to run into pages like this in your Google Analytics reports:

Anything after a “?” in a URL is a parameter. It’s common for tools to add URL parameters to a URL. These parameters don’t change the destination of the URL, they add extra data that various tools can then use.

The problem is that Google Analytics treats parameters as unique URLs. In other words, traffic to the same page will show up in Google Analytics as visiting different URLs simply because the parameters for each user were different.

This splits our pageviews across a bunch of different URLs instead of giving us the real total for a single page on our site. That’s exactly what’s happening in the Quick Sprout example above. Instead of having 7 pageviews for our homepage, we have 7 pageviews split across unique pages because of a unique fbclid parameter that was added.

There’s a bigger problem too.

A lot of marketing automation and email tools will add ID parameters to the end of every URL in their emails. That allows them to track what email subscribers are doing. Even worse, it can populate reports with personal information like email addresses and names. It’s against the Google Analytics terms of service to have personal info in any report so you definitely don’t want this data to end up in your reports.

Here’s how parameters work:

• The end of the URL and the beginning of the parameters is marked with a “?”
• Every parameter has a name and a value. The name is before the “=” and the value comes after.
• Parameters are separated by an “&” so if you see an “&” in the URL, that means there’s multiple parameters.

To clean up your reports and scrub personal data clean, go to the All Pages report. Then sort by least pageviews. This will give you a list of URLs that only had a single pageview. Scroll through about 100 pages and look for any parameters that don’t signify a real URL.

Once you have a list of parameters that are junking up your reports, go to your View settings and add all the parameters that you want excluded here:

Be careful though. Some sites use parameters for different pages. I personally think it’s a terrible way to structure a site but it does happen. If your site does this, don’t include the parameter for those real pages. Otherwise Google Analytics will stop tracking the pages entirely.

Also don’t include any of the standard UTM parameters that are used to track marketing campaigns. Google Analytics already handles that data correctly.

Install Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager

In our post on setting up Google Analytics, I advocated for skipping Google Tag Manager when setting up Google Analytics for the first time. I still stand by that, especially for folks creating their site for the first time. When you skip Google Tag Manager as a new site owner, you skip a lot of emplexity without giving up much.

If you’re at a stage with your site where you’re looking at deeper customizations for Google Analytics, it’s worth taking the time to get Google Tag Manager set up.

Long term, using Google Tag Manager is a good habit to get into. It saves a bunch of headaches down the road that large sites run into. Keeping all of the JavaScript tags from all your marketing tools in a tag manager makes updates, maintenance, and audits super easy.

Again, if you’re running your site by yourself and hate the thought of learning one more tool, feel free to skip this.

For everyone else, it’s time to remove your Google Analytics Global Site Tag from your site, install Google Tag Manager, and then add Google Analytics to your tag manager.

Once you’ve removed Google Analytics JavaScript from your site, follow these steps:

1. Create a Google Tag Manager account and set up a workspace for your site.
2. Install the Google Tag Manager Javascript in the same place on your site that you previously installed Google Analytics directly. The JavaScript is under the the Admin section of your Google Tag Manager account.
3. Create a new tag under your workspace.
4. For tag type, choose “Universal Analytics”
5. Choose “Page View” for track type.
6. Under Google Analytics Settings, choose “New Variable” and adding your Tracking ID.
7. Add a trigger that fires the tag on all pages.
8. Save your tag and publish your workspace. Don’t forget to publish the new workspace; you have to “push” to production otherwise your changes won’t go live.

Your tag will look like this when you’re done:

To make sure that Google Analytics is working through Google Tag Manager, check your real-time reports in Google Analytics to see if it’s successfully recording data.

Create Custom Alerts

Sooner or later, you site will get hit. Here are a few scenarios that I’ve personally been through:

• A site redesign was launched and Google Analytics was missing when it was pushed to production.
• Another site redesign launched and cut our sign-up flow by 50%. Tracking was working, the new site just didn’t convert nearly as well as the old site.
• Someone was making a few changes to the site and accidentally removed Google Analytics from the entire site. It was missing for about 24 hours before we caught it.
• Google launched a bug in its search algorithm and we lost 40% of traffic in about 30 days.
• On a different site, we lost 40% of our search traffic in 30 days after Google recrawled our site and lowered all our rankings.
• New sign-up infrastructure launched and broke our sign-up tracking, the primary goal of the site.
• I launched a new pricing page and cut our sales pipeline by 50%.

Most of these examples are pretty embarrassing.

Sooner or later, they happen on every site. I find that I run into 1–2 per year.

To help catch major problems like these, Google Analytics has Custom Alerts. You define a set of criteria and whenever that event happens, Google Analytics will send you an email. Even if your team isn’t checking Google Analytics daily, you’ll still catch major problems within 24 hours.

Here’s the alert I like to set up:

This alert sends me an email whenever sessions decrease by 30% or more compared to the same day the previous week. A few tricks that I’ve learned about custom alerts over the years:

• Alerts by day are the most useful. This will catch catastrophic problems that tank your data immediately. It can take longer for those problems to show up in weekly or monthly data. I also find that normal reporting is good enough to catch the weekly or monthly changes.
• I try to only set up a handful of custom alerts. One for total traffic and one for the primary conversion event on the site are usually enough (sign up, purchase, etc). If too many alerts fire, it becomes a bunch of noise.
• Comparing to the previous week is helpful. Most sites have huge traffic differences between the week and the weekend which are totally normal. These normal fluctuations can trigger alerts if you compare day to day.
• Increase the trigger percentage if you find that you’re getting too many false alarms.
• Some folks set up alerts for positive increases too. I never found them that useful personally. Good news has a habit of taking care of itself. It’s bad news where every minute counts.

Add an Office IP Filter

In Google Analytics, filters give you complete and total power. You can remove and transform your data permanently.

And when I say permanently, I do mean permanently. Be careful with these things. Once a filter is live, it’ll change all the data that’s collected. There’s no way to undo it. If a bad filter is applied, the only fix is to remove it and clean up data that’s collected after. There’s nothing that can be done to fix the old corrupted data.

So proceed with caution on these things.

There’s one filter that many websites should apply: a filter to remove internal traffic.

If you’re running your own business out of your house or from a coffee shop, don’t worry about this at all. The data impact from a single person is so limited that it’s not worth the hassle of adding a filter and maintaining one more setting in Google Analytics. Whenever I start to see the impact of my own browsing habits on one of my websites, my first thought is: “I need to spend my time getting more traffic.” At that stage, I prefer to worry about big things like getting enough traffic and customers.

However, there is a situation where an office IP filter becomes a requirement. When you’re working on a larger website with an entire team of people employed, skewing your traffic data becomes a real possibility. If a couple hundred people all work on the same website, Google Analytics data will become biased.

If your company works out of an office (or several offices), it’s worth the effort to figure out the IP address of your office and apply a Google Analytics filter that excludes all data from that IP. That keeps your employees from skewing your Google Analytics reports during their day-to-day work.

Here’s what your Office IP filter will look like:

This filter tells Google Analytics to take all data from an IP address and completely ignore it.

Remember to use the new views that you set up earlier. First apply the filter to your Test view, give it a few days to make sure it’s working properly, then apply the filter to your Master view. Filters are so powerful that you always want to test them first. All it takes is accidentally selecting “Include” when you meant “Exclude” to permanently nuke your entire Google Analytics account until your discover the mistake.

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Best Social Media WordPress Plugin – (Review Updated for Winter of 2019)

Social media has undoubtedly changed the way we live. It’s also changed the way we market ourselves, our businesses, and our websites.

If you have a website in 2019, you definitely want some type of social media integration.

You want your website visitors to engage with you on social media, and you want your social media followers to convert on your website. This won’t happen unless you make it as easy as possible.

Let me give you an example: You wrote and published a killer blog post. A reader loves your post and wants to share it with their friends on social media. How do they do this?

Without the proper tools, the person would have to copy your blog link, navigate to the social platform, login, and manually paste the link before sharing it. This process involves too many steps, multiple browsing screens, and too much room for error. The person may ultimately decide that it’s just not worth going through all of those steps to share your post. That decision may not even be conscious — they may get distracted and move on to something else, leaving your post unshared.

Social media WordPress plugins can make it easy for website visitors to share with just one click.

As a result, you’ll benefit from higher engagement rates on your social media profiles and your website alike. That’s just one example of why you need to install a social media plugin to your WordPress site. As we continue through this guide and review the best social media WordPress plugins, you’ll learn about the additional benefits.

Top features to look for in a social media WordPress plugin

Before we analyze specific plugins, I want to take a moment to identify some of the functionalities to keep your eye on when searching for a social media plugin:

Social icons — This shows your website visitors that you have social media pages. If they click on an icon, they’ll automatically be directed to the corresponding profile.

Social logins — Allow people to sign into customer profiles using their social media accounts. This makes it easier on your customers since they won’t have to create brand new usernames and passwords to access content on your website.

Social sharing icons — Website visitors can share content from your site to their social media profiles with just one click.

Social feeds — Showcase your social media feeds directly on your website. This feature gives your website visitors an idea of what to expect if they follow your profiles.

Social locking — Restrict your best content with a social locking tool. Content can be unlocked if a website visitor makes a specified action, such as following you or sharing content on social media.

Social comments — Enhance the conversation in your comments section by adding social media comments to your posts. This is a great way to drive engagement and get more blog comments.

Automated posting — Instead of manually posting your website content on social media, you can take advantage of plugins that do this for you.

Now that you know the top features of the best social media WordPress plugins, it’s time to check out the top options to consider.

1. Social Warfare

Social Warfare is considered among the best social media WordPress plugins because it’s so simple. Other plugins have a reputation for slowing down your website, but that shouldn’t happen with Social Warfare.

This plugin is designed to increase shares by adding social sharing icons to your website. You can add buttons for the most popular social media networks, including:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Pinterest

If you upgrade to Social Warfare Pro, you’ll gain access to share buttons for other platforms like Reddit, WhatsApp, Buffer, Tumblr, Pocket, and more.

Social Warfare also lets you choose exactly where you want to place the sharing buttons. You can add them above your content, below your content, in both of these locations, or manually place them on your pages. This plugin offers floating share icons as well — as a user scrolls your site, the sharing buttons remain in view at all times.

Social Warfare allows you to track your results with UTM parameters. You can view analytics to see how well your sharing icons are performing so you can tweak them, if necessary.

2. Instagram Feed

As the name implies, the Instagram Feed WordPress plugin lets you share your Instagram content directly on your website. By adding your Instagram posts to your website, visitors will have a better idea of what type of content you share on that platform. And, they won’t have to search for your profile on Instagram. This is a great way to increase your Instagram followers. It’s also a great way to keep your site updated with the fresh images you’re posting on Instagram.

Setting up the plugin is easy. All you need to do is link your Instagram account and determine where you want the feed displayed on your website.

There is a premium version of this plugin that comes with features like:

• Shoppable feeds
• Ability to filter content based on hashtags
• Popup lightboxes
• Hashtag feeds
• Advanced moderation for hiding or showcasing specific posts
• Post comments for user feeds

For one website, you can purchase the pro license for $39. But if you just want the basic feed on your website, you can stick with the free version and save a few bucks.

3. Social Locker

Social Locker is definitely one of my favorite social media WordPress plugins. Personally, I love the whole concept behind how this plugin works.

Here’s the thing. Just adding social sharing icons to your website doesn’t necessarily give people a reason to follow you or share your content. You can increase those chances by installing this plugin.

That’s because Social Locker restricts your premium content. For example, let’s say you have an ebook on your website. As opposed to charging for downloads, you use social media engagement as a currency. If someone follows, likes, or shares content on your website, the ebook is unlocked.

Here’s an example of what this would look like from the perspective of a website visitor:

For those of you who normally charge for various types of content on your website and don’t want to give it away for free, you can use these social engagements to generate discounts for that content.

Maybe you have an online video tutorial that you normally charge to view. With Social Locker, you can choose to offer the video at a discount if a user shares your content.

This plugin helps you drive social media traffic while simultaneously gaining quality followers. It’s a great way to generate new leads and drive conversions with social media integration on your website.

4. Super Socializer

Allowing your website visitors to create a customer profile benefits everyone — the user will receive more personalized content, and you’ll be able to learn more information about your customers so you can target them accordingly. It’s a win-win situation.

In order for this strategy to be effective, people need to create these profiles in the first place. That’s easier said than done.

Think about it for a minute: What steps does someone need to take to create a profile? At a minimum, they need to provide you with some personal information and create a username and password. People have so many accounts to keep track of on various websites. Is your site important enough to them to go through this?

You can increase your chances of getting more visitors to do this by integrating your sign up and login process with social media. Super Socializer is perfect for this.

Now users can create an account and login with just one click since they’re likely already signed in to their social media profiles. Plus, they won’t have to remember a new username and password.

Another benefit of this plugin is that you’ll get access to more information about your website visitors. You can target people accordingly based on their social media likes and habits. You can also enable social comments with Super Socializer. This is a great way to drive conversation and get more comments on your blog posts.

Overall, this plugin definitely has more advanced features and functionality that goes far beyond simple social sharing icons, although it does have those options as well. If you want an all in one plugin for social logins, social comments, and social sharing, Super Socializer is worth checking out.

5. Revive Old Post

What happens to your blog posts after you publish them? In a perfect world, they remain relevant in terms of SEO forever, but that doesn’t necessarily help you out on social media.

Here’s another question for you. How are you deciding what to share on your social platforms each day? It’s not always easy to come up with ideas for social media posts.

The Revive Old Post WordPress plugin by Revive Social provides a solution to both of these questions. This plugin automatically shares your previously published content on your social media platforms like:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Tumblr
• Pinterest

Revive Old Post can share more than just your blog posts. It can also share pages, custom posts, and media from your website. The plugin will automatically fetch images from your content and attach them to the social media post.

You’ll have complete control over how each post is shared. Maybe you just want the title of your post or page. Some of you may want more, such as a hashtag or additional text.

Revive Old Post can be integrated with your Google Analytics profile. This is ideal for campaign tracking to see how well these links are performing. Overall, it’s a great way to automate your social media posting while simultaneously driving traffic to your website.

BONUS: Revive Network

Revive Social has another plugin, called the Revive Network. This plugin is designed specifically for Facebook and Twitter. It’s made for sharing content from other websites in your industry on social media. This is a great way to expand your professional network, in addition to sharing relevant information on your website. It’s great for those of you who don’t have an active blog or lots of content of your own.

6. Kiwi Social Share

Kiwi Social Share is designed for the average WordPress user. If you’re looking for a plugin that’s easy to install, setup, and won’t confuse you with too many complex features, you’ll definitely want to take a closer look at this option.

With Kiwi Social Share, you’ll be able to create custom icons for social media sharing on your website. You can customize the position of the icons, as well as enable a floating bar that’s always in view. Kiwi Social Share also gives you the option to change the size and shape of the sharing buttons.

It has a “click to tweet” function for specific phrases as well. So if you’re writing a blog and want to highlight one of your favorite quotes, users can share that quote via Twitter with a link back to your blog.

Kiwi Social Share doesn’t slow down your website and lets you create social sharing icons that are visually appealing to your visitors. Installing this plugin puts you in a great position to increase engagement on your website and gain more exposure on social media.

Conclusion

It’s obvious that your website and social media profiles need to be working together to generate optimal results. So what’s the best social media WordPress plugin? It depends on what you’re looking for.

Some of you might just want to add something simple, like social sharing icons to your blog posts or Instagram feeds to your landing pages. While others might be looking for features that are a bit more advanced, like restricting content based on social media actions.

Maybe you want an all-in-one plugin that also has features like social signups and logins.

Do you want to automate your social media posts with your previously published content? There’s a plugin for that too.

As you can see from this guide, there’s a social media WordPress plugin for everyone based on your specific needs. Now, share this post with a friend who needs it. Naturally, there are social buttons right here for you to do just that.

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Best Membership Plugins for WordPress – (Review Updated for Winter of 2019)

Are you thinking about building a membership website? Great idea.

Membership websites generate recurring revenue by offering premium content and features to members. It’s also a great way for you to establish your value within your niche. By offering memberships, you’re telling people that your content is so valuable you don’t have to offer it for free.

In order for your membership business model to function properly, you need to install a membership plugin that adds this feature to your website to manage memberships, payments, and other user information.

If you have a WordPress site, there are tons of membership plugins to choose from. I found 746 in my search. Luckily, you don’t have to do too much in-depth research — I’ve done all of the heavy lifting for you and narrowed down the top seven membership plugins. You can use this list as a reference, instead of to trying to find all of the pros and cons on your own.

1. LearnDash

LearnDash is for websites that create and sell online courses. It gives you the option to control the enrollment for all of your courses. You’ll set the pricing, and determine if the course is available to the public or exclusive to members.

There are a few different ways to set this up. In addition to a membership that offers access to all of your content, you can add one-time pricing to give users the opportunity to buy individual courses.

This plugin also lets you use automation to your advantage. You can schedule content delivery. That way you can create all of your courses at once, but distribute them at later dates automatically. This is more much efficient than approaching this manually. If a user doesn’t have automatic renewal enabled for their membership, you can set up automatic renewal notifications to encourage them to renew.

With LearnDash, you can also create a system of points, badges, and certificates to reward users based on their progress. There are also engagement triggers that users can interact with as they are going through your courses.

Support and resources are exceptional too. There are helpful video tutorials and an active community forum to discuss ideas or potential problems with other site owners. If you still need help, you can always contact the LearnDash customer support team.

It’s tough to find another plugin that outperforms LearnDash when it comes to managing a membership site for online courses.

2. MemberPress

MemberPress allows you to switch your existing site into a fully-functioning membership website with ease. A seamless transformation isn’t necessarily the case with every other plugin out there, but it’s an important feature to consider for those of you who already have a website that’s up and running.

With MemberPress, it’s as simple as installing the plugin, adding the details of your payment gateway, setting up your products, and inviting people to join.

It’s very easy for you to manage your content with this plugin. You can restrict access to specific posts, pages, or files. You can do this for content that was already published before you installed the plugin.

This plugin also comes with pricing page templates, which is another top feature. This will help you generate more profit by focusing on your pricing strategy. In addition to the pricing templates, MemberPress supports payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net and more. MemberPress integrates with some of the most popular email marketing platforms as well.

At the end of the day, your membership website will only be successful if people actually join and pay for content. So you need to treat this like any other product or service. Installing a plugin alone won’t necessarily generate sales for you. With that said, MemberPress makes your job much easier.

3. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is another plugin that’s ideal for integrating with your website’s existing content. Like we’ve seen before, this plugin allows you to drip content, so you can automatically schedule when members will have access to premium features.

I’d recommend WooCommerce Memberships to those of you who want to add a membership site to your ecommerce platform. The plugin allows you to sell memberships along with product purchases.

From the user end, memberships can be purchased as a standalone product, or as a bundle. For example, let’s say you have a fitness brand. If a customer purchases diet supplements, you could give them access to the training programs section of your website for free. So, if you want complete customization and fewer restrictions for your memberships and products, the WooCommerce Memberships plugin might be your best bet.

Here is a look at some of the custom functionality offered from the plugin dashboard:

WooCommerce Memberships makes it easy for you to import or export your members. So if you want to combine these memberships with existing services or subscriptions you offer, you’ll be able to do so without having to go through everything manually.

With that said, there are times when you might want to go the extra mile to please one of your customers. For example, let’s say someone has a problem with one of their orders purchased from your site. This customer also pays for a membership to access exclusive content. To rectify the situation, you could easily change their membership to complementary for a specified time. You won’t get this type of flexibility and customization with some of the other membership plugins on the market.

WooCommerce also has an option for selling memberships to groups, teams, or corporations. But that’s a different extension that would have to be purchased and installed separately.

4. aMember Professional

I should preface by letting you know that aMember Professional isn’t a native plugin for WordPress. It’s software that’s built with PHP, making it possible for you to integrate it with WordPress.

However, since it’s not native and specifically designed for WordPress, there could potentially be some compatibility problems with other plugins you’re using.

I like it because it’s another all-in-one option for membership websites. There are unlimited membership levels and items for you to add to your site. They also have more than 200 payment systems that you can use to manage memberships.

From the administrative dashboard, aMember Professional lets you run customized reports about your members. You can also manage your email lists, set up autoresponders, and contact users who aren’t set up for auto renewals with reminder messages.

I really like the access control features for aMember Professional. In addition to controlling who can access different types of content, this software has features to prevent access sharing between users. It tracks the number of IP addresses being used to access content, so if a limit is reached, that user will get locked out of the system and be reported to the admin.

Unlike other membership plugin options, aMember Professional is just a one-time purchase, as opposed to a recurring subscription, making it one of the most cost-effective ways to set up your membership sit.

5. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro also offers a cost-effective pricing option. Their plans range from $99 to $249 annually, but you can spend $499 one-time for lifetime access. It may seem like a lot initially, but this pays for itself in two to five years, depending on the plan you were considering. It’s definitely worth it if you’re planning to have a membership site for an extended period of time.

Cost aside, Restricted Content Pro is extremely easy for to use if you’re going to manage basic content and membership levels on your website. You can create and share an unlimited number of discount codes to entice your website visitors to make purchases based on the best value. Restrict Content Pro also has built-in payment integrations so that you can accept credit cards, alternative payment options, or multiple payment methods at the same time.

What really separates this plugin from the crowd is the way you can analyze performance by generating custom reports to view the latest month, or specified date ranges to see how well your memberships are doing. This information is extremely helpful when it comes to assessing your pricing, promotions, and things of that nature.

6. MemberMouse

With MemberMouse, you can easily sell memberships along with subscriptions and products on your website. This versatility definitely makes it a standout membership plugin. It’s great for websites that want to add memberships for content restriction, as well as for ecommerce sites that want to add membership features.

The reason why I love this plugin is because it’s designed for website owners who aren’t too tech-savvy. It’s easy for anyone to use, regardless of your technical expertise. Simply restrict content on your website with password protection for members. When you create content, you can customize how it’s delivered based on things like membership levels, length of memberships, or the referring affiliate.

MemberMouse lets you set up free memberships as well. This is a great opportunity for you to get users to join your site, without having to pay first. Once they join and see your free features, they may be more inclined to upgrade to a paid membership.

The plugin is also designed to help you grow your email list.

You’ll also be very pleased with the data provided with the MemberMouse analytics and reports. You can track and measure things like:

• Sales
• Customer retention
• Customer lifetime value
• Refund rates
• Activity logs
• Affiliate tracking

Some of these made my list of the top metrics every marketing manager needs to track. So the ability to get these reports directly from the plugin will make your life much easier.

7. Paid Member Subscriptions

Paid Member Subscriptions is another versatile plugin that I couldn’t leave off of my list.

While it doesn’t necessarily offer anything different from the other plugins we’ve covered so far, it does have a free option. So for those of you who are new to this and don’t want to spend much money setting up your membership site, you won’t have to pay a dime to use Paid Membership Services. But, you won’t have access to premium features, such as content dripping, unless you upgrade to a paid plan.

Another reason why Paid Member Subscriptions made my list is because the interface is user-friendly and extremely straightforward. If you get intimidated by new software or technology that’s out of your comfort zone, you shouldn’t have a problem using this plugin.

Conclusion

Building a membership website is an effective way to improve your content strategy, establish brand authority, and generate recurring revenue. In order to create a membership site with WordPress, you’ll need to install a plugin.

So what’s the best membership plugin for WordPress?

It depends on what you’re looking for. I created this list to give a wide range of options based on specific features. Some plugins are designed for managing memberships with online courses, while others are better for ecommerce websites that need to integrate memberships with product purchases. There are plugins on this list that are all-in-one solutions, and options that are cost-effective as well. Since there is so much variety in this guide, I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for to meet the needs of your website.

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From Niche Pursuits Newbie to Owning an Empire of 20 Businesses with Deven Soni

If you’ve ever tried to launch your own online business and failed to get it off the ground, or have thought about buying your own business and found the whole experience too complicated, then this interview is for you. I…

The post From Niche Pursuits Newbie to Owning an Empire of 20 Businesses with Deven Soni appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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Best WordPress Booking Plugin – (Review Updated for Winter of 2019)

I’ll get straight to the point. If your company takes reservations or appointments, you need an online booking system — period.

Take a moment to analyze your current process. How does a customer schedule their appointment?

Without an online booking system, I’m willing to bet that the process looks something like this:

1. The customer looks up your phone number.
2. If they’re lucky, someone answers quickly. Otherwise, they wait on hold or reach your voicemail.
3. The customer explains the service they’re looking for and asks for your availability.
4. After some back and forth discussion repeating dates and times, the customer scrambles to find a piece of paper to write on so they don’t forget.

That’s assuming you can clearly understand each other over the phone. We all know sometimes it’s difficult to hear based on things like reception, accents, and background noise. Oh yeah — that’s also assuming nobody else called you while you were on the phone. Then you’re forced to let the incoming call go to voicemail, or place your current caller on hold.

Each time someone calls, it takes you away from the task you’re working on. Sure, there are some alternative solutions. You could pay someone to sit by a phone and answer calls all day. But do you really want to incur that added cost? This still isn’t your most efficient option.

Why you need a WordPress booking plugin

Adding a booking plugin to your WordPress site will do more than just improve your operational efficiency. This new system will optimize the customer experience.

Roughly 70% of consumers prefer booking appointments online.

Furthermore, 36% of people said that waiting on hold too long when booking over the phone was their biggest pain point for scheduling appointments and 20% of people said the biggest inconvenience was having to wait to call during office hours to book.

By adding a booking plugin to your WordPress site, you’ll eliminate more than half of the biggest pain points for consumers while simultaneously providing them with their most preferred booking option.

When evaluating a new service provider, 94% of consumers say they are more likely to choose one that has online booking options compared to a provider that doesn’t.

In short, adding online booking options to your website will:

• Improve your efficiency
• Enhance the customer experience
• Reduce the time it takes to book appointments
• Increase the chances of getting new customers
• Give you a competitive advantage

I think I’ve made myself clear. Now that you know the importance of having a WordPress booking plugin, you need to install one to your site.

How do you choose? What’s the best WordPress booking plugin?

Use this guide as a reference to help you decide which one is the best for your business.

1. Bookly

Bookly is fully customizable and extremely responsive. Its sleek design on both the front and backend is modern and visually appealing.

One of the features that makes Bookly one of the best WordPress booking plugins is the option for different employees to create custom pricing and availability. For example, let’s say you own a gym. Each personal trainer can set their own rates. Your customers would have the option to choose the trainer they want from a dropdown menu when booking a session.

From the user end, Bookly takes them through a quick four-step process on your website.

1. Select the service with the options for categories and employees, if applicable.
2. Choose a date and time.
3. Enter personal details like name, phone, email, and additional notes.
4. Pay.

That’s right. Bookly even processes payments or deposits. This is great for those of you who are getting lots of no-show appointments and missing out on those earnings. If you don’t want to force your customers to pay in advance, you can set an option for paying on-site at the appointment.

You can also set up automatic text and email notifications with Bookly. Those notifications remind the customer as well as your staff members about upcoming appointments.

Bookly also lets your customers translate the booking process into their native language. This solves the problem that I talked about earlier in terms of having trouble communicating with certain customers over the phone.

Bookly lets you create promo codes to discount your services. The plugin tracks all of the data, so you can determine which deals are working the best.

With Bookly, customers can set up recurring appointments, get added to a waiting list pending cancellations, attach files, and rate your services. This WordPress plugin even has a feature for group booking.

Overall, Bookly is one of the most complete WordPress booking plugins you’ll find.

2. EDD Bookings

EDD Bookings is definitely another top option to consider. In addition to booking standard services, this plugin is great for those of you who offer rentals.

Maybe you have a business by the beach and rent out bikes, skateboards, surfboards, and paddleboards by the hour. All of this can be managed through your website with the EDD Bookings plugin.

It’s one of the easiest plugins to integrate into your ecommerce platform. For those of you who are already using Easy Digital Downloads solutions for ecommerce, I highly recommend this plugin.

Customers can book appointments or rentals in just seconds on your website with EDD Bookings. All they need to do is:

1. Choose the appointment type or equipment type.
2. Pick a date.
3. Select a time.

It’s as simple as that.

The EDD Bookings plugin makes it easy for you to manage all of your appointments in one place with different calendar views. They provide you with extensive details for your day, week, and month. You can color code your appointments as well to keep track of different types of services.

The plugin integrates with payment gateways, email lists, Zapier, and Slack as well. EDD will also provide you with reports and detailed analytics. EDD Bookings has a responsive design for desktops, smartphones, and tablets.

Compared to other similar plugins, it’s very affordable. Pricing for the EDD Bookings plugin starts at $80 per year.

3. Booked

The Booked WordPress plugin makes it easy for customers to book appointments on your website. I like this plugin because it comes with great add-ons for things like integrating payment options with WooCommerce, calendar integrations with Google Calendars and iCal, as well as front-end appointment management.

It’s a great option for beginners because it’s essentially ready to go right out of the box. You don’t need to worry about any custom coding. The interface is smooth and easy to navigate.

Booked makes it easy for you to add custom time slots to your schedule. This is great for adding in holidays or vacation days. The plugin also comes with some great shortcodes, making it possible to embed your booking calendar nearly anywhere on your site.

Booked is another option for managing calendars for multiple members of your staff. So let’s say you own a barbershop or hair salon. Customers can book with their preferred stylist online with ease.

This plugin also offers guest booking, so website visitors don’t need to be registered or logged into their profile in order to schedule a service or appointment on your website.

4. Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar has been around for ten years and is a top solution for those of you who are in the hospitality industry.

In addition to appointments, this plugin is commonly used to book stays at hotels, resorts, or a bed and breakfast. That’s because the system is designed to accommodate days-long  bookings, as opposed to just an hour time slot for an appointment. Not every WordPress booking plugin offers this feature.

Booking Calendar is extremely responsive on both the frontend and backend. For those of you who aren’t too tech-savvy, you shouldn’t have any problems installing this plugin to your WordPress website. All you need to do is insert the booking shortcode into a page or post on your site.

Your bookings are stored in the Booking Calendar dashboard, so you won’t need any third-party services or accounts to manage them.

The plugin will automatically prevent double bookings based on this information. Again, this is ideal for those of you who are offering a service such as rooms in a hotel building.

Booking Calendar supports multiple languages, so you can accommodate website traffic that’s coming from other countries. The plugin also syncs with third-party platforms such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor, to make sure your availability dates are updated in real-time all over the Internet.

5. Team Booking

As the name implies, the Team Booking plugin is designed to accommodate the booking schedules of multiple members on your staff. We’ve seen some other plugins on our list that have this feature, but none that have it has their primary point of emphasis.

Team Booking integrates with Google Calendar, which makes it easy for managing appointments based on everyone’s unique availability.

But don’t let that that dissuade you if you’re a solopreneur. While this plugin was designed with teams in mind, you can still use it on your own if you’re providing an individual service.

This plugin allows you to set up multiple form fields to collect additional information about your customers.

Team Booking also has a map feature, which is another differentiating element. When a customer books an appointment, the map can pop up with the location. All of the directions are displayed in real time from the customer’s address.

You can collect payments or deposits with Team Booking as well. The plugin is supported by PayPal and Stripe.

Team Booking is a top choice for those of you who don’t want to spend a ton of money on a booking plugin. Pricing for this license starts at $28.

6. Amelia

Amelia is an automated booking specialist. This plugin is great for those of you who offer multiple types of services.

For example, let’s say you own a car repair center. Your customers can schedule things like tire rotations, oil changes, brake replacements, and other services that you offer. You can even set it up so they can choose a specific mechanic to service their vehicle, based on availability, of course.

This plugin is also great for law consultants. Your clients can schedule meetings based on the type of help they need. You can collect deposits and payments through this booking plugin as well.

As you can see, the applications for Amelia reach far and wide. Its versatility makes it one of the best WordPress booking plugins on the market.

You can install Amelia to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. You don’t need to be a technology wizard or have experience with coding to get it up and running.

I also like how this plugin has an administrative dashboard that lets you track and measure KPIs with graphs, tables, and charts. This provides you with deep insights into your performance.

The design of the booking calendar is completely customizable, so you can choose the colors and other design elements that compliment your website color schemes.

Conclusion

You need to have online booking options on your website. If you’re not allowing online booking, you’re leaving money on the table. Now that you’re aware of the importance of this feature, it’s time to find a plugin that fits your needs.

What’s the best WordPress booking plugin?

The answer will vary based on who you ask. I created this with all different types of businesses in mind. Depending on your needs, I’m confident you can find what you’re looking for.

• Do you want to collect payments with your plugin?
• Do you need to manage appointments for multiple staff members?
• Are your customers booking a service, making a reservation, or renting equipment?

Some plugins specialize in these features, so think these questions through and install a plugin that meets the needs of your business.

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Shopify Review

Are you about to build an ecommerce website?

Build it on Shopify.

I kind of wish the answer had more nuance to it, so I could write a more engaging review. But it really is that simple.

Ecommerce site = Shopify. End of story.

Out of all the decisions you need to make building your online store, the decision of which ecommerce tool to use is not a hard one.

If you want, you can stop reading this review and go sign up. You won’t miss out on much.

In-Depth Shopify Review and Methodology

To show you that I do know what I’m talking about, I have broken down all the core ecommerce site features and rated Shopify by each.

I’ve used a simple 5-point scoring system on each ecommerce feature below: 5 for “amazing,” 1 for “it sucks.”

I’m not a complete Shopify fanboy. There are a few areas where Shopify could do better. And one category Shopify completely fails. But these aren’t a big deal. The gaps are either minor or can be completely covered by other tools.

If you’re building an enterprise ecommerce site and evaluating new tools, it’s worth having the Magento and Shopify Plus (Shopify’s enterprise version) teams do a bake-off for your business. Otherwise, go sign up for Shopify and build your site there.

Big Brands Choose Shopify

Before jumping into the Shopify review and feature-by-feature ratings, who else uses Shopify?

Here are a few Shopify customers you might recognize:

• Bulletproof
• Leesa
• The New York Times Store
• Red Bull
• Kylie Cosmetics

You’re in good company — world-class brands and massive ecommerce sites have been built on Shopify.

Ease of Use: 5/5

Ridiculously easy.

Shopify is not only considered the easiest of the ecommerce tools, it’s also considered one of the easiest tools across all business apps. It’s true — lots of other business tools use Shopify as inspiration for how to build their apps.

If you’re looking for an ecommerce tool to get all those annoying tasks out of your way, Shopify is your best option.

Site Customization: 5/5

Shopify managed to do something that’s exceptionally rare in software: build a tool that’s both extremely easy to use and has all the flexibility that you’d ever need.

Most tools only achieve one of these. They’re either easy to use and limited, or they’re flexible and complicated.

As you grow your business, you’ll have the ability to evolve your store however you like. While you’ll most likely start with one of the pre-built themes, you can build a theme from scratch. At some point, you’ll need a theme that embodies your brand and has a unique feel. When you’re ready, find a ecommerce site design agency that has experience with Shopify. They’ll be able to build the entire thing for you.

When you’re ready for the big leagues and need a tool that has complete flexibility, Shopify has an enterprise version called Shopify Plus. So it’ll scale with you no matter how big you get.

Pricing: 4/5

Shopify charges you in four ways:

• A monthly fee that starts at $29/month and goes to $299/month. The more expensive plans have extra features along with larger shipping discounts.
• If you use Shopify as your online payment provider, you’ll be charged 2.9% + 30¢ to process the transaction. The fee comes down slightly each time you upgrade: it’s 2.4% + 30¢ on the advanced Shopify plan. There’s a similar fee for in-person payments that’s slightly lower.
• If you use another payment provider, Shopify charges a percentage on top of the payment provider fee. Shopify’s fee starts at 2% and decreases to 0.5% on the advanced plan.
• If you choose to use Shopify’s POS hardware, there’s a one-time fee of $656 for the entire package which includes an iPad stand, receipt printer, cash drawer, and card reader. Each of these can also be purchased individually. If you only want a basic card reader, you can get one for free with your Shopify account.

All of these prices are in sync with the rest of the industry. They’re exactly what you’d expect.

Some ecommerce site builders advertise the fact that they charge 0% transaction fees. This isn’t entirely true. Yes, they don’t charge anything. But you also have to set up your own payment provider and that payment provider will charge you a payment fee.

In other words, Shopify is your site builder and your payment provider. All payment providers charge a standard fee, including Shopify. That’s why Shopify charges you a monthly subscription and a payment processing fee.

The one fee that’s a little annoying is the fee to use other payment processes. This is the fee that starts at 2.0% on the lowest plan and comes down to 0.5% on the advanced plan. This fee applies to payments accepted through Paypal and Amazon Payments, among others.

I totally understand why Shopify charges a processing fee when they’re handling the payments. That’s completely normal for the industry. But the fee on top of other processing fees is a bit of an overreach in my opinion.

The vast majority of your payments will come in through Shopify Payments anyway so it’s a minor annoyance. This mainly impacts transactions that will come in through Paypal. You’ll have the Paypal processing fees and Shopify’s fees on each transaction.

That said, the extra cost is still worth all the extra value that you get from Shopify.

Shipping: 5/5

Shopify has removed all the friction from shipping. It’s as easy as it gets.

Core integrations with all major shipping companies are built right into your store. You get discounted rates and you have multiple options for how to handle shipping during the checkout (flat rate shipping vs individual quotes).

Simply print shipping labels at your home or office for each order. That’s it.

Shopify Themes: 5/5

Shopify has dozens of themes to choose from. Some of them are paid, ranging from $140–180.

But there are a lot of amazing free themes, too. Even the free Shopify themes look like they were built by top-tier website designers.

When you build your site on Shopify, you’ll look through the theme store to find one you like. If you choose a paid theme, you get a professional-looking site for a nominal fee that will easily support your business until you’re large enough to have the budget for a customer-built theme that conveys your brand perfectly.

With the Shopify theme store and how easy it is to set up a site on Shopify, you can build your entire site on your own without needing a site designer and developer. Cutting those costs goes a long way for a new ecommerce site.

App Store: 5/5

The Shopify App Store is amazing.

You’ll find an app for just about every extra feature you could ever want for your store: email abandonment, Facebook Messenger, recurring billing — it’s all there.

This is what really sets Shopify apart from other ecommerce tools.

I know several CEOs of Shopify app businesses that are doing extremely well. They’ve built businesses with hundreds of employees.

What this means is that with a few clicks in the App Store, you can add an extremely advanced app on top of your Shopify store. It’s like buying an entirely new tool for your business that’s integrated perfectly with Shopify.

No other ecommerce tool has an app store with as many apps or as high quality as Shopify.

Expert Directory: 5/5

Sooner or later, you’re going to want some help with your site.

Maybe you want to tweak the layout of your product pages. Or maybe it’s time to do a complete brand revamp and you want your Shopify theme built from scratch.

Whatever it is, you’re covered.

Shopify has been the top ecommerce tool for long enough that there’s now an extensive network of professionals to help you with your site. Any ecommerce agency will have deep experience with Shopify at this point.

Shopify also has an entire directory of experts for you to search. Designers, developers, photographers, marketers, all categorized by city. It’s super easy to find the help that you need.

Marketplace Integrations: 5/5

There are a few ways to build an online store.

Quite a few ecommerce companies choose to focus exclusively on Amazon for example; they don’t have their own website at all.

But what if you want both?

Shopify has made this much easier than it used to be. Instead of having to build out all your product listings by hand multiple times — on your own website, Amazon, and eBay — Shopify will handle it for you. Build your products in Shopify first, then add integrations for Amazon and eBay:

Once you’ve connected Shopify to your Amazon and eBay accounts, Shopify will automatically add your products to those platforms.

It saves a ton of time.

Product SEO: 5/5

Out of the box, Shopify has great SEO for your product pages.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have to do a bunch of work to get your product pages to rank for any keyword that’s even somewhat competitive. But Shopify gives you everything that you could possibly expect from an ecommerce tool.

You’ll be able to optimize your product pages, photos, and descriptions for keywords just like you’d expect. All the standard “on-page SEO” items are right where you’d expect them to be. In other words, Shopify’s on-page and technical SEO won’t slow you down at all. It’s everything that you need to rank.

That doesn’t mean you’ll automatically rank for the keywords you want. You’ll still need to create a ton of great content to increase your site’s authority and do a bunch of link building. In my opinion, that’s outside the scope of an ecommerce tool.

Content and Blog SEO: 1/5

This is the one category where Shopify completely fails.

Yes, Shopify technically has a blog feature. They built it out just enough so they can say that they have it. In reality, there’s no real reason that you’d ever want to use Shopify for your blog. Shopify lacks the management features and SEO that you’ll need.

If I’m using a blog to grow my business and traffic, I get the blog on WordPress. End of story.

If you’re going to get serious about blogging, you need to use WordPress. It is possible to have Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. So you’ll use Shopify for your online store and WordPress for your blog.

I break all of this down in my guide on WordPress ecommerce.

Point of Sale (POS): 3/5

I don’t know anyone who uses Shopify as their POS system. Nor have I ever seen one in the wild as a customer.

I consider that a… bad sign.

Nearly every POS I run into is Square, tailed by Clover and Revel. I’ve even seen Shopkeep a few times.

But I’ve never seen Shopify, not once.

Following my rule of using business tools for the one thing that they’re best at, if I needed a POS, I’d go get the best POS tool. For a small business, the most popular choice is Square. I’d only use the Shopify POS if the majority of my business was an online store, I occasionally did some in-person retail like at a farmer’s market, and I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible by using a single tool.

But if I had a brick-and-mortar location, I’d look into one of the dedicated POS tools instead of using the Shopify POS.

I give Shopify a rating of 3/5 since I consider their POS to be a neutral benefit. It’s a nice to have but not a huge benefit.

The Final Choice: Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Magento

For small and medium-size ecommerce business, the choice really comes down to options: Shopify or BigCommerce.

Shopify gives you the better tool and ecosystem. The tool itself is better, the apps are better, the agencies are better — all of it.

What this costs you is an extra fee on payment providers on top of what the payment providers charge. Now if you use Shopify payments, you skip all that entirely. The extra fee also comes down from 2% to 0.5% as you upgrade plans. So as soon as you start to feel the impact of the extra fee, you’ll upgrade and the fee will be lowered.

The extra payment fee is kind of annoying for folks who want to use another payment provider and give their customers as many options to pay as possible. But it’s a cost that’s worth enduring to get on the best ecommerce tool.

At the end of the day, this is an extremely easy choice for me. For any ecommerce store, I automatically pick Shopify to build my site and don’t think twice about it.

We put together an entire guide on how to create your store once you’re ready to build with Shopify.

Our recommendation only changes for true enterprise ecommerce businesses. If that’s you, check out Shopify Enterprise and Magento. Contact both companies and have them fight for your business.

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