Installing WooCommerce is an exciting moment. Suddenly, you’re turning WordPress into a powerful ecommerce store.

Your immediate focus might be on the new Products area of your WordPress dashboard, but the WooCommerce backend includes quite a few elements you need to be aware of.

From better store management to preparing for the worst, take the time to explore your backend settings to ensure your storefront is perfect for your customers at all times.

1. Setting Up Security

When you’re setting up an ecommerce store, security must be a priority. A single security incident could ruin your site’s reputation permanently and risk the personal identities of your customers. WooCommerce is for creating online stores, not securing them. This is why you have to take steps to secure your WooCommerce backend.

WooCommerce has multiple recommendations for securing your store immediately after installing WooCommerce, including:

• Use a secure host
• Use strong passwords
• Enable two-factor authentication
• Use security plugins, such as Jetpack Protect
• Secure FTP directories
• Keep WooCommerce, WooCommerce plugins and WordPress up to date

2. Checking Your Stats

By default, your WooCommerce backend gives you access to numerous reports to see how your store is performing. The Reports section of WooCommerce gives you insight into order histories, order trends, individual product sales, coupon/discount performance, how many guests versus customers and much more.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your store, give the reports a try. They make it much easier to turn your online store into a success.

3. Clearing Your Caches

WooCommerce caches data for multiple parts of your store, such as shipping rate calculations. Over time, this data builds up and slows down your site. While you might have set up a caching solution for WordPress, you might not have done the same for WooCommerce.

Under the System Status section of WooCommerce, use the Tools tab to clear out individual caches. This boosts speed and performance, which makes customers happier.

4. Maintaining Your System

Just like with anything else on your website, you have to do some general maintenance on WooCommerce from time to time. The WooCommerce backend has built-in maintenance and troubleshooting tools. For instance, the cache clearing feature above gives you the tools you need to regularly clean the cache.

The System Status area of WooCommerce is designed to help you quickly uncover issues and see if everything’s performing correctly. Run a system report to check critical details about your site and to help WooCommerce support staff help you fix any problems as quickly as possible.

If the worst happens, there’s also an option to reset everything back to defaults. This is perfect if you made numerous changes and suddenly nothing works right.

5. Customising Backend Features

The Settings area of WooCommerce is one of the areas you’ll want to change as quickly as possible. You might be more interested in the storefront, but the WooCommerce backend is where you customise all the options that ensure purchases calculate correctly, customers are notified of orders and products ship using the chosen method.

While there are numerous options to customise, you usually don’t change them much after the first time. However, it is vital to go through every option to ensure your store runs smoothly. Some of the areas where you might want to make changes include:

• General settings, such as your store’s home location and base currency
• Setting up the option to allow product reviews
• Calculating taxes and shipping
• Customising the checkout process
• Customising the customer account page
• Choosing which emails to send and when

6. Increasing WooCommerce Functionality

Another area you might frequent, especially at first is the Add-Ons area of the WooCommerce backend. This is where you can quickly find and manage extensions for WooCommerce, such as accepting various payment methods or offering shipping through different companies.

7. Clearing Out Excess

While you already know about caching, that’s not the only excess that slows down your WooCommerce store. Having too many extensions can drastically slow down not only WooCommerce, but WordPress in general. Start by checking your WooCommerce Add-Ons area to see if there are any extensions you don’t need. Remove any old ones to help speed up performance.

You should also remove any WordPress plugins and themes that you no longer use. These can negatively affect your entire site, including WooCommerce functionality.

8. Enabling Backups

WooCommerce doesn’t come with a way to back up your site. While this might not seem related to the WooCommerce backend, you should ensure your WordPress backup solution includes all your WooCommerce directories too. Should the worst happen, you’ll be able to restore your store and get back to your customers quickly.

Interested in using WooCommerce to open your own ecommerce store? Contact me today to find out how I can help.

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Your ecommerce site has to make a great first impression. Otherwise, shoppers won’t stick around to see what you’re selling.

Without some vital features, shoppers tend to get disappointed and move on to the competition. Luckily, a few tweaks to your website is all it takes to give consumers what they expect and more.

While having wonderful and useful products does help, your website determines whether anyone sees those products.

1. Simple Shopping Cart

No one likes a complex checkout process. Imagine if you had to fill out multiple pages of long forms before you could pay for your items in a brick and mortar store. You’d likely leave instead of dealing with the hassle. The average shopping cart abandonment rate is over 69%. While part of that is because shoppers just aren’t ready to buy yet, 37% abandon because they don’t want to create an account and 28% believe the checkout process is too complicated.

Keep things simple and offer a guest checkout option. Those two things will boost conversions.

2. Fast Loading Pages

Online shoppers aren’t the most patient. After all, they shop online because it’s faster and more convenient. If your ecommerce site takes too long to load, they’ll move on. This includes product pages that are full of images. According to Google, two seconds or less is the optimal page loading speed. The faster your pages load, the happier consumers will be.

3. SSL

No one wants to enter their personal details on a site that doesn’t make security a priority. If your ecommerce site isn’t using SSL, shoppers will look elsewhere. They just don’t want to risk compromising their identity. SSL certificates are an easy way to encrypt data on your website and keep shoppers safer.

4. Easy To Use Navigation

Navigation is a crucial element for any website. With ecommerce sites, it’s important for helping consumers find exactly what they’re looking for. This includes having an obvious search function. If your menu is buried or has too many sub-menus, it could be too difficult to use. The idea is to make it easy and enjoyable for shoppers to find products. The easier it is, the more likely they are to buy.

5. Noticeable CTAs

Far too many ecommerce sites have a beautiful product page that goes into infinite detail on features and benefits. However, that page is missing something – a noticeable call to action. The “buy” button might be tucked off to the side or blend in with the background.

If there isn’t an obvious way to add something to an online cart, shoppers aren’t going to stay on your site. They want it to be obvious at first glance on how to buy the product(s) they’re viewing.

6. Clear Product Images/Videos

A single product image isn’t always enough. Ecommerce shoppers want the digital version of a brick and mortar shopping experience. This means they want to see products from every angle. Add multiple, clear images of every product and allow shoppers to zoom in to see details clearly.

You could even add videos that show products in action. This helps consumers see if the product is right for them. Just be sure that videos and images are compressed for the web to avoid long page loading times.

7. Responsive Design

Your shoppers aren’t just coming from desktops and laptops anymore. The majority may be shopping from their phones and tablets. Is your ecommerce site ready for that? If your site isn’t ready to support a mobile audience, you could be losing customers. Many WordPress themes are designed to be mobile-friendly. Use this to your advantage to create a site that works on any device.

8. Personalisation

One of Amazon’s best features is personalisation. It’s also how they keep consumers coming back. If possible and relevant to your site, incorporate personalisation to recommend related products. If shoppers are logged in, add a welcome message to the header and recommend products based on past purchases. It’s a simple feature, but highly effective.

9. Simple Design

Intricate designs might sound good on paper, but in reality, they’re difficult to use. Complex designs often create cluttered pages and make it impossible to see navigational elements, product images, and shopping carts. It’s better to use a simple design with ample white space to ensure consumers are able to interact easily.

10. Engaging Product Pages

Finally, shoppers expect engaging product pages from your ecommerce site. This means uncluttered pages filled with product images, videos and details. Place the most important details and images near the top. After all, an infinite product page is just annoying.

Are you ready to give your customers everything they expect from your site? Contact me today to learn more about my website development services.

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