5 Common Small Business Problems Solved with WordPress Plugins

If you’re a small business owner, this might sound familiar. Get up, grab a coffee, open up, start the day. You’ve got a lot to do, but it’s quiet. Then a customer walks in, looking for information and pricing. And the phone rings. It’s that guy who talks nonstop, again, and he wants to schedule an appointment. Now your stack of work for the day seems a lot bigger and the stress kicks in. Balancing customer interactions and hands-on work is one of the most common small business problems.

You just don’t have the time to speak with every customer about every detail and get your work done. Isn’t there a way you can solve these problems with your website? If you think about it, a lot of businesses handle customer interactions through their websites alone. Why couldn’t you harness the technology of WordPress to do that yourself?

We’ve broken down five common issues a small business faces and found WordPress plugins that can help. These plugins will automate or simplify many of your customer (and even employee) relationship tasks, and they are easy to manage through your WordPress site.

1. Answer Your Customers’ Questions Before They Ask

You can lose a lot of time answering questions by phone. And if you hear many of the same questions every day, there’s an opportunity. You can display those questions–and your answers–on your website using a WordPress FAQ (frequently asked questions) plugin. The HTML5 Responsive FAQ plugin allows you to create groups of FAQs, sort them by category, and customize the look and feel. This will provide a useful resource for your customers, help bring more traffic to your site, and get you off the phone.

2. Book Appointments On Your Website

Do you spend a lot of time scheduling appointments over the phone? Take a look at the latest WordPress booking plugin. You have complete control over booking, how the interface looks, and you’ll receive email notifications when someone sets an appointment. Make it easier to come in, and free up some time to take more customers.

3. Manage Employee Schedules

Employee schedules are always a source of confusion. A lot of that confusion is cleared up over the phone or in emails. But you can use your WordPress site to manage scheduling with ShiftController. You’ll be able to create a schedule, check availability, assign shifts to employees, manage time off requests and holidays, and even manage shift trades right from WordPress. Your employees will have better access to their schedule at all times, which will reduce confusion and save you an extra phone call or email here and there.

4. Create Events and Sell Tickets

If you manage events for your business, you know that it’s time consuming and takes a heroic level of coordination to pull off, often requiring you to juggle multiple tools like Facebook or Eventbrite. With the Events Manager plugin, you can schedule all the events for your business through WordPress, and allow people to browse and sign up right on your website. This plugin covers everything you need for events, from ticketing to providing information, and features like the iCal feed, Google calendar buttons, and RSS feed make things easier for your customers.

5. Stay In Contact with Your Customers

There are so many great ways to reach your customers that don’t require picking up the phone. Collect new customers on your WordPress site using the Constant Contact form plugin (free). Then you can use Constant Contact, or another email marketing service to send out reminders, promotions, and newsletters automatically. This can save you time and help your customers out by providing useful information or deals. And the best part? You’re free to focus on what’s in front of you.

Depending on your small business, you may face a variety of different challenges. These plugins are a great step towards automating and solving some of the common problems with managing time as a small business owner. However, these are just the beginning. Small businesses can do a lot more with WordPress and a little creativity.

Install a plugin today and get some time back, or contact the WP Live team for expert WordPress assistance.

Darius Carrick

5 Common Small Business Problems Solved with WordPress Plugins

1. Answer Your Customers’ Questions Before They Ask

2. Book Appointments On Your Website

3. Manage Employee Schedules

4. Create Events and Sell Tickets

5. Stay In Contact with Your Customers

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About Darius Carrick

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