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WordPress & WooCommerce
WordPress and WooCommerce together provide the ideal platform for selling CBD products online. They offer an easy to use interface to create a professional ecommerce store without needing advanced technical skills. Both platforms are open source and freely available to download and use, with minimal costs for hosting and themes. This allows CBD brands to launch their online store and sell products affordably.
WordPress and WooCommerce also provide the features and functionality required for a CBD company. Compliance notifications, lab test reports, coupon codes and popups can be added using plugins. The platforms are highly customizable, with thousands of CBD-specific themes to choose from.
They create a mobile-optimized user experience, handle payments, shipping and security, and provide analytics to track store performance. WordPress and WooCommerce are a scalable solution able to support businesses from startup to enterprise level.
Free and open source
WordPress and WooCommerce are free to download and use. The open source codebase means thousands of developers are continually improving the software and creating plugins tailored for CBD brands. This gives you access to useful tools for compliance, marketing, payments and more at little or no cost.
Easy to use
WordPress is designed to be user-friendly for those without strong technical skills. The intuitive interface makes it simple to publish content, add products, run promotions, customize themes etc. This DIY platform keeps startup costs low since you don’t need advanced developer experience to build and manage the site.
Optimized for ecommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPress ecommerce plugin built specifically for selling products online. It handles everything like products, pricing, shopping cart, shipping, payments and more. The plugin is free, included secure asynchronous checkout feature, integrates with several payment gateways, and has dedicated support. All of this allows you to get an online CBD store up and running quickly.
Customizable
WordPress offers thousands of free themes to choose from for designing your website. Premium CBD-specific themes are also available with custom page templates, product showcases, built-in compliance tools and promotional spaces. These tailored themes eliminate the need for expensive web development resources to get a high-quality CBD site launched.
Compliance made easy
Several WordPress plugins exist to help CBD brands meet legal requirements around lab testing transparency, FDA labeling and disclaimers, age verification, licensing details and product shipping rules. Using these purpose-built plugins helps ensure your WordPress/WooCommerce CBD store operates fully compliant with regulations.
Supports growth
WordPress and WooCommerce are used by major websites and online retailers receiving millions of monthly visitors. The platforms are built to scale as your business and traffic grow over time. There are hosting, caching and performance optimization solutions available to keep page speed fast even with a large product catalog and customer base. These platforms will continue adapting to support the needs of high-volume CBD brands.
Mobile-optimized
A WordPress/WooCommerce website is fully responsive, adapting to any screen size from desktop to mobile. This is crucial as nearly 70% of web traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets. Your CBD store needs to offer an optimal viewing and shopping experience for visitors regardless of device used.
Continual innovation
WordPress and WooCommerce release updates, upgrades, and improved features on a regular basis. Because the platforms are open source, dedicated developer communities are always enhancing the software. CBD brands that build their online store on WordPress and WooCommerce gain access to the latest ecommerce technologies and tools through frequent updates.
Choose a high-quality CBD WordPress theme from WooCommerce
Pick a WordPress theme designed specifically for CBD companies or ecommerce like:
CBD Retailer is a clean and flexible block theme suitable for a CBD-based online store selling beauty, health, or cosmetic products.
A mobile-friendly theme suitable for health and beauty stores. Clean, flexible and with an intuitive visual interface, your online store will definitely stand out from the crowd.
CBD Compliance plugins for WordPress
The CBD industry in the US is highly regulated. Plugins are available to display FDA compliance notifications, add supplement facts panels to product pages, and generate reports for state licensing requirements. Federal law requires CBD companies to disclose certain information to customers which these plugins facilitate.
Allows you to create FDA-compliant supplement facts labels for your products. Just enter the nutritional information, ingredient list, servings per container and other details for each product. The plugin generates a properly formatted supplement facts table to display on your product pages.
Plugin for creating custom product labels to print and adhere to your product packaging. Options include text for supplement facts, ingredient lists, net quantity, company info, and all required FDA disclaimers like “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” Labels help ensure your products meet FDA standards for supplements or consumables.
Age verification plugins for WordPress
Age verification is important for any WordPress site selling age-restricted products like CBD, vapes, e-cigarettes or alcohol to ensure customers are legally allowed to buy these items.
Adds an age verification step during checkout to validate customers meet your store’s age requirement before allowing them to complete a purchase. Uses their billing date of birth to calculate age and deny checkout if they’re under the limit. Also useful for limiting certain products to customers over a specific age.
WooCommerce Checkout Age Verification Plugin by SkyVerge
Simple but effective plugin to add an age verification step during the WooCommerce checkout process. Customers enter their birth date which is checked against your set age requirement (default is 18+). If they’re underage, it prevents them from completing checkout and purchasing products from your store.
The Customer Reviews for WooCommerce plugin allows you to display customer reviews on product pages in your WooCommerce store. By default, reviews will appear below the product description on single product pages, but you can also use shortcodes to display reviews on any page.
Customers can rate products on a scale of 1 to 5 stars to reflect their level of satisfaction. The number of reviews and average star rating are prominently displayed at the top of the reviews section to give potential customers a quick snapshot of the overall experience with the product based on all reviews.
For example, “Rated 4.8 out of 5 based on 93 reviews.” Reviews from verified owners, or customers who actually purchased the item from your store, will display with a “Verified Owner” badge so other customers can determine if a review comes from a trusted source.
You have the option to make all reviews anonymous if you don’t want to show the customer’s name or avatar with their review. The plugin also allows you to add custom fields to the new review form, such as an overall 1 to 10 rating scale or pros and cons input fields where the customer can write a response.
The Customer Reviews for WooCommerce plugin will notify store admins by email whenever a new review is submitted.
You can customize the email template and subject line. For example, “New customer review for [product name]”. The email would contain details like the review rating and content.
Reviews are checked for spam based on keywords and IP address. Detected spam reviews won’t automatically publish to your live site; you’ll need to manually review and verify them.
Running CBD promotions and sales
Running promotions and sales is an effective way to increase revenue and drive more traffic to your WooCommerce CBD store. To celebrate 4/20, you could offer a sitewide 20% off coupon for customers.
Create a coupon in your WooCommerce dashboard called “20% OFF for 4/20!” that gives 20% off all orders. Set the coupon to be valid for one week leading up to 4/20 and note in the description “In celebration of 4/20, take 20% off your entire CBD order with code ‘420SALE’!”. Advertise the coupon on your site and social media so customers know to enter code ‘420SALE’ at checkout to receive the discount. A sale like this, on a popular day for CBD consumers, will drive more sales and exposure for your store.
You could also run a product sale offering 25% off select items like tinctures and capsules for a limited time. Lower the price of all tinctures and capsules in your store by 25% and check the “On sale” box to activate the discounted prices. Update images and descriptions to notify customers of the sale details. Products on sale will display as “On sale!” with the special prices, attracting customers to purchase more tinctures and capsules than they normally would while the sale is active.
To maximize the impact of your promotions, heavily advertise on social media, your blog, email newsletters, and elsewhere. Provide coupon codes and links for easy access to the sales. Highlight popular, high-demand CBD products to gain interest. Keep the periods short, around 3 to 5 days, to create urgency. Offer free shipping over a minimum order amount to increase average order value. And request reviews from promotion participants to build social proof for future sales and turn first-time customers into loyal returning clients.