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How to Recover Abandoned Carts in WooCommerce?

It’s not uncommon for ecommerce shoppers to abandon carts. You may not know it, but your store might also be suffering from carts being abandoned. This problem can be addressed however. To start, you must determine why your customers abandon their carts.

Why online shoppers abandon carts and what you can do about it?

There are various reasons why online shoppers abandon their carts. We lay out the most common ones and what you can do to address them.

Checkout is Too Complicated

Your customers will nitpick and that is to be expected. When you make your customers jump hoops during checkout, you’re not doing them a favor. Your checkout should be quick and straightforward. If you must add some other stuff that will complicate checkout, consider if you can add it on the thank you page instead. The thank you page is the page where the customer is redirected to after making a successful purchase. If you need help tweaking your thank you page, the Wooassist team can help.

Users Need to Create an Account to Check Out

Internet users are already burned out having to create an account for each internet service that they use. Don’t add to that burden. Don’t force your customers to create an account if it’s not necessary. To enable guest checkouts on WooCommerce, go to your WordPress Dashboard, click on WooCommerce > Settings. Under the Account and Privacy tab, enable “Allow customers to place orders without an account”. You can tweak other account related settings here to your liking.

Too Many Checkout Form Fields

The default WooCommerce checkout page is good enough as it is. There is no need to add more fields unless necessary. If you’ve edited your checkout page before to add some unnecessary fields, look into it and consider removing it.

Unexpected Charges

Customers will abandon your checkout when they see the shipping fee. No one will force you to offer free shipping if it will make your business unsustainable. There are however some things that you can do to reduce abandoned carts as a result of shipping and other fees. People now are more accepting of shipping fees. For other fees, be transparent from the get-go. If you charge taxes, handling fees, and other fees, make it clear starting from the product page that you charge these fees. If they are suddenly greeted by these fees on checkout, it will look like unscrupulous practice.

Too Many Clicks to Checkout

Reducing cart abandonment is all about simplifying your product purchase process. Ideally, it should not take more than three clicks for a customer to check out. If it takes four clicks to check out, that is one click too many. Get rid of unnecessary barriers to completing checkout.

Don’t Make it Hard to Contact You

Some of your prospective customers will look for your contact details before they make a purchase. If they added a product to their cart but could not find your contact information or even a contact us page, there is a high likelihood that that user will abandon that cart. To prevent this from happening, make sure you have a contact us page. Even better, if you can add your email or phone number on your WooCommerce store’s header.

Payment Issues

Another common reason for abandoning shopping carts is payment issue. When the customer tries to pay for his/her order and it fails, you can bet that cart will be abandoned. The solution here is simple. Offer more than one mode of payment. Some common payment channels you can use are Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Square.

Other Things You Can Do to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Show Security Certificates

To be able to sell your products or services online, you’ll need to be able to establish that you are trustworthy. You can show security certificates and security seals on your checkout page to improve your trust rating. Some security seals that you can add to your site as Norton, McAfee and TRUSTe.

Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping can significantly reduce your cart abandonment rates. However, not every business can make a profit when offering free shipping. As an alternative, you can offer free shipping when your customers meets a required minimum order value or quantity. This strategy can also help improve your average order value.

Offer a Money-Back Guarantee

Most consumer laws dictate that you should have a return policy anyway. So there’s no reason not to do it. Making your money-back guarantee known shows your prospective customers that you have faith in the quality of your product or service. Don’t worry about the people that might abuse your money-back guarantee. It hardly ever happens. And if it happens a lot, the problem might be your product.

Improve Your Page Load Speeds

If your site is slow, some of your prospective customers might get frustrated and abandon their carts. Make sure your site is fast.

How to Recover Abandoned Carts

There are many ways to recover abandoned carts. Some of the more common methods are remarketing and abandoned cart emails.

Using Remarketing to Recover Abandoned Carts

There are many platforms that you can use for remarketing. Essentially, remarketing works by saving a cookie on the user’s browser so you can show them your tailored ads. Neil Patel details how you can use remarking on Adwords to recover abandoned carts. Facebook is another platform that you can use for remarketing. SproutSocial details how to use remarketing on Facebook.

Using Abandoned Cart Emails to Recover Abandoned Carts

Abandoned cart emails send your customers a reminder email if they did not complete their purchase. For guest checkouts, this requires that the user must at least have entered his/her email address. This won’t be an issue if you require your customers to register before making a purchase. Do note however that requiring customers to create an account may hurt your conversion rates. There are a lot of abandoned cart email plugins that work for WooCommerce, you just have to find the plugin that works for your needs.

Recover abandoned carts and improve your sales by implementing these strategies. If you have any questions, you can post a comment below. If you need help setting up abandoned cart emails or anything else, you can send us email.

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How to Increase Conversion Rate By Adding WooCommerce Side Cart Plugin

Did you know that you can increase conversion rates by adding the WooCommerce Side Cart plugin to your website?

Improving the customer journey in your WooCommerce is a great way of boosting your conversion rate and this simple plugin gets the job done by adding an intuitive site-wide cart icon to your WooCommerce store. When you click on the icon, it brings up a view of your cart. When checking the cart contents, your customers don’t need to leave the page they are on which makes for great user experience.

Our Own Experience

We tested the plugin on GardenWare among others, but here’s how it looks on GardenWare. You can tweak the look to fit your brand with some custom CSS. You can adjust the position of the cart icon depending on your needs. You can also remove items or add quantity without refreshing the page.

Increasing Conversion Rate

After installing the plugin on Gardenware, we took the data after 3 months.

To account for seasonal data, we compared the data with the same months of the previous year, and we get an increase in conversion rate of almost 10%.

It is important to note that improving the customer journey and user experience leads to more conversions. From our user testing, the plugin does help improve user experience by a great deal.

How to Install and Set Up WooCommerce Side Cart

To get more conversions by using the WooCommerce Side Cart, you have to first install the WooCommerce Cart plugin. You can download the plugin here or search for it from the plugin repository. 

We recommend testing this first on a development site to make sure the plugin does not conflict with any other plugin you are using. It’s a good idea to extensively test your product purchase process to make sure there are no issues.

After installing and activating the plugin, click Woo Side Cart from your WordPress Dashboard to see the plugin settings. You can tweak the settings based on your needs.

You can also tweak the CSS to make sure the sidebar cart colors and style fit your branding strategy.

Should you need assistance with setting up and customizing the plugin, we can help. Or if you have any questions, you can let us know in the comments.

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How to Find and Remove Abandoned Plugins from Your WooCommerce Store to Keep Your Site Secure

You probably already know that keeping your site updated is important for security and to keep everything running. But did you know that just updating your WordPress core, themes and plugins might not be enough? What else should you be doing? You should find and remove abandoned plugins.

WordPress does not automatically warn users using a plugin when plugins are abandoned by their developers. This is important because when developers abandon their, they do not receive updates. This includes critical security updates and other updates to make sure that the plugins stay compatible the current versions of WordPress and WooCommerce and your theme.

Why is it Important to Find Abandoned Plugins?

Abandoned plugins are critical security issues as they are likely to contain deprecated code and vulnerabilities that may be exploited by hackers. Abandoned plugins can also break functionality on your WooCommerce. Your lucky if it breaks a layout or something else minor. In some cases, abandoned plugins can affect your product purchase process. Imagine breaking your WooCommerce store’s checkout because of an abandoned plugin.

How to Find Abandoned Plugins?

You can search for abandoned plugins manually by going to your plugins page and clicking on the “View Details” link on each plugin. Clicking on this link would take you to a different page and your next action would depend on where the link takes you.

If the plugin is not in the plugin repository, you might find a different link to visit the plugin’s site.

It Takes You to a Page with the Plugin Details

If you got the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository, you will most likely be taken to a plugin page with all the plugin details. There you can see when the plugin was last updated. You should be wary of plugins that have not been updated for several months. If you find that the plugin has not been updated in over a year, note it down.

It Takes You to a Page that Tells You that Plugin Has Been Remove From the WordPress Repository

If you find yourself on a page that tells that the plugin has been removed from the WordPress plugin repository, this is a major red flag. There are several reasons why a plugin could be removed from the repository. The less alarming reasons are if the plugin author has requested removal of the plugin or there are some licensing issues. However, in some cases, it would be because the plugin has violated the WordPress Plugin Guidelines or has been identified to have a security vulnerability severe enough to warrant a removal. If this is the case, remove the plugin immediately and scan your site for malware.

It Takes You to a Third-Party Plugin Vendor’s Site

If clicking on the link takes you to a plugin vendor’s site, you might need to do some further digging to find if the plugin is still being updated. Search for the developer’s change logs on the plugin to see when it was last updated. It might also be worth checking how often the plugin developers release an update. Also check if you have the latest version of the plugin installed. If it is a premium plugin, there is a likelihood that you are not getting automatic updates because of an expired license. In this case, renew your license and update.

It Takes You to a 404 Error

If it takes you to a page with a 404 error page, check the site’s home page and try to find information on your plugin. The plugin developers may have already gone out of business which means the plugin has been abandoned.

As you are probably thinking by now, scanning your site for abandoned plugins can be a handful. Thankfully, you can use WordFence to scan your site for abandoned plugins. Just install the WordFence plugin and run a scan, if there are any abandoned or outdated plugins on your site, WordFence should alert you of it.

So You Found One or More Abandoned Plugins on Your Site. What now?

In a perfect world, you just remove abandoned plugins and be done with it. However, things are usually more complicated than that. Chances are you are actively using the plugin and you might not be noticing any problems with it. But that doesn’t make the plugin any less of a security threat. We recommend removing the plugin and finding an alternative plugin that is not abandoned. If there are no alternatives available, you can customize the functionality instead. These should all be done on a staging site so as not to disrupt your live site.

But What if the Plugin is Critical to Your Site Functionality?

There’s not really much you can do in this case. You can try to contact the plugin developer or hire a developer to create your own plugin. It is most likely a bigger risk to your business if you keep using an unstable and unsecure plugin. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you will be liable to your customers if their data gets leaked because of a security breach. The fines are hefty so it might be best to err on the side of caution.

If you’ve fixed all the abandoned plugins on your WooCommerce store, you might want to keep yourself updated on the latest security news concerning WordPress and WooCommerce. You can subscribe to our newsletter to receive security updates on your inbox.

If you are looking for more things to do to make your site more secure, you can also check if your site is running the latest version of PHP.

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How to Install an SSL Certificate on Your WooCommerce Store

For WooCommerce stores, an SSL certificate plays a huge role in securing sensitive data for your users particularly their credit card details and other payment information. Having a secure WooCommerce store builds your customers’ trust. Without trust, the visitor will not convert. If you are serious about your e-commerce business, you should take the necessary steps to secure your site.

What is SSL?

SSL stands for secure sockets layer. It is a type of security that handles the encryption of data before they are sent to the internet. Encryption locks data to avoid unauthorized use. Data sent via SSL must be decrypted for the content to be readable.

Why is SSL a Requirement for Accepting Credit Card Payments?

Connections that use plain Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (http) are sending data in plain text. Data will pass through a lot of internet nodes and it is possible to intercept the data before it reaches the destination server. It is a security concern when sensitive data like credit card numbers are sent unencrypted.

Connections that check for an SSL certificate and encrypt data use https (secured http). Aside from encryption, SSL certificates also provide authentication. Trusted SSL providers will only issue an SSL certificate after several layers of identity checks. A green https address bar and a lock icon in it are the best indicators that a site has an SSL certificate and can be trusted. Your customers are less likely to fall for a scam because scammers will not have an SSL certificate in their sites. Also, users will see a warning in their browsers should they try to go to a website without proper SSL certificate using https.

Maintaining Your SSL

One downside of getting an SSL is the added administrative burden in terms of cost, paperwork, and third party verification. Once you get an SSL certificate for your e-commerce site, you must not neglect its renewal. Your WooCommerce store will get a red flag as an unsecure site if you have an expired SSL certificate. It’s scary enough that many users will tend to back off seeing your site as a security threat. If you neglect to renew your SSL, your organic traffic would suffer and you could be penalized by Google.

How to Choose an SSL Plan for WooCommerce

Scope of Validation

Basic SSL only provides security on the main domain. Wildcard SSL certificate secures a domain together with its sub-domains. If you have sub-domains like sports.example.com, shop.example.com, and news.example.com, go for a wildcard SSL certificate.

Types of Validation

Domain Validation

Domain Validation SSL certificate is cheaper than other certificates and issued within minutes. It only verifies the domain name and you do not need to provide any documents.

Organization Validation

This certificate validates that your business really exists. The validation process usually takes two to five business days. Your organization’s name will be displayed in the certificate which in turn earns your customer’s trust.

Extended Validation

An EV SSL certificate has the highest form of SSL certificate validation. Sites with EV SSL certification will have unique visual cues in them: a green https address bar and a lock icon in it. To get an Extended Validated SSL, an organization will have to complete a process defined by Certificate Authority (CA).

Choosing a reliable SSL certificate for your WooCommerce store is a matter of trust. You might choose to have an inexpensive yet relatively unknown certificate. Some of these inexpensive certificates are just as reliable as the expensive ones.

How to Acquire an SSL certificate

Installing an SSL on your e-commerce site can be really easy or quite frustrating, depending on your hosting provider. SSL installations require configuring the servers and hosting providers typically own the servers themselves.

There are two ways of getting an SSL certificate: buying from the hosting provider themselves or buying from a third party.

Buying from the hosting provider is the simplest way to get an SSL. The process differs from one hosting provider to another. But in most cases they will handle the installation themselves. All you have to do is fill out a form and accept the terms. In 1 to 2 days, you will get an email finalizing your SSL installation. Most of these SSL certificates are domain validation though.

If you want a higher type of validation, consider buying a certification from a third party. The process may vary with different SSL and hosting providers but here’s the general process that you need to follow:

Prepare your validating documents. Ask for a separate dedicated IP address from your hosting provider. Shared IP addresses aren’t allowed in SSL.

Generate the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from your web hosting server. It is best to ask your hosting provider to generate the CSR. The Certificate Authority will create your certificate based on the information contained in the CSR.

Submit the CSR and other validating documents to the Certificate Authority. Usually, your SSL provider will handle this for you.

Have your domain and company validated.

After receiving the SSL certificate, you need to upload it to your hosting account, then “turn it on” for the site you want to secure. Depending on the hosting server, you can do this in the cPanel. Alternatively, you can send a ticket on your hosting provider to do this for you.

If you are having problems with securing an SSL certificate it is best to get in touch with your hosting provider.

Now that you have a better understanding of SSL certificates, it’s time to get one for your site if you don’t already have one. If you have any other questions or if anything is not clear, let us know in the comments and we’ll do our best to help.

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Effective Strategies to Boost Customer Engagement with WooCommerce

In the ever-evolving landscape of eCommerce, where competition is fierce and consumer expectations are continually on the rise, engaging customers effectively has become more crucial than ever. With WooCommerce powering a significant portion of online stores, harnessing its potential to enhance customer engagement can significantly impact your business's success. Here are some actionable strategies to boost customer engagement and drive conversions using WooCommerce:

1. Personalized Shopping Experience

Leverage WooCommerce's capabilities to collect and analyze customer data, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and preferences.

Implement personalized product recommendations, tailored email campaigns, and targeted promotions based on individual customer interests and behaviors.

Utilize plugins like "WooCommerce Personalized Product Recommendation" to automate and streamline the process of delivering personalized experiences.

2. Interactive Product Visualization

Incorporate high-quality images, 360-degree views, and product videos to provide customers with a more immersive shopping experience.

Enable user-generated content such as product reviews, ratings, and customer photos to build trust and authenticity.

Explore augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to allow customers to visualize products in their real-world environments before making a purchase.

3. Seamless Omnichannel Integration

Ensure consistency across all touchpoints, including your website, mobile app, social media channels, and physical stores (if applicable).

Implement WooCommerce extensions that sync inventory, customer data, and orders across multiple platforms to provide a seamless omnichannel experience.

Enable features like "Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS)" and "Ship From Store" to offer flexible fulfillment options and enhance convenience for customers.

4. Social Commerce Integration

Integrate social media platforms with your WooCommerce store to enable social selling and capitalize on the power of social commerce.

Utilize tools like the "WooCommerce Instagram" extension to showcase product catalogs directly on Instagram and facilitate seamless shopping experiences.

Encourage user-generated content sharing, social sharing buttons, and social proof elements to leverage social influence and drive engagement.

5. Gamification and Loyalty Programs

Gamify the shopping experience by implementing loyalty points, rewards, challenges, and exclusive perks for repeat customers.

Integrate WooCommerce with gamification plugins like "WooCommerce Points and Rewards" to incentivize desired behaviors and increase customer retention.

Foster a sense of community by creating VIP tiers, referral programs, and user-generated content contests to encourage active participation and advocacy.

6. Responsive Customer Support

Provide responsive and personalized customer support through live chat, email, social media, and support tickets.

Integrate helpdesk solutions and CRM tools with WooCommerce to centralize customer inquiries, track interactions, and deliver timely resolutions.

Leverage chatbots and AI-powered customer service tools to automate routine inquiries and provide 24/7 assistance for improved customer satisfaction.

7. Continuous Optimization and A/B Testing

Regularly analyze website performance, user behavior, and conversion metrics using tools like Google Analytics and WooCommerce reports.

Conduct A/B tests on various elements such as product pages, checkout process, CTAs, and promotional strategies to identify what resonates best with your audience.

Iterate and optimize your eCommerce strategy based on insights gleaned from data analysis and experimentation to continually enhance customer engagement and drive business growth.

In conclusion, by leveraging the powerful features and flexibility of WooCommerce, eCommerce businesses can implement effective strategies to enhance customer engagement, foster brand loyalty, and ultimately drive conversions. By personalizing the shopping experience, embracing omnichannel integration, leveraging social commerce, gamification, and prioritizing responsive customer support, businesses can create meaningful connections with their audience and stay ahead in the competitive eCommerce landscape.

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5 Reasons Why Content Audits Are Invaluable for Your Business

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, maintaining a strong online presence is essential for businesses aiming to stay ahead of the curve. Amidst the plethora of strategies available, a content audit stands out as a fundamental yet often overlooked tool for success. Let's delve into five compelling reasons why a content audit is not just useful, but essential for any business striving to excel in the digital realm.

Insight into Content Performance

A content audit provides invaluable insights into the performance of your existing content assets. By systematically reviewing each piece of content, you can assess its relevance, engagement levels, and alignment with your business goals. Analyzing metrics such as page views, bounce rates, social shares, and conversion rates enables you to identify top-performing content that resonates with your audience and drives results.

Identification of Content Gaps and Opportunities

Conducting a content audit unveils gaps in your content strategy and untapped opportunities for growth. By analyzing your content inventory against your target audience's needs and preferences, you can identify areas where you're underrepresented or missing entirely. This insight empowers you to develop new content ideas, fill existing gaps, and tailor your content strategy to better serve your audience throughout their customer journey.

Optimization of Content for SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in driving organic traffic to your website. A content audit enables you to assess the SEO effectiveness of your existing content and identify areas for improvement. By analyzing keyword usage, meta tags, internal linking, and other SEO factors, you can optimize your content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more qualified traffic to your site.

Streamlining of Content Management Processes

Managing a large volume of content across various platforms can quickly become overwhelming without proper organization and governance. A content audit helps streamline your content management processes by providing clarity on what content exists, where it's located, and who is responsible for maintaining it. By establishing clear workflows, content calendars, and governance policies, you can ensure consistency, quality, and efficiency in your content production and distribution efforts.

Alignment with Business Objectives

Ultimately, every piece of content should serve a purpose in achieving your overarching business objectives. A content audit allows you to assess the alignment of your existing content with these objectives and make informed decisions about its relevance and effectiveness. By prioritizing content that directly supports your business goals and eliminating or updating content that doesn't, you can maximize the impact of your content marketing efforts and drive measurable results for your business.

Conclusion

In today's digital age, where content is king and competition is fierce, a content audit serves as a cornerstone for success. By providing insights into content performance, identifying gaps and opportunities, optimizing for SEO, streamlining content management processes, and aligning with business objectives, a content audit empowers businesses to elevate their content strategy, engage their audience, and achieve tangible results. Embrace the power of content audits as a strategic imperative for driving growth and staying ahead in the digital marketplace.

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Why is it Important to Keep Your PHP Version Updated?

The WordPress ecosystem is built on the PHP programming language. PHP is continuously being developed to improve security and make code execution faster among many other improvements.

PHP End of Life

At some point, a version of PHP will become obsolete which is referred to as the “end of life” of that version. This means that version of PHP will no longer receive any security fixes.

Unfortunately, many websites are still running on outdated PHP versions. All these websites are at risk.

According to WordPress statistics, 18.5% of WordPress sites are still running on PHP 5.6 or lower. Support for PHP 5.5 ended on December 2018. Another 34.7% of WordPress sites are running PHP 7.2, 7.1 and 7.0. Support for PHP 7.2 ended November 20,2020. That would make 53.2% of WordPress sites vulnerable to PHP exploits.

Source: WordPress.org

Why are Majority of WordPress Sites Running Outdated Versions of PHP?

Many users most likely don’t even know what PHP version they have since updating it is more complex than updating themes and plugins. Many non-technical WordPress users are wary of touching their hosting settings or cPanel. And for good reason. one wrong click on cPanel could cause your site to go down if you don’t know what you are doing. This seems to be the biggest barrier to adoption of newer PHP versions.

Some hosts are also slow to adopt and offer newer PHP versions. We recommend WPEngine and Siteground as they are quick on the uptake when it comes to PHP version offerings.

Why You Should Update

Better Security

The main reason that you should update your PHP is for security. As we have already mentioned, older PHP versions are no longer getting security fixes. That means known vulnerabilities are not being fixed on that version which leaves your site open to attacks.

Site Speed

Newer PHP versions will execute code faster so that means faster page load speeds. Faster page load speed means better user experience and good SEO signals. Site speed is an SEO ranking factor. So if you want to hit page one of Google search results, invest in site speed.

Ongoing Support

If you are running the latest PHP versions, you are protected from the latest known vulnerabilities. People work to fix security vulnerabilities in PHP when they come to light. The same goes for known bugs.

How Do You Check Your PHP Version?

Now you’re curious how to update your PHP version. First off, you have to find out what version of PHP you are using. There are several ways to check your PHP version. You can actually check on your WordPresh Dashboard.

Site Health Page

The Site Health page that you can access from your WordPress Dashboard contains a plethora of useful information that you can address to keep your site secure. You can reach it by going to Tools and then clicking on “Site Health”. Or you can just append your domain with:

WooCommerce Status Page

If you are using WooCommerce, you can also click on WooCommerce and then on Status. You can see your PHP version when you scroll down to the “Server environment” table.

There are other ways to view your PHP version but these are the easiest methods for WordPress users.

You Know What Version of PHP You are Running, Now What?

If you not running an outdated version of PHP, then you don’t need to do anything. If you find that your PHP version is outdated, there are a few things you need to do before you update your PHP version.

Create a staging environment. You can test all your updates here before updating your live site. You will, essentially, also need to test the PHP upgrade on a staging environment so this is a necessary step.

Create a backup of your site.

Update your WordPress core.

Update all your themes and plugins. If you are using premium themes and plugins, make sure you have an active license for everything so you can receive automatic updates.

Remove unused plugins.

Find and remove abandoned plugins. This could get complicated if your site relies heavily on an abandoned plugin. We have a separate guide for removing abandoned plugins.

Now You’re Ready to Upgrade Your PHP

We recommend letting a developer upgrade your PHP version in case something goes wrong or at least have a developer at your beck and call before you proceed.

How you upgrade your PHP depends on your hosting provider so you should consult your hosting provider’s documentation. You will most likely need to navigate cPanel or your hosting account’s dashboard. Some hosting providers will actually require you to create a support ticket to request a PHP upgrade.

Make sure you are testing the PHP upgrade on a staging environment first so you can sort any issues in a controlled environment.

Have your hosting provider’s contact information at the ready so you can reach out to them right away if you encounter a problem.

If you need technical help with any of the steps leading to the PHP upgrade or the actual upgrade, you can contact us.

If you have any questions, you can also let us know in the comments.

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Focus on Your Business: Let Wooassist Handle Your WordPress and WooCommerce Site Updates

Nowadays, a strong online presence is necessary if you want your business to be competitive. WordPress and WooCommerce have emerged as powerful tools to create and manage websites and online stores. However, the adage popularized by the Spider-Man movie rings true. With great power comes great responsibility. The responsibility lies in keeping up with your site updates and maintenance. Neglecting these vital aspects can lead to catastrophic consequences, including security breaches, performance issues, broken site functionality, and even site downtime.

We can help.

Wooassist offers you a lifeline in the form of our comprehensive WordPress/WooCommerce Site Updates Service.

The Cost of Neglecting Site Updates

Many website owners don’t pay attention to website updates, including WordPress Core updates, plugin updates, theme updates, and security checks. It’s easy to put them on the back burner, thinking they’re not as urgent as other business tasks. However, this negligence can prove to be a costly mistake.

When you neglect site updates, you leave your website vulnerable to security threats. Hackers are constantly on the lookout for outdated plugins or themes with known vulnerabilities that they can exploit. A security breach can compromise sensitive user data and damage your reputation and trustworthiness. When user data is compromised and not managed properly, this can even lead to litigation and hefty fines due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other pertinent laws.

Furthermore, outdated plugins and themes can lead to compatibility issues and break the functionality of your website. Your site may become slow, unresponsive, or even crash, driving away potential customers and hurting your SEO rankings. On the off chance that an outdated element breaks your site and you don’t have an available working backup, this can result in your website being offline for days while you scramble to find a solution to the problem. The financial impact of this happening could be significant.

The Wooassist Advantage: Your Guardian Angels

At Wooassist, we understand the importance of keeping your WordPress and WooCommerce websites up-to-date and secure. Our WordPress/WooCommerce Site Updates Service is designed to take the burden of updates and maintenance off your shoulders, allowing you to focus on what you do best – growing your business.

1. Update Frequency Tailored to Your Needs

We recognize that different websites have different needs. That’s why we offer flexible update schedules. Whether you prefer monthly updates, weekly check-ins, or bimonthly maintenance, we’ve got you covered. Our team of WordPress/WooCommerce experts will work closely with you to determine the right frequency for your site, ensuring it stays in top shape year-round.

2. Comprehensive Site Updates and Maintenance

Our service includes a wide range of essential tasks to keep your website in optimal condition. Here’s what you can expect when you choose Wooassist:

Site Backups

We’ll back up your website to ensure that your data is safe and secure. In the event of an unexpected issue, you can rest easy knowing that your site can be restored quickly. We will also set up scheduled backups so you have a recent restore point in case of any issues down the line.

Testing on Staging Site

Before applying any updates to your live site, we’ll thoroughly test them on a staging environment to identify and address any potential issues so they don’t affect your production site.

Fixing Update-Related Issues

We perform extensive user testing to identify if any problems arise during the update process. In case of any issues, our experts will swiftly address them, ensuring that your site remains functional and bug-free.

Security Checkups

We will perform an audit of your website’s security to identify and mitigate potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Abandoned Plugin Cleanup and Replacement

Unused and outdated plugins are a security risk. We’ll help you identify and remove any plugins that are no longer necessary, reducing your site’s attack surface. If such plugins are crucial to the functionality, we will find alternative plugins or implement a custom solution.

Site Speed/Performance Audit

A slow website can deter visitors and harm your SEO efforts. We’ll conduct regular speed and performance audits to ensure your site loads quickly and efficiently.

SEO Audit:

Search engine optimization is crucial for online visibility. We have expert tools that will analyze your site’s SEO performance and provide recommendations for improvement.

Additional Services as Needed

In addition to the standard maintenance tasks, we can also handle more advanced updates such as PHP version and other software upgrades. These updates are crucial for maintaining compatibility and security, and we’ll ensure they are executed seamlessly.

Invest in Your Website’s Future with Wooassist

Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. It’s your digital storefront, and its performance and security should never be compromised. With Wooassist’s WordPress/WooCommerce Site Updates Service, you can invest in the future of your website, ensuring that it remains secure, functional, fast, and user-friendly.

Say goodbye to the stress and hassle of managing site updates on your own. Let Wooassist be your dedicated partner in keeping your WordPress and WooCommerce site in top shape. Our team of experienced professionals is ready to provide you with the peace of mind you deserve, knowing that your online presence is in safe hands.

Don’t wait for a security breach or a website meltdown to take action. Contact us today to discuss your needs and let us tailor a maintenance that is aligned with your goals.

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How to Fix Your Website Structure

Have you ever considered looking at your WooCommerce store’s site structure? Probably not. After all, it doesn’t look like an urgent issue that warrants a lot of immediate attention. However, if your WooCommerce site suffers from poor structure, you could actually be hurting your SEO rankings. Odds are you are also making it difficult for your customers to navigate your site. In fact, depending on how bad your site structure is, it could be causing your customers a lot of frustration. You should make it a top priority to learn how to fix your website structure.

Why Should You Fix Your Site Structure?

If you know your site structure has problems, then do not delay. Address it right away so you can reap the benefits of following best SEO practices. If you are serious about getting on page of Google’s search results page, then you should not skimp on fixing your site structure. Not to mention, a good site structure will make it easier for your customers to navigate your site. This leads to good user experience which can increase your sales by as much as 30%.

What Does Good Site Structure Look Like?

Good site structure should look like a proper flow chart. The home page should have a link to all stand-alone pages this includes the about page, contact page, privacy policy page, pricing page, portfolio page, my account page, blog page, shop page and any other important pages.

Blog posts should make full use of blog categories and blog tags, if necessary. The same goes for products. Make full use of product categories and blog tags. Your blog categories and product categories should never have the same name as they will cannibalize each other. They will compete with each other for SEO rankings. Also, categories and tags should not be the same.

What You Should Do to Fix Site Structure?

Do a Content Audit

Before you go about fixing your WooCommerce store’s structure, it is important to understand your content. You can do a content audit to better understand your content assets and determine how to optimize your website’s structure. After doing a content audit and getting a clear picture of your content assets, the next step is to identify site structure problems.

Identify Site Structure Problems

Check and Fix Your Navigation Menu

Check all your navigation menus. From a user perspective, do they make sense? Do you use dropdown menus? More important menu items should go to your main navigation menu. Less important links to pages like Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Terms and Conditions should go to your secondary or footer menu. Having a privacy policy and cookie policy page is essential if you want to comply with GDPR regulations which you should.

You can even have people try using your site and ask them feedback about your site’s navigation.

What Should Be on Your Main Navigation

Your main navigation should contain your most important pages or all pages you want your visitors to have easy access to. We recommend your Shop Page, Blog Page, About Page, Contact Page, or depending on your business, a portfolio or pricing page.

Find 404 Errors

Isn’t annoying when you go a certain website, you click a link and then land at a 404 error page?

Google has been putting more attention on good user experience and having 404 errors on your website is not good user experience. Fixing 404 errors should be included in your website maintenance tasks. You can find 404 errors by using this Broken Link Checker tool. Once you determine which links lead to a 404 error, remove that link or point it to the appropriate page.

Redirect 404 Errors

In some cases, your broken links could be because of a change in your website’s URL structure. In this case, you might want to redirect all your all URLs to the new URLs. Make sure you use a 301 redirect. You can use the Redirection plugin to set up your redirects. For SEO purposes, it is important to set up a 301 redirect to tell search engines that the old page has been permanently moved to a new address.

Update or Remove Outdated Content

It is important for SEO to have fresh content so you should be updating your content regularly. In some cases, you might find that some of your old content may no longer be relevant so you can either update or delete that page. If you have updated content, you should redirect the deleted page to the updated content.

Make the Most of Your Internal Links

Proper internal linking creates a smooth flow between all your site’s pages. When you’re writing a blog post and you mention another blog post that is related to your current post, link to it. When you mention a specific page on your site, link to it. When you mention a specific product, link to it. Google appreciates good internal links.

Learn How to Properly Use Posts and Pages

Think of categories as a file cabinet where you place files that belong together so everything remains organized. So if a user is interested in a specific kind of product or blog post, the user can find them all in one place. Tags, on the other hand, are used differently. You can think of tags as the index section of a book. Properly tagging your posts and products makes it easier for users to find posts or products that mention a specific keyword or topic.

Should You Revise Your Categories?

If you found out that you’ve been using your categories all wrong and want to revise it to make it clearer, you should do it sooner rather than later. Making sure your category structure is optimum will go a long way in helping your SEO. Just make sure you properly redirect everything to the new URL.

Changing the Permalink Structure

By default, WordPress sets your permalink structure to something that is not optimal. It is ideal to have a custom structure or a post name structure. It should be one of the first things you should change when you create a new WordPress site. So if you didn’t do it before and now have hundreds of posts and pages, then changing your site structure could become a major issue.

When you change your site structure, you will lose many external links pointing to your site and that’s a big SEO disaster. You have to make sure you make proper 301 redirects to the new URLs.

It might be a lot of work but you will soon reap better SEO rankings. If you already have good content, the benefits of optimizing your permalink structure could be significant. This means you should not skip doing this.

Resubmit Your Site Map

When you finish all your site structure optimizations, you should resubmit your sitemap to major search engines. That would be Bing and Google. Resubmitting your sitemaps ensure that search engines index the changes in your site structure.

Have you checked your site structure lately? What problems did you find?

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Do This Right Now to Protect Your WooCommerce Website from Credit Card Attacks (And Save Yourself From Enormous Fees)

Website security is often one of the most overlooked aspects of owning a WooCommerce website, at least until the attacks succeed. One of the most worrying security risks over the last few months is the increase in the frequency of credit card fraud. The increase specifically comprises of card testing and bin attacks. In this article, you will learn how you can protect your WooCommerce website from credit card attacks.

What are Card Testing and Bin Attacks?

Card testing and bin attacks involve an attacker attempting a transaction on your website and testing thousands of credit card number combinations on your checkout page. They will keep doing this until they get a combination that works.

If an attack is successful, they will be able to commit fraud. But even if the attackers don’t succeed, it still doesn’t bode well for the website owners. You will get slapped with a hefty fee worth thousands of dollars by the credit card processor company themselves.

If this hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky as it already has to many other store owners. You can improve the security of your site so you don’t fall victim to card testing and bin attacks.

Standard Website Security

If you own a WooCommerce website, you should have already taken the standard security measures for your website. This includes keeping your plugins and themes updated, installing an SSL certificate, installing a security plugin, and other best practices. If you haven’t yet, you can check out these posts.

Secure Your WooCommerce Site

Increase the Security of Your WooCommerce Store

The Most Important Steps to Take Against Card Testing and Bin Attacks

Credit card processors will usually push the blame of the card testing and bin attacks to the business owner. However, they also have a responsibility to keep their own systems secure. Being financial organizations, credit card processors need to have the most secure systems.

Most merchant account owners would not be aware that card processors have additional security features. These can be configured to prevent card testing and bin attacks. This extra line of security is your best protection against credit card fraud.

3DSecure

While some of these features may bring some additional fees, enabling them is recommended. For example, one of these technologies is 3DSecure. This requires customers to complete an additional verification step for each credit card transaction. In theory, this should fully prevent any automated attacks. And even if an attack does get through, the credit card processor should no longer hold you liable for it.

Fraud Filters/Rules

Some credit cards processors would have other extra security features that don’t require any additional payment. One example is being able to configure simple rules to filter out suspicious card activity. For instance, you could filter out all transaction attempts outside of the countries you are servicing. That would already block most attackers.

You can also filter out transactions that have had a number of failed attempts within a short amount of time. This is called the velocity filter or rate-limiting. For example, you can filter out transactions with 5 failed attempts within 5 minutes. This results in the card processor rejecting further attempts. This won’t stop the attack entirely. However, it can reduce the number of attempts because the rejected combinations are now worthless to the attacker.

Know What Security Tools are Available to You as a Merchant

The most important thing is to know your credit card processor and the security features they have available. Contact them if necessary. If they don’t have any of these, then we strongly recommend switching to another company that offers better security.

Steps to Take on the Website Side to Prevent Card Testing and Bin Attacks

Once the credit card processor side of things has been sorted, next will be the website side. Proper defense against credit card fraud consists of measures taken on both the card processor and website site. To this end, we recommend a system with 3 lines of defense.

1. Install a Website Firewall

2. Add a Captcha

A captcha is a verification system designed to filter out bots from legitimate human users. It helps prevent bots from doing any malicious activity on your sites like submitting contacts forms, sign-up forms and even checkout forms.

Preventing bots from completing the checkout form is what we need against card attacks. While Captchas have a slight impact on user experience, they’ve continued to improve over the years. Google’s ReCaptcha v2 and v3 are among the best examples. Learn how to set up Recaptcha for WooCommerce here. And with that, your second line of defense is set.

Set Checkout Attempt Limit

In the unlikely chance that attackers bypass both the firewall and captcha, this next line of defense is designed to address the main problem. The main issue with card testing and bin attacks is the surge of transaction attempts sent over to the card processor. Similar to the velocity filter on the card processor side, you can set up a similar filter on the website side using the Woo Manage Fraud Orders plugin. You can set it up to automatically block the users that execute consecutive failed attempts at placing an order on your site. The plugin allows you to set a limit to the number of fraud attempts. For example, you can set this at 5 attempts. This way, 5 will be the maximum number of transaction attempts sent to the card processor and the attacker is permanently blocked from the website.

Conclusion

Credit card testing and bin attacks are on the rise. You can prevent it from happening to your site.

Make use of fraud prevention features on your credit card processor and implement our recommended security measures on the website side. Find out what anti-fraud measures are available to you as a merchant. These security tools will save you from being fined thousand’s of dollars. Contact your credit card processors to know what tools you can set up. Implement them. Then proceed to implement the security measures on the website next

If you need any assistance on the technical side, we can help. And if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

Disclaimer: Article contains affiliate links. When you buy through links from this article, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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How to Fix Any Issue in WooCommerce – A Step by Step Guide

Whether you’re having problems with your cart, your shipping, your payment gateway, your WooCommerce checkout, or any other aspect of WooCommerce, you can just follow these simple steps to fix most problems.

Step 1: Try to Recall What Recent Changes You Did to Your WooCommerce Site

The first step in trying to solve a problem in WooCommerce is to try to determine what had caused it. Sometimes problems arise when you make a change to your site which is why it is important to always create a backup when you make any changes. In some cases, you might not always notice the problem right away which is also why it is important to do some user testing when you make changes to your store.

Try to recall what changes you made recently. Did you change any settings? Did you add a new plugin? Did you remove any plugins? Did you add any code snippets? In many situations, you can resolve the issue by rolling back the recent changes you made.

Step 2: Revert to a Backup

Determine when was the last time your site was working and revert to a backup from that date. If the issue is with a theme or plugin conflict, however, the issue will most likely pop back when you update. Not updating is not an option. You will have to update eventually. Reverting to a backup is only a temporary solution if you need your site back working and fast.

Step 3: Update Everything

If remedying the recent changes you did does not solve the issue you are having, the next step would be to update your site. Update everything – WordPress Core, themes, plugins, WooCommerce template files, and also make sure you’re using a supported PHP version.

If you are using any premium plugin that has a subscription, make sure you have an active subscription so you can get the latest updates.

If the updates don’t do the trick, it is time to test for a plugin conflict. You’ll want to do this on a staging site so you don’t affect the functionality of your live site.

Step 4: Check for a Theme Conflict

On your staging site, switch to a default WordPress theme like Twenty-Twenty One. Test if the issue still persists. If the issue is resolved, then it is a conflict with your theme. You’ll want to pass this on to your developer to fix the issue with the theme or contact the theme developers to let them know of the issue so it can be fixed. If the issue still persists after changing the theme, then it’s time to check for a plugin conflict.

Step 5: Check for a Plugin Conflict

On your staging site, deactivate all your plugins except WooCommerce. Test if the issue persists. If the issue is resolved, it is time to identify which plugin is causing the issue. Activate your plugins one at a time. Every time you activate a new plugin, test if the issue returns. You’ll know if it’s the erring plugin if the issue pops back up after activating it. Once you’ve determined the problematic plugin, you can find a replacement plugin or reach out to the plugin developers so they can fix it.

If deactivating all your plugins does not fix the issue, then it is not a plugin conflict. You’ll have to explore other options.

Step 6: Check for Abandoned Plugins

WordPress will only alert you that you need to update a plugin when a new update is available. However, if a developer abandons a plugin or a plugin or it is removed from the plugin repository, WordPress will not alert you of this.

Over time, these abandoned plugins may stop working with future releases of WordPress and WooCommerce, and when that happens you’re going to have problems. These abandoned plugins can also become a backdoor for hackers.

WordFence can help you detect abandoned plugins. Just install WordFence and do a scan of your site. If for some reason you don’t want to use WordFence, you’ll have to check all your plugins manually. Just head to your plugins page and click on View Details for each plugin. Keep tabs on plugins that have not been updated in a few months. Odds are those plugins could be abandoned. Any plugin that have not been updated in over 6 months is most likely already abandoned. Consider removing the abandoned plugins you find and then test if the issue you are having disappears.

Step 7: Submit a Bug Report

If all the above steps do not yield anything, it could be a bug in WordPress or WooCommerce. If this is the case, the next step would be to report the bug and how it can be reproduced.

Or you can contact the Wooassist team. We can help diagnose and fix the issue for you.

You can also file a support ticket with WooCommerce if the issue involves a premium plugin. To save time, before you contact WooCommerce, make sure you do the above steps first. They’ll just ask you to do the same things we mentioned in this article before they help you out.

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Where to Hire a WooCommerce Developer?

If you own a brick-and-mortar store in this day and age and you don’t have an ecommerce presence, you’re really lagging behind. You can easily move your offline business online with WooCommerce. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. If you’re not a technical user, you need to know where to hire a WooCommerce developer.

Creating a simple ecommerce store with WooCommerce is easy and you can do it with very little technical know-how. However, if you want customizations done in your WooCommerce store, you’re going to have to hire a WooCommerce developer to do the customizations for you. 

And if you already have a WooCommerce store, you might sometimes need the help of a WooCommerce developer to fix any problems you might be having on your site. Having a WooCommerce developer at your beck and call can be a lifesaver. 

In this blog post, we will discuss where you can hire a WooCommerce developer who can help you build the ecommerce store of your dreams.

How to Find a WooCommerce Developer?

If you’re looking to hire a WooCommerce developer, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you’ll want to make sure that the developer has experience with both WordPress and WooCommerce. You can ask for referrals from other businesses who have used WooCommerce, or check out online portfolios and reviews.

Contact the developer to get a consultation. This will give you an opportunity to learn more about their experience and skills, as well as get a sense of their communication style.

It is important to agree on a price and the scope of the job before starting anything. Once you’ve found the right fit, you can rest assured that your WooCommerce project is in good hands.

What to Look for in a WooCommerce Developer?

When looking for a WooCommerce developer, it is important to consider their experience with the platform. A developer should have a good understanding of how WooCommerce works and be able to customize it to meet your specific needs.

It is also important that the developer has a good understanding of WordPress. WooCommerce is built on top of WordPress, so a good WooCommerce developer will first need to be familiar with WordPress.

Another thing to consider when hiring a WooCommerce developer is whether they are able to provide support after the project is completed. Many developers will only provide support for a limited period of time, so it is important to ensure that you are aware of this before hiring someone.

Finally, it is also worth considering the cost of hiring a WooCommerce developer. While there are many cheaper options available, it is important to remember that you get what you pay for. A cheap developer may not have the same level of experience or expertise as a more expensive one, so it is important to weigh all of these factors before making a decision.

How Much Does it Cost to Hire a WooCommerce Developer?

The cost of hiring a WooCommerce developer can vary depending on the size and scope of your project. If you are looking for a simple website with a few products, you can expect to pay around $500-$1,000. If you need a more complex website with multiple products and features, the cost can range from $2,000-$5,000 or more. Ultimately, the cost of hiring a WooCommerce developer will depend on your specific needs and requirements.

Things to Know Before You Hire a WooCommerce Developer

A WooCommerce developer can help get the job done, but you as a store owner should also do your own research. Get to know the platform. WooCommerce is great out of the box. It has most of the features you’ll need for standard ecommerce store operations. However, if you want customizations like memberships, subscriptions, affiliate programs, booking, dropshipping, product add-ons, and other integrations, this may entail additional costs in the form of plugins or custom development work.

It’s not uncommon for some store owners to make demands of their developers for things that cannot be accomplished from a technical standpoint. Sometimes store owners may request to add what they think are simple features but are actually quite troublesome (or even downright impossible) to implement for even the most experienced WooCommerce developers.

Be sure to discuss your project in detail with the developer so that they can give you an accurate quote. Any new features that are requested on top of the original quotation can be declined so it is important to get this out of the way. Should you want to add anything, that would entail a new quotation as a separate project.

Questions to Ask a Potential WooCommerce Developer

When looking for a WooCommerce developer, here are some important questions you might want to ask.

What experience do you have with WooCommerce?

What themes are you familiar with? Note: We recommend a WooCommerce developer familiar with the Storefront theme which is easily the best theme to use for WooCommerce. 

What WooCommerce plugins are you familiar with? Are you comfortable using WooCommerce Hooks? Note: Knowledge of WooCommerce Hooks is essential for making customizations to WooCommerce.

Have you developed any custom WooCommerce solutions before? If so, can you tell me about them?

How comfortable are you working with code that needs to be compatible with multiple browsers and devices?

Are you familiar with SEO best practices? Note: You may not want to pay for SEO services at this point in time but it is important to build a site with a good SEO foundation.

Hiring a WooCommerce Developer

Hire Wooassist for Experienced WooCommerce Developers

There are plenty of places where you can hire a WooCommerce developer and you’re already on one. We at Wooassist have been working with WooCommerce store owners for many years. We’ve helped hundreds of WooCommerce store owners get their stores up and running and even helped with many customizations to WooCommerce (including creating custom plugins).

Our WooCommerce developers have extensive experience with WooCommerce. Our developers live and breathe WooCommerce and we do this all at affordable rates on a pay-as-you-go basis. We do not charge any expensive retainer fees. We only bill you for the time spent working on your site.

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us an email.

Hire from a Jobs Agency

Another option is to use a job agency. This can be a great way to find qualified candidates, as the agency will have a pool of pre-screened workers to choose from. When using a jobs agency, be sure to specify that you’re looking for someone with experience in WooCommerce development. This will help the agency match you with the right candidates. Be prepared to pay a bit more for this service, as the agency will charge a fee for finding and placement.

You can either hire a project-based developer or get a regular in-house developer.

Hire a Freelancer Through Upwork or Similar Gig Sites

For businesses that are seeking to hire a WooCommerce developer on a budget, one option is to post a job on Upwork, Fiverr, or similar gig sites. These sites can put you in touch with thousands of freelancers that can help you get your WooCommerce store set up or fix any problems you are having on your WooCommerce store.

When posting a job on these gig sites, include as much detail as possible about the project. The more information you provide, the more likely you are to find a qualified freelancer.

One problem with working with freelancers though is that it can be very difficult to sort through the sea of freelancers bidding on your listing. Even when you’ve found a freelancer that is a fit for you, there is no guarantee for how long they will be available. Sometimes freelancers disappear on a whim and leave your business hanging.

Alternatives to Hiring a WooCommerce Developer

Buy Premium Plugins for the Functionality You Want

If you need a custom solution for WooCommerce and if the feature you want is popular enough, you can find plugins that can do it for you. You can look into the wide range of WooCommerce plugins available in the plugins marketplace. Still, it is important to note that despite being a user-friendly solution for ecommerce, there is still a learning curve to WooCommerce and you might sometimes find yourself unsure how to proceed when trying to do stuff on your own. These are times when you’ll need a WooCommerce developer to help you out.

If the feature you want to implement is too specialized, there might not be a plugin. In this case, there is not much else you can do apart from hiring a developer or…

Study Up on Programming Languages 

If you want to cut costs, studying up on programming languages used in WordPress and WooCommerce is an option. This is however not a quick solution. It can take years to learn, and even more, to master various programming languages involved in WordPress, namely, PHP, Javascript, HTML and CSS.

Developer Forums

Heading over to developer forums and message boards is also a good option if you wanted to get some help with customizing WooCommerce. If the feature you want is simple enough, you can probably find some kind soul who might be willing to help free of charge.

Apart from studying programming languages used in WooCommerce, there really is no definitely alternative that can replace a WooCommerce developer. 

As we come to the end of this article, it’s important to remember that when it comes to finding a WooCommerce developer, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. While some businesses might benefit from hiring an in-house developer, others may find that working with a freelance or agency developer is a better fit for their needs. Ultimately, the best decision for your business will come down to factors like your budget, project scope, and preferences.

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Disabling Shipping Methods Based on Order Subtotal: A Step-by-Step Guide for WooCommerce

There are many scenarios where a store owner might want to disable certain shipping methods based on the order subtotal. For instance, they may have a minimum order amount required for certain shipping methods, such as free shipping or expedited shipping. Alternatively, they may want to restrict certain shipping methods for orders that don’t meet a certain threshold, such as only offering express shipping for orders over a certain amount.

By implementing the code outlined in this article, store owners can easily disable or hide certain shipping methods based on the order subtotal, ensuring that their customers are only offered shipping options that are appropriate for their order. This can help improve the overall customer experience and streamline the checkout process.

We will show you how to achieve this using some simple code snippets in WooCommerce.

Important Note: Paste the Code Snippets on Your Child Theme

If you’re making changes to the code of your WooCommerce store, it’s always a good idea to use a child theme. By adding the code to your child theme’s functions.php file, you can rest assured that your changes will be preserved even if you update your theme in the future. Plus, using a child theme can help prevent any conflicts that may arise from making changes directly to your site’s core files.

Step 1: Find the ID of the Shipping Method You Want to Disable

To get the ID of the shipping method, you can inspect the radio button using your browser’s dev tools. The value of the input element is your shipping method ID.

Step 2: Unset the Shipping Method

We will now need to create a function that will unset the target shipping method if the order total is less than the minimum amount. In this example, we will be disabling the Cash on Delivery shipping method if the order subtotal is less than $50.

In this case, the ID of the shipping method is ‘cod’. You will need to replace this value with the value of the shipping method you would like to hide.

You will also need to change the value after subtotal <. In This case, COD will be hidden if the total is below $50. Change this value to your desired amount.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

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Disabling Shipping Methods Based on Order Subtotal: A Step-by-Step Guide for WooCommerce

May 17, 2023 By Rob Leave a Comment

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There are many scenarios where a store owner might want to disable certain shipping methods based on the order subtotal. For instance, they may have a minimum order amount required for certain shipping methods, such as free shipping or expedited shipping. Alternatively, they may want to restrict certain shipping methods for orders that don’t meet a certain threshold, such as only offering express shipping for orders over a certain amount.

By implementing the code outlined in this article, store owners can easily disable or hide certain shipping methods based on the order subtotal, ensuring that their customers are only offered shipping options that are appropriate for their order. This can help improve the overall customer experience and streamline the checkout process.

We will show you how to achieve this using some simple code snippets in WooCommerce.

Important Note: Paste the Code Snippets on Your Child Theme

If you’re making changes to the code of your WooCommerce store, it’s always a good idea to use a child theme. By adding the code to your child theme’s functions.php file, you can rest assured that your changes will be preserved even if you update your theme in the future. Plus, using a child theme can help prevent any conflicts that may arise from making changes directly to your site’s core files.

Step 1: Find the ID of the Shipping Method You Want to Disable

To get the ID of the shipping method, you can inspect the radio button using your browser’s dev tools. The value of the input element is your shipping method ID.

Step 2: Unset the Shipping Method

We will now need to create a function that will unset the target shipping method if the order total is less than the minimum amount. In this example, we will be disabling the Cash on Delivery shipping method if the order subtotal is less than $50.

In this case, the ID of the shipping method is ‘cod’. You will need to replace this value with the value of the shipping method you would like to hide.

You will also need to change the value after subtotal <. In This case, COD will be hidden if the total is below $50. Change this value to your desired amount.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:function change_payment_gateway( $gateways ){ // Compare cart subtotal (without shipment fees) if( WC()->cart->subtotal < 50 ){ // Then unset the 'cod' key (cod is the unique id of COD Gateway) unset( $gateways['cod'] ); } return $gateways; }

Step 3: Display a Notice

The next step is to display a notice to the customer if the subtotal is below $50 and COD is selected as the payment method. We will create a function that will check the order subtotal and payment method, and display a message if necessary.

You will need to change the value after $minimum to your desired minimum amount.

You can also change the value “Minimum order for COD is %s please use another payment option.” ig you want to change the notice.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

Step 4: Trigger the Function

The last step is to trigger the function every time the radio button of the shipping method is clicked. We will create a jQuery script that will track the event and trigger the function.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

And that’s it! With these three code snippets, you can now disable a shipping method if the order total does not meet a certain amount.

Disabling shipping methods based on order subtotal is a powerful tool for any WooCommerce store owner who wants to streamline the checkout process and improve the customer experience. By implementing the code outlined in this article, store owners can ensure that their customers are only offered shipping options that are appropriate for their orders. Whether you need to set a minimum order amount for certain shipping methods or restrict certain methods for orders that don’t meet a certain threshold, this guide provides a clear and easy-to-follow solution.

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AI-Powered Content Marketing Strategies for WooCommerce Success

In the rapidly evolving world of ecommerce, content marketing has emerged as a powerful tool to engage customers, drive traffic, and boost conversions. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), WooCommerce businesses have a wealth of opportunities to harness AI-powered tools and techniques to optimize their content marketing strategies. This article explores how AI-powered content marketing strategies can revolutionize content marketing for your WooCommerce store’s success.

Generate Article Ideas for Your Target SEO Keywords

One of the primary objectives of content marketing is to improve search engine rankings and drive organic traffic to your e-commerce website. AI can be a valuable ally in generating article ideas that align with your target SEO keywords. AI-powered tools can analyze keyword data, search trends, and customer behavior to identify relevant topics for content creation.

By employing AI tools, you can uncover new perspectives and unique angles to engage your audience. AI tools can help to identify emerging topics and conversations that can be transformed into compelling content. Additionally, AI can analyze competitor data and identify content gaps, allowing you to create articles that differentiate your brand from the competition.

AI-Driven Content Creation

AI technologies can transform content creation for ecommerce businesses. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI tools can analyze vast amounts of data, identify trends, and generate valuable insights for content ideation. From blog posts to product descriptions, AI can automate content generation, freeing up valuable time and resources so entrepreneurs like you can focus on the business side of things.

Personalizing Content with AI

With AI-powered tools, businesses can deliver tailored content experiences that resonate with their target audience. By leveraging AI tools, entrepreneurs can dynamically generate personalized content that enhances user experience, improves customer satisfaction, bolsters loyalty, and ultimately, drives conversions.

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Benefits of AI-Written Content for Your WooCommerce Business

There are plenty of benefits to having AI write content for your WooCommerce store’s blog. 

Time and Resource Efficiency: AI can automate the content creation process, saving valuable time and resources. With AI-powered tools, businesses can generate high-quality content quickly and efficiently, freeing up human resources to focus on other important tasks such as strategy development, customer engagement, and business growth.

Scalability: AI allows businesses to scale their content production efforts easily. Whether you need to create hundreds of product descriptions or publish regular blog posts, AI can generate content at a large scale without compromising quality. This scalability is particularly beneficial for e-commerce businesses with extensive product catalogs or content-heavy websites.

Consistency and Brand Voice: Maintaining a consistent brand voice across all content channels is essential for building brand identity and establishing trust with customers. AI can adhere to predefined style guides, ensuring consistency in tone, style, and messaging. By consistently producing content that aligns with your brand voice, AI helps reinforce your brand’s identity and enhances brand recognition.

Language and Grammar Accuracy: AI-powered content writing tools excel at grammar and language accuracy. These tools use natural language processing algorithms to analyze and understand the context, resulting in well-structured and error-free content. By leveraging AI for content creation, businesses can ensure that their written materials maintain high levels of quality and professionalism.

Multilingual Capabilities: With the global nature of e-commerce, catering to customers in different regions and languages is crucial. AI-powered content writing tools can generate content in multiple languages, overcoming language barriers and enabling businesses to expand their reach to a wider audience. This multilingual capability allows for localization and internationalization of content, facilitating effective communication with customers around the world.

Experimentation and Innovation: AI-powered content generation opens up new avenues for experimentation and innovation. By exploring AI-generated content, businesses can uncover unique perspectives, uncover fresh ideas, and explore creative approaches to engage their audience. AI can generate alternative content options that may not have been considered by human writers, allowing for creative exploration and differentiation.

While AI-generated content offers significant benefits, it is important to strike a balance between AI automation and human input. Human oversight and editing are necessary to ensure the accuracy, relevance, and authenticity of the content. By combining AI-generated content with human creativity and expertise, businesses can leverage the best of both worlds to create compelling and impactful content.

The Caveats of Using AI for Content Marketing

AI Will Lie Straight to Your Face and It Will Not Bat an Eye

While AI can automate content generation, it is crucial to remember that it is not infallible. AI-generated content may contain errors, inaccuracies, or biases. Therefore, it is essential to review and verify the output of AI tools before publishing. Sometimes, AI can appear to write coherent sentences that actually make no sense. Human oversight and manual editing are crucial to ensure the accuracy and quality of the content you publish on your WooCommerce store’s blog. 

AI Cannot Write About Personal Experiences

AI tools excel at analyzing data, identifying patterns, and generating content based on those insights. However, they lack the ability to draw from personal experiences or emotions. To inject authenticity into your content, consider having a writer put a personal spin on AI-generated material. This combination of AI-generated insights and human creativity can result in engaging and relatable content.

You can however tell an AI writer to write in the first person or make up stories about fake personal experiences but it won’t have that human touch which is very important in Google algorithms.

AI May Write Plagiarized Content

One potential drawback of using AI to write content is the risk of plagiarism. AI-powered tools rely on vast amounts of data to generate content, which increases the possibility of inadvertently reproducing existing material without proper attribution. While AI algorithms are designed to generate unique content, there is still a chance that they may inadvertently produce content that closely resembles existing works. This poses ethical concerns and potential legal issues, as plagiarism is a serious offense in the realm of content creation. To mitigate this risk, human oversight and manual checking are crucial. Content generated by AI should always be carefully reviewed and cross-checked to ensure its originality and adherence to ethical standards.

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How We Can Help?

Our team can help you leverage AI for your content marketing efforts. This includes keyword research, article editing and proofreading, SEO optimization, fact-checking, and plagiarism checks. 

Our services can help you harness the power of AI in your content marketing strategy while ensuring the necessary human touch and quality control. From keyword research and SEO optimization to content creation, editing, and plagiarism checks, we provide a comprehensive solution to enhance your content marketing efforts and drive the success of your WooCommerce store.

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Maximizing WooCommerce Success: Empowering Your Keyword Optimization Strategy with AI

In the competitive world of e-commerce, optimizing your WooCommerce store for search engines is crucial to driving organic traffic and achieving success. An essential aspect of this optimization process is keyword research and optimization. While AI may not be directly involved in keyword research, it can play a significant role in enhancing your overall keyword optimization strategy. In this article, we will explore how you can leverage effective keyword optimization techniques to boost the visibility and performance of your WooCommerce store.

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Understanding Keyword Optimization for WooCommerce

Keyword optimization is the process of strategically incorporating relevant keywords into your website content to improve search engine rankings and attract targeted traffic. By targeting the right keywords, you can ensure that your WooCommerce store appears in search results when potential customers are actively seeking products or information related to your business.

Conducting Keyword Research

Identifying Relevant Keywords

To start your keyword optimization journey, begin by identifying keywords that are relevant to your WooCommerce store and align with your target audience’s search intent. Think about the products or services you offer and the specific terms or phrases potential customers may use to find them.

Expanding Your Keyword List

Utilize SEO tools like Ahrefs and SemRush to expand your keyword list. These tools provide valuable insights into search volume, competition levels, and related keywords. By exploring long-tail keywords (specific, niche phrases), you can target a more focused audience and potentially reduce competition.

Optimizing On-Page Elements

Optimizing on-page elements is critical if you want your WooCommerce store to rank in search engines.

Meta Tags

Optimize your meta title tags and meta descriptions to include relevant keywords. These elements provide concise summaries of your webpage content and play a vital role in search engine ranking and click-through rates.

URL Structure

Incorporate keywords into your page URLs to make them more descriptive and search engine-friendly. For example, instead of “www.example.com/product123,” use “www.example.com/product-category/product-name” to include keywords and provide context.

Heading Tags

Use heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure your content and highlight important sections. Include keywords naturally within these headings to provide search engines with valuable information about your content.

Crafting High-Quality and Relevant Content

Content Relevance

Develop well-written, informative, and relevant content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. Incorporate keywords naturally throughout the content to improve its visibility in search results.

User Experience

Ensure that your content is easy to read, well-organized, and mobile-friendly. A positive user experience encourages visitors to spend more time on your WooCommerce store, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Monitoring and Fine-Tuning

Track Performance

Regularly monitor your keyword rankings and website analytics to assess the effectiveness of your optimization efforts. Tools like Google Analytics provide valuable data on organic traffic, bounce rates, and conversions.

Refine Your Strategy

Based on the insights gained from monitoring, make data-driven decisions to refine your keyword optimization strategy. Continually adapt and optimize your keywords and content to stay relevant and competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Leveraging AI for Content Creation and Optimization

AI technology can be a valuable tool in the process of writing and optimizing content for your WooCommerce store. This section will explore how AI can assist you in generating engaging and persuasive copy while ensuring it is optimized for search engines and your target audience.

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AI-Powered Content Generation

AI powered by advanced natural language processing algorithms can assist in generating high-quality content. By providing relevant input and prompts, you can obtain AI-generated product descriptions, blog posts, and landing page content that align with your brand voice and resonate with your audience. This can save you time and resources in the content creation process.

SEO Optimization Suggestions

AI tools can also assist in optimizing your content for search engines. By providing specific keywords or phrases, the AI can generate optimized content by seamlessly incorporating these keywords in a natural and coherent manner. This ensures that your content ranks well in search engine results and attracts relevant organic traffic to your WooCommerce store.

Improving Readability and Engagement

One of the key factors in keeping visitors on your WooCommerce store is the quality of your content. AI can help in enhancing the readability and engagement of your content. AI tools can analyze your existing content and provide suggestions to improve sentence structure, grammar, and overall coherence. This ensures that your content is clear, concise, and easy to understand for your audience.

Aiding in Keyword Research

While AI tools like Ahrefs and SemRush are commonly used for keyword research, AI can provide additional insights and suggestions. By providing detailed information about your target audience, products, and industry, you can gain alternative keyword ideas and uncover hidden opportunities that traditional SEO tools may have missed.

Summary

AI tools offer powerful capabilities in content creation and optimization for your WooCommerce store. By leveraging AI technology, you can generate engaging and optimized content, improve readability and user engagement, and obtain advanced keyword insights. Integrating AI into your content strategy can save time, enhance your SEO efforts, and ultimately drive better results for your WooCommerce store. Remember to combine the strengths of AI with human expertise to ensure your content aligns with your brand and effectively communicates your message to your target audience.

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Content SEO Strategies: How to Create Optimized Product Descriptions for WooCommerce Using AI Tools

Optimized product descriptions play a crucial role in attracting potential customers and driving conversions. Learning how to create optimized product descriptions for WooCommerce using AI tools is essential for success. In this article, we will explore how AI tools can significantly enhance your content SEO strategies and help you create optimized product descriptions that resonate with your audience.

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How AI Can Improve Your Product Copy

Benefits of Using AI in Crafting Product Descriptions

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools bring numerous benefits to the table when it comes to creating product copy. Firstly, AI can generate content quickly and efficiently, saving you valuable time and resources. With AI, you can automate the process of crafting descriptions for a large number of products, allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business.

How AI Can Enhance the Quality and Effectiveness of Product Copy

AI tools utilize natural language processing capabilities to generate high-quality product descriptions. They analyze vast amounts of data, including customer reviews, competitor descriptions, and industry trends, to create compelling and engaging content. AI can identify relevant keywords and phrases to optimize your descriptions for search engines, increasing your visibility and driving organic traffic to your store.

Saving Time and Resources with AI-Generated Content

One of the significant advantages of using AI tools for generating product descriptions is the time and resources saved. By automating the content creation process, you can avoid the tedious task of writing individual descriptions for each product. AI tools can generate unique and customized descriptions based on product attributes, ensuring consistency and accuracy across your product catalog.

Crafting Compelling Product Descriptions Using AI-generated Content

Utilizing AI Tools for Generating Product Descriptions

AI tools designed specifically for ecommerce, such as language models and content generators, can be integrated into your WooCommerce platform. These tools analyze your product data, identify key features, and generate detailed and persuasive descriptions that capture the essence of your products. They can even offer variations and suggestions to help you create compelling copy that stands out from your competitors.

Enhancing Product Descriptions with Unique Selling Points and Brand Voice

While AI-generated content provides a strong foundation, it’s important to infuse it with your brand’s unique selling points and voice. Customize the descriptions by highlighting the benefits, features, and value propositions of your products. Add a personal touch that reflects your brand identity and resonates with your target audience. This combination of AI-generated content and human creativity will help you create compelling and authentic product descriptions.

Optimizing Content for Search Engines While Maintaining Readability

AI language models can incorporate your target keywords naturally into your content, ensuring that the descriptions remain readable and user-friendly. Strike a balance between SEO optimization and providing valuable information to your customers. Remember, the goal is to engage and convert potential buyers.

Best Practices for Content SEO and AI Tool Integration

Ensuring Natural Language Flow in AI-Generated Content

Although AI tools generate content efficiently, it’s crucial to review and edit the generated descriptions to ensure a natural language flow. AI can sometimes produce text that sounds robotic or lacks the human touch. Therefore, it’s essential to fine-tune the content to align with your brand’s tone and style, enhancing the overall user experience.

Balancing AI-Generated Content with a Human Touch

While AI tools can automate the content creation process, it’s important to maintain a balance between AI-generated content and human creativity. Injecting personal insights, storytelling elements, and unique brand perspectives into product descriptions can help differentiate your store and create a connection with your audience. Use AI as a powerful tool to augment your creative capabilities rather than relying on it completely.

Regularly Reviewing and Updating Product Descriptions

Product descriptions should not be a one-time task. It’s crucial to regularly review and update them to ensure they remain relevant and accurate. Keep track of customer feedback, industry trends, and changes in your product offerings. By regularly evaluating and improving your product descriptions, you can maintain a competitive edge in the market.

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Summary

Optimized product descriptions are vital for ecommerce success, especially on platforms like WooCommerce. AI tools offer significant advantages in creating compelling and SEO-friendly content efficiently. By leveraging AI-generated product descriptions, you can save time and resources while enhancing the quality and effectiveness of your copy.

However, it’s essential to strike a balance between AI-generated content and human creativity. Infuse your brand’s unique selling points and voice into the descriptions to create an authentic connection with your audience. Remember to optimize the content for search engines while maintaining readability and natural language flow.

Additionally, regularly reviewing and updating your product descriptions is crucial to ensure relevancy and accuracy. AI tools can assist in monitoring performance and provide insights on optimization opportunities.

Incorporating AI tools into your content SEO strategies for WooCommerce can significantly improve your product descriptions and drive better results. Embrace the power of AI, but always remember to add your human touch to create compelling, informative, and persuasive product descriptions that resonate with your target audience.

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The Science of Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts for Your WooCommerce Store

Writing SEO-friendly blog posts is a crucial task for WooCocommerce store owners. With the right approach, you can optimize your content to attract more organic traffic, engage readers, and ultimately drive conversions. This article explores the science behind crafting SEO-friendly blog posts for your WooCommerce store, providing valuable insights and practical tips to help you achieve online success.

Understanding Keyword Research for Blog Posts

Keywords lay the foundation for effective SEO. Conduct thorough keyword research using powerful SEO tools to identify relevant and high-performing keywords in your industry. We recommend targeting keywords that have low difficulty and high search volume. By integrating these keywords naturally into your blog posts, you enhance their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

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Crafting Engaging Headlines and Meta Descriptions

Captivating headlines and meta descriptions are essential for enticing readers and improving click-through rates (CTRs). Incorporate target keywords into your headline while ensuring it remains attention-grabbing and relevant to the content. Similarly, optimize meta descriptions by providing a concise summary of your blog post, including keywords that resonate with search intent.

Structuring Your Blog Post for SEO Success

Organizing your blog post with proper structure enhances readability and SEO performance. Utilize subheadings to break down your content into digestible sections. Incorporate keywords into subheadings while maintaining a natural flow of information. This approach helps search engines understand the context and relevance of your content. For users, this allows them to scan your content so they can easily find the information that they are looking for. Make sure you use the correct heading tags.

Crafting Compelling and Unique Content

Producing high-quality and unique content is essential for both readers and search engines. Develop content that provides value to your audience and addresses their needs and pain points. Incorporate relevant keywords throughout the body of your blog post, ensuring a balanced and natural distribution.

Leveraging Internal Linking for SEO Benefit

Internal linking plays a vital role in guiding users through your website and boosting SEO. Strategically place internal links within your blog posts to connect relevant pages or products. This practice not only improves user experience but also helps search engines crawl and index your website effectively.

Optimizing Images for Enhanced SEO Performance

Images are an integral part of blog posts, but they can also impact SEO. Optimize images by compressing them for faster page load times, using descriptive file names, and adding alt text that includes relevant keywords. These optimizations improve user experience and make your content more accessible to search engines.

Ensuring Mobile Responsiveness

With the rise of mobile usage, optimizing your blog posts for mobile devices is crucial. Responsive design ensures that your content adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes. This optimization factor plays a significant role in search engine rankings and provides a better user experience for mobile visitors.

If in this day and age, you find that you are still not using a mobile responsive theme, addressing this should be at the top of your priorities.

Encouraging User Engagement

Search engines make use of user engagement metrics, such as time spent on page and bounce rate when determining the value of your content. Encourage readers to engage with your blog posts by including relevant calls to action and inviting comments. These interactions signal to search engines that your content is valuable and authoritative.

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Summary

To sum it all up, writing SEO-friendly blog posts for your WooCommerce store involves a strategic approach that balances keyword optimization, engaging content creation, and user experience. By implementing the science behind SEO, you can enhance your online visibility, attract targeted traffic, and ultimately drive conversions. Embrace these practices, leverage AI-powered tools, and stay updated with industry trends to ensure your blog posts continue to generate positive results for your ecommerce store.