WordPress Workflow Management For Physical + Digital

When you sell both physical and digital products, it can be difficult to manage your workflow. For your WooCommerce to run successfully, you need to think about how you’ll manage your inventory, shipping, payment methods, and customer support.

Whether you just started running your WooCommerce or have been operating one for some years now, workflow management is essential if you want to overcome business obstacles.

In this post, we’ll show you how to manage your workflow for both physical and digital products in WooCommerce.

What is a workflow management system?

A workflow management system is a set of tools that help automate business processes like order processing, inventory management, processing shipping, and collection of customer reviews. With this system in place, you can streamline business operations resulting in faster order processing times, reduced errors and better customer experience.

Workflow management often involves process and process charts which proceed in a sequence determined by certain actions. It also includes a form builder that is used by the WooCommerce to gather input from customers. You can use Gravity Forms conditional logic to build interactive and dynamic forms that adapt to user input. The information you get from these forms can help improve and simplify your workflow.

Why should you use a workflow management system?

You should use a workflow management system in your WooCommerce if your business is growing. An automated system will help you handle increasing orders and keep the business running without glitches.

Additionally, if you have a working system, you can process more physical and digital orders and compete effectively in the ever-growing e-commerce market. According to research by Statista, retail e-commerce sales in 2021 amounted to about $5.2 trillion globally and are expected to grow by 56% to $8.1 trillion by 2026.

Here are some of the reasons you need a workflow management system in your WooCommerce.

Automated inventory management

When managing both digital and physical products, your inventory management system needs to be top notch. Doing this manually when you have thousands of products under your listing, makes it hard to keep track of each time and could easily lead to errors.

An automated inventory system allows you to monitor all your products and stops you from taking orders when products go out of stock. It also helps prevent overstocking.

Additionally, it's common to get returns in your WooCommerce. In fact, about 30% of products ordered online are returned compared to 8.89% from brick-and-mortar stores. To make the process easier, it's better to automate the return process. This will help in inventory management for your business when an item is returned to the warehouse.

You can also use a WooCommerce thermal printer like BizPrint for return shipping label printing. This plugin allows you to pre-print return labels on packages so that customers can easily return items, making the entire process smooth.

Email marketing automation

WordPress workflow management comes in handy for email marketing. You can target your customers based on their purchasing behaviors or demographics. When the system is automated, you don’t have to manually type every email, they can be triggered based on the customer action.

With time, you can analyze bounce rates, open rates and subscription rates to understand what works for your customers. Automation of emails is also vital for WooCommerce follow up emails. You can set up automation templates to send emails to customers as you focus on other areas of the business.

Your emails should include details about your products, new offers and links to purchase items. To make your links clickable and ensure that they are not broken, you can use custom WooCommerce permalinks to customize your product pages URL. If the URLs in your emails are well structured, this could boost your site’s usability.

Social media management

Social media platforms are an important part of your WooCommerce. However, they can take up a lot of time since you need to put up new posts, promote your products and respond to customer queries.

An automated workflow system will help you schedule posts and engage with your audience without taking too much effort. Tools like chatbots come in handy in workflow management for your social media pages.

What’s the importance of a workflow management system?

If you are wondering how your WooCommerce will gain from implementing a workflow management system, here are some of the key benefits.

Scale your business operations

A workflow management system will help you scale the business without hiring more people or needing extra resources. Since processes are automated, you can reduce the time spent on manual data entry and other repetitive tasks. This frees up a lot of time, allowing you to focus on expanding the business in other areas.

Better control over your business processes

When the business is operating seamlessly, you can monitor all the processes from the time customer orders are received to delivery. Automated workflows help with timely shipping resulting in better customer satisfaction, higher sales and profits.

Saves time and money

Automating your store’s tasks saves the business time and money. Since you don’t have to hire manpower for all tasks, it reduces the amount of money spent on paying salaries. In addition, the existing staff will be more efficient and productive because most of the tasks are automated. If you are looking to boost your workflow efficiency, consider adopting automation tools.

How does PeachPay help with WooCommerce workflow management?

There are different plugins available in the market that help with WooCommerce workflow management. These plugins are necessary because WooCommerce does not come with some in-built functionalities. For instance, WooCommerce requires web hosting to help with automatic backups, WordPress updates and security. Businesses will often weigh the benefits of web hosting vs WordPress hosting and choose what’s right for them.

However, most of these plugins are quite pricey and are complicated to use. But there’s a solution if you are looking for an alternative plugin. PeachPay is an all-in-one checkout and payment solution for WooCommerce stores that offers all the features of other plugins at no extra cost.

With PeachPay, you can create a customized checkout experience for your customers. Here are some of the features you get with PeachPay.

• More than 13 payment options including Stripe, PayPal, Square, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay/Clearpay, Affirm, purchase orders, cash on delivery, checks, bank transfers, ACH debit/credit, and more.
• Coupons and discounts display on the checkout page.
• Email notifications
• No annual or monthly fees whatsoever
• 3D secure payments
• WooCommerce subscriptions integrations

One of the key ways to manage your workflow is by streamlining your checkout and payment processes. According to the company, most stores that use this plugin see their sales increase by 35%. While the standard checkout process takes an average of 50-60 seconds, the PeachPay direct checkout takes 10-20 seconds.

By adopting PeachPay for your business, you get one -click window checkout, it's fully customizable to your store, you can set up in five minutes or less and can access payment analytics.

PeachPay and WooCommerce integrations

PeachPay offers a native WooCommerce integration that can then link through to other WordPress plugins. This plugin lets customers purchase subscription packages thanks to PeachPay’s integration with WooCommerce subscription.

Additionally, your eCommerce can integrate with other features like the thermal printers that can trigger physical processes such as packing slips, receipts for customers at point of sale. You can create customized new order receipts that can be auto-printed to multiple printers at multiple locations.

The importance of PeachPay’s workflow management system

So, why do you need to use PeachPay in your WooCommerce? This plugin streamlines business operations in several ways.

Faster processing times

Faster checkouts are critical for reducing order processing times. This will reduce shopping cart abandonment rates because the process is much shorter. This in turn will lead to more sales.

Better customer experience

When selling physical and digital products, you need to ensure that your customers have an excellent experience. One way to do this is by making the checkout process much easier. For instance, if the customer spends less time checking out their order, they are more likely to come back and shop again from your store.

In addition, thanks to the rise in digital payments, there are multiple payment options that customers prefer to use when making orders. The PeachPay plugin offers more than 13 payment options, so your customers can use their preferred method to shop. Consumers are more satisfied when they can get such benefits from their favorite stores.

Reduced errors

Although the checkout process is simple and direct, it does not come with any mistakes. Customers can confirm their correct orders in a few steps. Additionally, the business can track all the payments and orders from one system. This comes in handy during reconciliation of cash and inventory.

Start to streamline and scale your business

Automating your workflow management will save your business time and money, increase productivity, facilitate timely shipping, and simplify complex business processes. The e-commerce world has become quite competitive; therefore, you need a streamlined workflow to stand out and scale your business further.

To streamline your WooCommerce, you’ll need some plugins for extra support. These plugins help with web hosting, creating dynamic forms, printing orders and shipping labels and faster checkout.