Setting up an online store has suddenly become a logical step for many businesses suffering in lockdown. If you have a WordPress based website, Barn2’s Multiple Product Page plugin can have you up and running very quickly.
Lots of food businesses are now realising they need to be online to keep going. I’ve been working with Greenslate Community Farm in Billinge on their online marketing for a few years now and the inbound online marketing channels have been increasingly important in the farm’s income.
Faced with the current situation the farm has had to shut down their adult learners care farm and cafe.
The best way the farm could help the local community was to set up an online shop with options for ‘contact-free’ pickup or delivery, and this has all been put together by volunteers at very short notice.
I’ve been running Woocommerce on the farm’s WordPress based website for a few years now. Selling courses and events with the free Woocommerce plugin and the Stripe payments gateway has been smooth and straightforward. But, taking it up to a full-blown online shop took some working through.
Multiple Product Page plugin
If you are familiar with online shopping (I guess we all are now if we can manage to log onto Ocado) then you’ll expect to see items grouped by what type of product they are.
The Woocommerce Multiple Product Page plugin from Barn2 plugins seemed the ideal solution, so I bought it for £79.00 + VAT for a one-year subscription. You can find it here complete with demonstrations of how to set up and use it:
This plugin allows you to layout your products on one page grouped by category, rather than one page for each product so it’s very user friendly. It’s allowed me to set up a nice looking and functional shop with barely an issue so I highly recommend it.
As I write this, the Greenslate Farm online shop has been running for just under two weeks now (we started a couple of days after lockdown) and sales have grown day on day, far exceeding our expectations. Infact, the site has been occasionally sending users the ‘503 Server Busy’ message because of the massive upsurge in traffic.
People need to buy online at the moment for many reasons, so there hasn’t been a better time to set up an online shop. It will keep some businesses afloat. More importantly, it will keep lots of people safe by giving them access to what they need with the option of ‘no-contact’ pickup or delivery.
If you want any tips on how to set up an online shop like I’ve done here feel free to email me or give me a call on 07803 925446. If you think it would be useful for me to create a ‘how to’ guide or video let me know.
Click on the image below to see the Multiple Product Page plugin in action a Greenslate Farm.
