A Quick Guide to WooCommerce and Zapier Integration

Running an online store is tough. You’ve got to work hard to attract customers, process orders, and take care of inventory. Then, there are things like invoicing,  emails, and dozens of others that you’ve got to deal with. And sure, WordPress-based platforms like WooCommerce make day-to-day management easier. But they can’t do all the work for you. 

Luckily with Zapier, you can automate a great share of the repeatable, time-consuming work. In this article, we’ll look at how you can integrate WooCommerce with Zapier and make your store (and business) management easier.

But first, let’s look at why you should choose WooCommerce for your online store!

Why Use WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a popular open-source eCommerce platform. It’s built on top of WordPress – one of the most intuitive and powerful content management systems. This gives its users access to the entire WordPress ecosystem with all its great themes and plugins.

Thanks to that anyone, even with little technical knowledge, can build an online store and sell their products. If we consider how easy it is to get started with WooCommerce, it’s no surprise that today it’s the leading eCommerce platform. In fact, it’s  powering almost 1 in 4 online stores (23.43%)! 

On its own, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. However, over the years, developers created hundreds of WooCommerce-friendly themes and extensions. All that makes it one of the most powerful and easiest to customize eCommerce platforms out there. 

And, adding Zapier to the mix can make WooCommerce even more powerful – here’s why.

Why Integrate WooCommerce with Zapier

There are several benefits to integrating WooCommerce with Zapier. And while some are more obvious than others, here are the most important ones:

– Save MASSIVE Amounts of Time

This is by far the main benefit of Zapier and WooCommerce integration. By using Zapier to connect WooCommerce with other third-party tools, you can automate dozens of processes in your business. This can save literally hours of your and your team’s time every month.

And, what’s most important – it allows you and your team to focus on what you’re good at. Thanks to that, you can significantly increase the ROI that you get out of every hour you and your team spend on your business. 

– Spend More Time on Marketing

Connecting WooCommerce with other tools using Zapier can significantly reduce your workload. This gives you and your team more time to focus on attracting new customers.

In the long run, this can have an interesting snowball effect. In theory, the more time you can spend on marketing, the more sales you can drive. This helps you grow your business faster, allowing you to invest even time (and money) in marketing. You see where this is going, right?

– Avoid Human Error

One of the biggest benefits of automation is that it always does exactly what it’s set to do. So, as long as you set everything up correctly, the risk of an error is significantly lower compared to having a human do the same job.

Not saying that computers are better than humans. But, when it comes to manual, tedious, and boring tasks, we’re just more prone to making an error.

Zapier automation will do whatever it’s pre-programmed to do, every time you ask it to. No questions asked.

– Keep Your Data Accurate

Data is gold. With Zapier, you can easily upload your WooCommerce customer data to your central data hub. This alone is essential if you want to get the most out of your marketing (think e-mail marketing). But, not only that.

For example, you can also easily send all orders to a Google spreadsheet, allowing you to generate accurate reports in seconds. Plus, you can use automation to keep track of your stock.

This allows you to let your customers know it’s time to buy with an automated reminder. It also allows you to refill the stock before you run out.

There’s even more you can do with a Zapier and WooCommerce integration. We’ll get to Zap examples in a minute. But first, let’s look at how you can connect the two.

How To Integrate WooCommerce With Zapier

There used to be a couple of free WordPress plugins that you could use to connect WooCommerce with Zapier.

Sadly, all but one haven’t been tested with the last three major releases of WordPress. A great example of such a plugin is WPFlyLeads. The plugin allowed you to send your WooCommerce leads to Zapier or Integromat:

Then, there are robust WordPress automation plugins, such as AutomatorWP or Uncanny Automator. The latter offers quite a long list of the things that WooCommerce can “use” to trigger its workflow. When setting such a Workflow, all you need is to set its second step to Zapier to integrate your WooCommerce site with it.

Note that the below list is not exhaustive and there’s a whole lot more:

The problem with the UncannyAutomator plugin is that the best triggers are only available in its pro plan, which costs $199 per year. It’s also quite complicated and can feel like an overkill for what we want to do.

But, that’s where the official WooCommerce and Zapier plugin comes to save the day.

The plugin isn’t free and costs $59 per year. But as it’s dedicated to WooCommerce, you avoid most compatibility issues.

This significantly increases the chance that all Zaps fire exactly when you want them to. Which is an important thing to look at when deciding on what tools to use in your automation stack.

Not only that. The plugin doesn’t just allow you to send data from WooCommerce to Zapier. As it supports a two-way integration, it allows you to update data in WooCommerce with Zapier actions! This alone can take your automation to a whole new level.

How to Install the WooCommerce Zapier plugin? Thankfully, once you buy the plugin, all you need to do is upload it to your site just like any other WordPress plugin. If you’ve never uploaded a plugin before, in your WordPress dashboard go to Plugins > Add New. There, click “Upload Plugin” and then “Choose File” from the menu that appears.

Navigate to the plugin file and select it. Once that’s done, hit “Install Now” and wait for the plugin to get added to your site. 

Of course, you’ll also need to sign up for a Zapier account (if you don’t have one). For most automations, the Starter Plan at $29.99/month will suffice. There’s a free plan, but it only allows you to create single steps Zaps. Sadly, that’s not enough to get the most out of Zapier and WooCommerce integration.

Once you have a Zapier account in place, let’s look at what you can automate.

Ideas for Your WooCommerce and Zapier Integration

Let’s look at workflows that are possible with the use of the official WooCommerce and Zapier integration plugin. 

Some of the things that you can use in your triggers and actions include:

– Trigger the workflow on new, updated or deleted orders, subscriptions, bookings, or products.

– Use the two-way automation to automatically update or create orders, coupons, customers, and product data. 

– Find coupons, customers, orders, products, bookings, and subscriptions and send their data to third-party tools.

The good news is that the WooCommerce Zapier plugin is compatible with most WooCommerce extensions. This includes Bookings, Subscriptions, Gravity Forms, Product Add-ons, and many more. 

Now, let’s look at what extensions you can set up to get the most out of your WooCommerce integration with Zapier. 

1. Add New WooCommerce Customers to an Airtable Database

I’m a big fan of using Airtable as your business’ go-to data hub – no matter the size. First, having a centralized place where you keep your data gives you more control over your automation.

Not to mention that it’s just safe to keep your data in a place that’s designed specifically for that. Sure, you could send all emails to Mailchimp or Activecampaign. But what if you want to send it to another tool? With Airtable, you can then quickly lookup for a record in Zapier and trigger any automation you need.

Of course, you may say that a Google Spreadsheet is just as good. The problem with spreadsheets is that usually too many people tinker with them. As a result, it’s not uncommon for team members to (accidentally) break the automation or even delete customer data. 

And it’s not like Airtable will cost you a fortune. It’s free up to 1,200 records per base. This is more than enough to get your eCommerce business going. Then, it costs just $10 and $20 for 5,000 and 50,000 records per base.  

The main automation you should set up? Simply set it to create a new record with data of a new customer:

You can also set it to update an existing record (if it exists), counting all orders or money spent per customer. And, if the record does not exist yet, you can easily set Airtable to create one right when editing the automation.

2. Send Order Data to Google Sheets

Now, just because I like to emphasize the benefits of keeping data in Airtable over Google Sheets, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the latter at all.

I don’t recommend keeping key business data, such as customer details, in a spreadsheet. But order data? Google Sheets is the way to go!

By adding order data to Google Sheets, you can create reports and calculate the most important KPIs for your business. 

For more accurate data collection, you may also want to try the Line Item in an Order trigger:

Once you collect enough data, you can track trends, create simulations, or find top-performing products. The possibilities are endless. The key is to use automation to free up your time for that high-level brainstorming.

And, don’t forget that you can reuse the data from that Google Sheets spreadsheet in other workflows!

3. Send Lead Data to Your Favorite Autoresponder (And Trigger Campaigns)

It doesn’t matter if you’re using Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or any other email marketing platform. With Zapier, you can connect any autoresponder to your workflow.

The most popular integration is the one where you create or update a contact whenever someone makes a purchase on your website. 

This doesn’t just include adding a new email address to your database. Other things that you could automate with WooCommerce, Zapier, and your autoresponder include:

• Moving someone who made a repeat purchase into the right segment.
• Tagging someone who ordered a product from a specific category.
• Deleting a user from the database when they remove their account at your WooCommerce store. 
• Triggering an upsell campaign for specific products.
• Sending an abandoned checkout email

Of course, there’s plenty more you could automate that doesn’t include your customer as a trigger. For example, you could send promotional emails whenever you add new products to your inventory. With Zapier and WooCommerce integration, the world is your oyster! 

4. Create a Task in Your Favorite Project Management Tool

If your orders require human attention, you can use Zapier to create and assign tasks to your team members whenever there’s a new order. And, let’s face it – unless you’re selling digital products or you’ve automated everything including packaging, they probably do. 

Of course, the choice of a PM tool is totally up to you. Thankfully with Zapier, you have access to dozens of different apps – including my favorite, ClickUp:

And, don’t forget that you don’t have to restrict yourself to creating a new task whenever there’s a new order. 

As always, the number of things you automate is up to you. You could even create automated checklists or assign task templates to the more demanding tasks. 

5. Go Beyond Emails with Automated Text Messages

Thanks to a WooCommerce Zapier integration, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just email. Sure, it’s an amazing marketing channel. But why stop there? 

With Zapier, you can connect your WooCommerce store with a text messaging tool like Twilio. Then, you can set it to automatically send a text message whenever there’s a status order update:

Of course, you can also use this integration to send promotional text messages too. Got a new coupon? Let your audience know about it in an instant with text!

The key to success here is the same as with email – don’t overdo it not to make customers block you. 

And, keep in mind that since SMS is a more sensitive channel, you can’t send as many text messages as you can emails. 

 6. Automate Feedback Collection

eCommerce stores thrive on customer feedback and reviews. You need that feedback to improve your customer service, find new products, and build trust.

The problem? 

Customers rarely leave them on their own. By using Zapier, you can automatically ask people to review your purchase in one of the popular review sites such as Trustpilot.

Of course, you don’t have to restrict yourself to using Zapier and Trustpilot. You can use other sites such as Google Reviews. And, let’s not forget that product reviews that customers leave on your WooCommerce site are just as important. 

With Zapier, you can create workflows that’ll ask people to come back to your store, leave a review and… possibly make another purchase! 

Of course, don’t forget to offer your customers a little incentive… I’m looking at the coupon WooCommerce Zapier trigger, of course! 

 Common Problems with WooCommerce and Zapier

Being able to use WooCommerce with a tool like Zapier to automate your entire workflow is a great time saver. However, keep in mind that there are a couple of problems that you should be aware of. The two most common ones include:

No Line Items Support in Both Trigger and Action

Your automation works by sending data from one tool to another. The problem is, some of the WooCommerce triggers use the so-called Line Items as their output. 

Line Items are Zapier’s special field that acts as an array and contains a list of multiple items.

The thing is, if your action step app doesn’t accept line items, the Zap won’t work. 

Thankfully, Zapier offers a solution to most formatting problems known as Formatter. If needed, simply add it as an extra step to convert line items to text. You can find it in Formatter > Utilities > Line-item to Text: 

WooCommerce Doesn’t Send Data to Zapier

The second common problem relates to Zapier having problems with sending data to WooCommerce. If you can’t send data, the Zap won’t trigger. To solve this problem, try one of the following:

• Double-check that the Zap is set correctly and active (sounds silly but it happens!) 

• Check if your WooCommerce Zapier plugin is up to date. An outdated plugin may cause the Zap to stop working. 
• Make sure that your site isn’t in maintenance mode. The mode may block outgoing connections between WooCommerce and Zapier.
• Similarly, verify that the connections aren’t blocked by your server. If that’s the case, you might have to reach out to your hosting provider. 

If none of the above helps, you may have to create a ticket and contact WooCommerce support directly. 

Integrate WooCommerce with Zapier (and Other Tools) Today

Zapier and WooCommerce are a powerful duo. One that can give any eCommerce entrepreneur a major competitive advantage. The connection doesn’t just save you time, but can help you offer your audience a much better experience. 

And, most importantly, it lets you and your team focus on what you do best – growing your business. 

If you want to start automating your WooCommerce business and have more time on things that matter, I can help. Visit this page to schedule a quick discovery session and let’s discuss your Zapier problems and ideas.