WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that anyone can use to create a great e-commerce site to sell absolutely anything, all while functioning like all the great online stores around. As you can expect, there will be certain features, both on the back-end and the front-end, that will apply to certain types of e-commerce sites, and it’s impossible to include them all in one plugin.
In reply to this you’ll find a large number of WooCommerce add-ons that will cater for most, if not all, situations you can imagine. In this review we’ll be taking a look at two in particular from Tyche Softwares – Abandoned Cart Pro as well as Order Delivery Date.
We’ve already reviewed the Order Delivery Date plugin here on WP Mayor, so in this review we’ll cover only the new and improved features that have been released since. You can either follow the video review below or read on.
Abandoned Cart Pro
Starting with Abandoned Cart Pro, this plugin is aimed at helping you recover lost sales automatically. There are a number of reasons a customer might abandon their shopping cart, such as if they decide to wait and look around for a better deal, or if the price is higher than they expected, or even having their credit card denied during checkout.
This can be a frustrating moment for the customer, and even more so for you, the store owner. This plugin therefore allows you to recover sales with WooCommerce that might otherwise be lost to abandoned carts by both logged-in users as well as guests users.
The plugin does its magic in the background, sending email reminders to potential customers about their abandoned carts and even giving you the option to include incentives such as discounts and coupons. These all help in automating the process and eventually ensuring more sales.
Installing the Plugin
Installing the Abandoned Cart Pro plugin is the same process as installing any other WordPress plugin. Simply head to the Plugins section of your WordPress site and upload the provided zip file.
Once you’ve done this and activated the plugin you’ll find a link to its settings under WooCommerce in the dashboard’s sidebar.
Choosing Your Settings
Upon activating the plugin and heading to Abandoned Carts you’ll find a number of tabs to work from. The first provides a record of abandoned orders, the second is where you can set up your email templates, the third is the main settings section, the next tab is a record of the recovered orders, and the last two provide a record of the sent emails and a product report.
The Product Report is the latest addition to this plugin, providing you with information about the products which were abandoned, including total number of times the product was abandoned and recovered.
Main Settings
The main Settings tab is where you choose all the needed options for the abandoned carts, including actually enabling the system. You can set how many minutes should pass from when an item is added to the cart to the order not being placed before you consider a cart to be abandoned, as well as after how many days you’d like to delete the abandoned cart orders
You’re also able to send emails to the admin if an abandoned cart order is recovered, to track any coupons applied to abandoned carts, and to disable guest carts from being tracked. Then lastly you can enter and activate your provided License Key.
Email Templates
The email templates are the most important part of this system. From here you can create the emails that will be sent to your potential customers should they abandon their shopping carts. By default you’re provided with 3 templates; an initial, an interim and a final, all of which can be copied, edited or removed, while also showing you how many were sent and the percentage recovery from each individual one; another new feature that can prove to be very useful.
When creating or editing a template you first need to set the name and email address to use, after which you’ll add the subject and email body, followed by a few settings to activate the template, choose the time after the cart is abandoned to send the email, enter any coupon codes, as well as send a test email to check everything.
The default email templates are a new feature from version 2.3.1, together with the in-built coupon code for 5% and 10% discount on cart total that are provided in the second and third templates. These coupon codes, together with the unique ones that you can add to the template, can all be tracked.
Something else that has been improved in the email body is that the {{products.cart}} merge tag has been replaced with a table. All the fields such as the product image thumbnail, product name, quantity, price, and so on have their own merge tags. This allows you to create the table that you want, providing you with full control of what product information is to be sent in the notification emails.
Seeing It In Action
Below are some screenshots showing you the plugin in action, both on the back-end as well as an example of a sent email that I created while testing it out.
Pricing
The Abandoned Cart Pro plugin is for sale from Tyche Softwares for $119 for a single store. This sounds pricey, which is why the folks at Tyche Softwares took the time to explain the following:
Seem a little pricey at $119? Some quick math… say your average order value is $40. So, this plugin needs to recover only 3 orders for you to pay for a Single Store License! Surprised? Go grab this one!
Order Delivery Date Pro
The second plugin we will be discussing is Order Delivery Date Pro, and as I mentioned earlier, the main functions of the plugin have already been discussed here on WP Mayor, so below you’ll mainly read about the new and improved features that have been implemented since that initial review.
One of the first differences you will notice is the introduction of licenses. These are valid for a period of one year from the date of purchase, after which you can benefit from a 50% discount on renewal. Some other notable improvements are the re-structuring of the code, the addition of new hooks, filters and publicly accessible functions that allow you to extend the plugin, the introduction of .po, .pot and .mo files that allow for translations, as well as compatibility with WPML.
Installing the Plugin
Now getting to the use of the plugin itself, upon installing and activating it you will find a new section in your Dashboard’s sidebar called Order Delivery Date. From here you can access all the available options and settings, view the Delivery Calendar and enter your license key.
First let us look at the Order Delivery Date Settings and see what’s been added.
Choosing Your Settings
There are a lot of settings to choose from for this plugin, so we’ll only be looking at what’s been added since the previous review, and there are some interesting and valuable changes.
Starting with the additional delivery charges, these can now be applied to the different weekdays, to specific delivery dates, and also on same day delivery and next day delivery methods, all from their respective sections. All time slot settings have also been improved with the option to choose between a 12 and 24 hour format.
Time slots can now also be set for specific weekdays, the minimum delivery time feature now works in hours rather than days, and the Recurring Days and Specific Delivery Dates options can now be used simultaneously. You’re also able to hide the delivery date and time slot fields for virtual products, and to enable delivery dates for specific product categories.
All these changes contribute to making the delivery options more customisable, and in turn providing your customers with more specific options that not only help them to choose their ideal times, but also help you to control the delivery orders that are coming in.
The Holidays settings now allow you to set a range of holidays too, rather than having to set each day individually, making it easier and quicker to set holiday or shut-down/stock-taking periods.
One of the biggest feature additions will have to be the new Settings by Shipping Methods. This section allows you to create different delivery date and time settings for different shipping methods. More information about this can be found in their How To guide.
Some other minor changes and enhancements include the support for HTML tags in the “Field Note Text” field in the Appearance tab, the changing of the time interval for the time slider setting from 1 minute to 5 minutes (simply makes more sense), and the delivery date field on the Checkout page can now also be set to appear in the Shipping section.
Moving on to plugin compatibilities, Order Delivery Date Pro is now compatible with a host of other plugins including Zapier, WooCommerce Subscription plugin, WooCommerce Print Orders, WooCommerce Checkout Manager, and many more.
The Delivery Calendar
One of the most noticeable new features added to this plugin is the Delivery Calendar. This can be accessed from the sidebar and provides you with a daily, weekly and monthly view of all the deliveries that have been scheduled through the orders made.
Simply clicking on a scheduled delivery will pop up the information relevant to that order, including the product names, customer name, delivery details as well as a link to the order itself. In turn, on the WooCommerce Order page you will now have a new Delivery Date column (if you enable the “Show on Orders Listing Page” option), while on the Edit Order page you will now be able to see the delivery date listed alongside the other details.
Seeing It In Action
Once the options have been chosen and the order delivery date enabled, every customer using your shop will be able to see a Delivery Date option in their Checkout screen. By clicking on this option the customer is provided with a calendar according to the style you would have chosen, and with the available dates and times that you would have set.
Once a date and time are chosen, and the order is finalised, the confirmation message will appear on the customer’s screen and the relevant emails are sent according to your WooCommerce settings. Each email will now also include the delivery date and time for your, and your customers’ reference.
Pricing
The Order Delivery Date Pro plugin is for sale from Tyche Softwares for $99 for a single store. It once again rises in prices if you’d like to use it on multiple stores, and Tyche Softwares have once again explained the idea behind the pricing:
Seem a little pricey at $99? Some quick math… say you charge $50 per hour. Then 2 hours of your time is worth $100. So, this plugin only needs to save you 2 hours to pay for a Single Store License!
Documentation and Support
The documentation for both these plugins is quite extensive. In fact, from either of the plugins pages you will be able to access Front-End Demos and Admin Demos that allow you to try out the plugins and see them in action, as well as links to their respective documentation, FAQs and forums.
Conclusions and Recommendations
All in all, both plugins from Tyche Softwares provide exactly the service that they describe. Abandoned Cart is a great way to win back lost sales through email reminders, while Order Delivery Date fills in a void in WooCommerce that many would need in order to provide the best possible service to their customers.
With the amount of online shopping carts being abandoned before a purchase is finalised, Abandoned Cart is definitely something you should consider if you’d like to get the best out of your online store. The email templates also allow you to customise your emails for your target audience, while the inclusion of coupons and discounts is a great way of bringing back those potential customers who were put off by a high price tag or shipping cost.
Order Delivery Date makes it super easy for the customer to pick their delivery date and time, while also being easy for you as the shop owner to set up the available dates and times together with the prices and other specific criteria. It provides a way of automating the scheduling of deliveries, saving you time and money in the process.
The introduction of the numerous new features since our last review here on WP Mayor is promising and bodes well for the future where we might even see newer ideas coming into play to further enhance both these plugins. So if you’re looking for any of the functionality mentioned above, you should definitely give these Tyche Softwares plugins a go.
2 Responses
Thank you Mark for the review. Love the way it’s described.
You’re welcome Vishal, glad you like it!