How to Send SMS Notifications from WooCommerce
Are you running an online store and need to improve customer experience? One of the best ways to do so is by sending order notifications via SMS. In this article, we’ll show how to send SMS notifications from WooCommerce without any coding.
First, let’s first have a look at what an SMS gateway is and how they operate.
What is an SMS Gateway?
Like email marketing gateways, SMS gateways will help you send custom SMS from your website or mobile app to people with minimal effort. However, by default, there is no way to send an SMS to one of your customers or a particular group of customers.
The SMS gateways convert the messages sent from the web to a human-readable format and deliver the content to the recipient. These tools can be integrated with any website or app. Especially if you are using WordPress as the CMS, you get plenty of dedicated SMS plugins you can use.
These days, SMS gateways have become more advanced and are able to automate tasks according to the admin’s needs. For example, you can configure an SMS plugin that will send every order update to WooCommerce customers through the SMS gateway. As a result, it will bring a good reputation and customer satisfaction to your company.
So many eCommerce stores are using SMS gateways nowadays, which has become a common trend. Many free, freemium, and premium SMS gateway services are available. Each offers different features, and you can choose one according to your requirements and preferences.
Coming to the pricing, SMS gateways will charge you based on your usage. For example, most providers offer subscriptions based on the monthly quota, so you can select a subscription based on your monthly usage.
That brings us to the question; why should we send SMS notifications to our customers? Let’s find out.
Why Send SMS Notifications to Customers About Their Orders?
Sending SMS notifications to customers will inform them of their order’s current status on their mobile devices without any additional effort.
For example, by default, to check an order’s status, you have to log in to the WooCommerce store and check your order status manually. This can take some time, and most customers will feel lazy. Besides, it also requires an internet connection, which a customer may not be able to access all the time.
However, by adding an SMS notification option, the SMS gateway service will update the customer with every order update via SMS. All the SMSs will be delivered directly to their primary mobile number. This way, you can improve the overall customer experience and take your WooCommerce store to the next level.
Since we have talked a lot about SMS plugins, so next up, let’s have a look at some o the best plugins to send SMS notifications from your WooCommerce store.
Best Plugins to Send SMS Notifications from WooCommerce
This section will show three popular plugins to send SMS notifications from WooCommerce. They are:
- SMS for WooCommerce
- YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications
- SMS Alerts Order Notifications
Now, let’s see what each plugin has to offer.
1) SMS for WooCommerce
This is the best option if you are looking for an SMS plugin from the official WooCommerce team. SMS for WooCommerce is an easy-to-use SMS plugin that can be integrated with multiple SMS API providers. Since they are the same team behind the WooCommerce plugin, there will be no compatibility issues or similar problems. Furthermore, the plugin can also be integrated with WhatsApp business, making it more useful in every situation.
It has several useful features, such as customer number validation, opt-in post-checkout, SMS personalization, admin SMSs, and Do Not Disturb mode. For example, the customer number validation option can help prevent the user from adding a fake number as the delivery number. In addition, the validation tool will ask for an OTP; hence, the store admin can verify that the order is genuine and not placed by a bot.
Besides, the opt-in post-checkout feature will allow the customer to enable/disable the SMS notifications. If customers do not want to get any SMS notifications regarding the shipment, they can easily disable it. Moreover, the personalization feature can help the store admin to add custom text and make the SMSs brand related.
Apart from customers, the store admins can also receive SMS notifications regarding the placed orders and their status changes. Lastly, if you set up a DND (Do Not Disturb) mode inside the plugin settings, the plugin will only send SMSs according to the timezone.
Features
- Multiple SMS API Integrations
- WhatsApp Business Integration
- Phone Number Validation
- Order Status SMS Update
- Admin SMSs
- SMS Personalization
Pricing
The SMS for WooCommerce is a premium plugin that will cost you $99/year. However, once you have purchased the plugin, you will get one year of support and updates. Also, you will be protected by their 30-day money-back guarantee.
2) YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications
If you prefer a feature-rich WooCommerce SMS plugin for your online store, you need YITH WooCommerce SMS notifications. If you have been in the blogging and WooCommerce industry for a while, you probably know YITH WooCommerce plugins. They deliver top-quality plugins for extending the functions of your WooCommerce site.
The YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications plugin can integrate more than 20 SMS gateway providers.
The plugin will send customers SMS notifications whenever their order status changes. This process is automatic, and the store admin doesn’t need to do anything from their end. Customers can also choose whether they want to get SMS updates or not during the checkout process. Besides, it has an easy-to-use dashboard, so customizing the plugin would be pretty straightforward.
By default, the size of the message body is 160 characters, but you can extend it from the plugin settings. Apart from that, the TinyURL integration in this plugin is pretty convenient. For example, displaying the entire URL won’t be a feasible option if you need to share the tracking URL of the shipment. With the TinyURL integration, you can convert long URLs to short ones and add them to the message body.
Features
- 20+ SMS Gateway Integrations
- Automatic Notifications
- TinyURL Integration
- Admin Notifications
- Extend Message Body
- Easy to Configure
Pricing
YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications is a premium plugin. It will cost you $79.99 a year for the subscription. You will be protected by one year of priority support, updates, and 30 days money-back guarantee.
3) SMS Alert Order Notifications
You must check out SMS Alert Order Notifications if you prefer a simple solution for sending notifications from WooCommerce. It is a complete package to cater to all SMS notification requirements. The plugin has an elegant dashboard, so configuring the options would be a cakewalk.
Moving on, the plugin can be integrated with only one SMS gateway – SMS Alert. Once you have configured the plugin correctly, it will send SMS notifications to customers when they place an order and get the shipment moved. You can also enable OTP (One Time Password) for COD (Cash On Delivery) orders. This will ensure the packages will not get lost to a stranger. OTP for COD is a handy feature on a WooCommerce store.
Moreover, the admin notification feature will let the store admin know if there is a low stock available for a specific product or if a product is out of stock. This can be very handy as the site admin can prepare for restocking accordingly. Furthermore, you can also enable the login with the OTP feature, so the user doesn’t need to enter the password; instead, they can log in to the site by using the OTP.
Summing up, it is one of the best plugins for sending SMS notifications from WooCommerce.
Features
- Easy to Use
- Admin Notifications
- URL Shortening
- OTP Feature
- Login with OTP
Pricing
SMS Alert Order Notifications is a free WordPress plugin, which you can download from the WordPress plugins repository.
How to Send SMS Notifications from WooCommerce
Now, with some simple steps, let’s see how to send SMS notifications from WooCommerce. We will use the SMS Alert Order Notifications plugin for this tutorial. So, let’s get started.
Step I: Install and activate the plugin
First, log in to your WooCommerce website, go to the Add New Plugins section, and search for SMS Alert Order Notification. Once you have found the right plugin, click on the Install button to install it.
After installing the plugin, hit the Activate button to activate the plugin on your site.
Afterwards, you will be redirected to the plugin’s dashboard.
Step II: Create SMS Alert Account
Now, to use the SMS Alert plugin, you need to connect it to your SMS Alert account. Creating an SMS Alert account is free, and you can sign up on the platform using your name, email address, and phone number.
After creating the account, they will send an OTP to your registered mobile number.
By entering the OTP, you can validate your account. Afterwards, you will be redirected to the SMS Alert dashboard.
Step III: Configure the Plugin to Work with the SMS Alert Gateway
They will share the login credentials on your registered email address. So, please open the email, and copy the username and password. Now, go to the SMS Alert plugin settings and paste it there. Once you have pasted the credentials, you can validate your account.
After successful validation, the general settings page will look like this:
Step IV: Send SMS Notifications
Under the WooCommerce tab, you can see multiple conditions you can use to send SMSs.
After modifying the settings, save the changes. From now on, every WooCommerce customer will get SMS notifications according to their order status updates. If you need to add more features like OTP logging in, you can customize it too.
That’s it!
This is how you can send SMS notifications from WooCommerce.
However, the free SMS Alert subscription comes with only 5 SMS credits. So, you might want to upgrade your subscription based on the required credits.
Conclusion
Sending order status updates via SMS is a common feature most eCommerce giants leverage. It will help the customer know where the package is without logging in to the system. Since it is easy to customize, you can also try it on your WooCommerce website. Thankfully, you can integrate your WooCommerce store with any SMS gateway service according to your requirements without writing a single line of code.
In this article, we have shown you three plugins that can be useful for WooCommerce SMS integration. They are:
- SMS for WooCommerce
- YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications
- SMS Alert Order Notifications
All three plugins come with easy customization options.
Afterwards, we used the SMS Alert Order Notifications plugin to send SMS to customers from WooCommerce. Once you have configured the plugin correctly, you can send SMSs to your customers automatically. You can also configure multiple conditions, and the plugin will act accordingly.
Overall, WooCommerce SMS notifications are a great way to boost the user experience and improve conversions.
We hope you have found this article helpful and learned how to send SMS notifications from WooCommerce. Please share this article if you found this helpful. Also, let us know about your experience in the comments below.
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