Imagine that a customer adds a product to the shopping cart but does not make a purchase on your website Activation by add SMS
How cool is it to remind them on their mobile phones to abandon the shopping cart ?
You can do this and more by sending SMS notifications from your e-commerce website.
While you are already using email as a communication channel, SMS is more effective for quick reminders and notifications.
Research shows that SMS marketing has the highest click-through rate (CTR) for hyperlinks (6.16%), compared to email marketing (2.80%), search advertising (1.98%), and social media advertising (0.05%).
Therefore, anyone can use SMS to promote the growth of his business through effective communication with his customers.
In this article, we will show how you can add an SMS portal to your WordPress e-commerce site.
So at the end of this article, you will be able to send SMS notifications to your customers in this way.
How to add an SMS portal to your commerce website ?
We will add the SMS feature to our site in just three steps ،
- Create an account on the SMS Alert website
- Connect the account to your WordPress site
- Enable SMS notifications for our customers
Step 1 : Create an account on the SMS Alert website
SMS alert is the tool that will help us send SMS to customers.
To create an account on SMS Alert, click here and it will take you to the official website.
To create your account, click “Register”.
Then enter these details.
Once you have entered your details, click “Register”, and your account will be created.
Now, you will receive OTP on the mobile phone number you entered.
So, just enter the one-time password and click on “check one-time password”.
Now, we have successfully created an account on the SMS Alert website. Once the account has been created, we can proceed to the second step of linking this account to your website.
Step 2: Connect the account to your WordPress site
To send SMS messages from your website, we need to install this plugin on your WordPress site.
To install the extension, go to your WordPress dashboard. Now go to” extensions “and click”Add New”.
In the Extensions section, find the extension”SMS alert”.
Therefore, this extension will help us to connect our site to the SMS alert account.
To install this extension, click “Install” and then click “Activate”.
We have successfully installed the plugin.
To link your website to the SMS alert account, we need to log in to the extension for SMS alert.
So to log in to this plugin, go to “WooCommerce” and click on “SMS alert”, and you will get to this page.
Now here , you need to enter the login details of your SMS alert account.
Once you have created your SMS alert account, you will receive login details to your email address while creating your SMS account.
As you can see, we received mail from the SMS alert, so open it, copy these details and paste them on your website.
Once you have entered the login details, click “Check and continue” and click “Save Changes”.
Now we are logged into this extension. Now enter the mobile phone number where you want to receive email notifications. Once the number is entered, click on”Save Changes”.
So far, we have successfully connected the SMS alert account to your website.
Once your account is linked, we can now move on to the last step to enable SMS notifications for our customers.
Step 3 : Activate SMS notifications
Once SMS notifications are enabled, you can start sending SMS to your customers.
So, to enable it, go to Woocommerce and click SMS alert and then click “customer notifications”.
Now select when you want to send SMS to your customers from this list and click “Save Changes”.
Now we have successfully enabled customer SMS notification, and your customers will receive notifications about their purchases.
Next, let’s see how you can check your customer before placing an order. Suppose a customer makes an order and processes the order. You want to make sure that the order is original.
So, how can you check your customer
You can do this by sending OTP to the customer’s mobile phone number during the time of purchase or placing an order.
A one-time password is a one-time password that is sent to the customer’s mobile phone number to verify his number on our website.
Therefore, the client must enter the one-time password and verify his mobile phone number before placing an order.
Enable the OTP feature
To enable it, go back to your WordPress dashboard, and then go to the OTP settings.
Now to add the OTP feature on your checkout page, enable the “OTP for Checkout”option.
And if you want to enable OTP verification, then when your client specifies a specific payment method, enable the option “enable OTP only for selected payment options”.
Then click here and choose the payment method for which you want to enable OTP verification.
Here, by selecting “cash on delivery”, you ensure that the one-time password is sent only to those people who choose the cash on delivery option.
Therefore, when a customer chooses to pay cash on delivery, he will receive OTP on his mobile phone number for verification.
Now instead of the “Proceed To Checkout” button, if you want to show the OTP check button on your checkout page as shown here
Enable the option”Show verification button when paying”.
And if you want to show OTP verification in a pop-up window on the checkout page like this ،
Just enable the option”check OTP in a pop-up window”.
Once finished, click on “Save Changes”, and the OTP feature will be enabled on your website.
If your customer adds the product to the shopping cart and clicks on “proceed with the payment process and select” cash on delivery “as the payment method, he will be asked to verify his number to place the order, as indicated here.
So as soon as you enter the one-time password and then click on “one-time password verification”, their mobile phone number will be verified.
Therefore, as soon as your client verifies his phone number, he will be able to place an order on your site.
This is how you can check your customer before placing an order on your website.
Next, let’s move on to the BONUS part of this tutorial, where we’ll see how you can notify your customer of the product that has returned in stock.
Bonus : enable the messaging feature in the inventory
Now let’s say your customer is looking for a product on your website that is not available right now, and you want to notify your customer when it returns to stock.
How to notify your client about this?
You can do this easily by sending an SMS to your customer when the product returns to stock.
To send SMS messages “back in stock”, return to the control panel and click “Back in stock”.
Now select both options “Send a message to the customer when the product returns to stock” and “send a message to the customer when the product is subscribed”, then click “Save”.
Now the back-in-stock feature will be enabled on your website.
If a customer chooses an “out of stock” product from your website, they can enter their phone number to get a message when the product is available again in stock.
Therefore, when this product returns to stock, your customer will receive an SMS to his mobile phone number. So as soon as the product returns to stock , your customer will receive such an SMS ،
This is how you can notify your customer when the sought-after product returns to stock again.
Next, let’s see how you can receive SMS notifications when a Customer places an order on your site.
How do I receive notifications when a Customer places an order?
So to receive SMS about the orders placed on your site, go to the control panel of your website and click on “Administrator notifications”.
Here you can see a list of options to choose from when you want to receive SMS notifications.
Once you have selected the options of your choice, click “Save”.
Now, when the client makes an order, you will begin to receive SMS on your mobile phone number, as indicated here.
This is how you can receive SMS notifications when a client places an order.
Now, if we go to the SMS alert account, we can see a demo account.
Since it is a free demo account, we will only get 5 SMS credits which means we can only send 5 SMS from this account. Now, to send more SMS, we need to purchase SMS credits.
So to buy more SMS credits, go to the control panel and click on “buy SMS”.
For the purchase of SMS (credits), the minimum balance value is 5000, which means that you can send up to 5000 SMS to your customers.
So, enter the details and enter the SMS credits you want and then proceed with the payment process.
Once you have the credits, you can start sending SMS for your orders.
That’s it, guys. This is how you can send SMS to your customers from your e-commerce sites.
Conclusion
It’s crucial to build relationships with your customers and be at the forefront of their mind when
they think about your products, and SMS alerts can do just that. So what we have here is a simple way to send SMS notifications from your ecommerce website to customers.
You can start by creating an account on SMS Alert, linking it to your WordPress site, and after that, enable SMS notifications. Then, finally, you can add the button at the top by allowing the “back in stock”option.