best practices Tag Archives - Page 7 of 8

Custom Development for Your WooCommerce Store

March 20, 2017 By John Leave a Comment

One of WooCommerce’s best-selling points is its customizability. But as extensive as the WooCommerce plugin database is, sometimes it’s still not enough. That’s where custom development for your WooCommerce store comes in. With custom development, we open a whole new world to your website’s capabilities. Still, as powerful as it is, it doesn’t come without its challenges.

Customizability

What exactly do we mean when we say custom development? Well, it’s like a custom tailored suit – it is tailoring code according to your exact specifications. With that, we’ll have precise control of the end-result. It is making changes to your website using configurations beyond what the software or plugins are originally capable of.

Sometimes you may find that WooCommerce is lacking a certain functionality that you require. You search for a plugin and there’s no viable plugin for it. In cases like these, we can custom code to add that functionality to your WooCommerce store. If you don’t like how a WooCommerce plugin works, we can add custom code to tweak it and make it work the way you want it to.

However, this does not come without its challenges.

Compatibility

In a vacuum, programming is predictable. For example, if you only had to deal with WooCommerce and you wanted to change something, it is simple and straightforward. However, in reality, a website exists as a combination of different software working together. What should be a straightforward change to WooCommerce could become unpredictable. Other installed plugins may behave differently as a result of the custom code.

These complications can create additional work but solving them is a necessary step in custom development.

Iterative Nature

Other obstacles to custom development are unexpected bugs and simple errors.

Custom development is adding short pieces of software to the site. And as with all software, the first release rarely turns out as perfect from the get-go. Even with thorough testing, not all cases can be tested. In some instances, the bugs can pop up at an irrelevant area of the website.

Errors are also common, especially with complex customizations. At Wooassist we have tested over 500 developers in our recruitment program and trialed almost 100 of them. We are left with the cream of the crop and have 3 solid developers. They are the top one percentile, but they are not machines. They are not perfect. These unexpected bugs and mistakes go hand in hand with custom development. To get things right, several iterations may be necessary.

More meticulous testing is advised, but it will also cost more. It is up to the client to set the balance between testing and cost.

Maintenance Costs

Another challenge for custom development is its dependency on the parent software. This includes – either WordPress itself, WooCommerce or the other plugins you have installed. There’s the possibility that updates and new software versions will affect your custom development.

This is because the custom code has been specifically designed for the current setup at the time. If the setup changes, then the custom code needs to be modified as well. This means that custom development is not a build-it-and-leave-it process. It needs regular maintenance to keep up with the updates of the original technology.

So should you still get custom development for your WooCommerce store?

It depends.

Most of the time, the ready-built plugins and extensions for WordPress and WooCommerce are enough to get a website up and going. There are thousands of extensions, both free and paid. Chances are, the functionality you are looking for might already be available. If it comes down to a choice between a paid plugin and custom development, sometimes the paid plugin is more advisable. It is much safer and easier to adjust your expectations and solution compared to custom code.

Business owners can be guilty of coming up with less than optimal ideas and then investing in development to implement these. A much better process is to invest more in researching the problem and the range of solutions available. Find some experts, send them the objective, the problem and your proposed solution and let them do some research for you. There is often a much simpler and cheaper solution.

Now what if there are no plugins for the functionality you require?

This is when you have to decide whether the functionality is worth the challenges and costs that come with custom development. If it is a functionality that gives the site admins the capability to spend less time working on a task, then it will pay itself off in the long run. If it improves customer experience and increases conversions, then it should also be an acceptable cost.

You can also choose the option that requires the least customization. Strike a compromise between the functionality you require and functionality of the original software. Bend the software less to avoid complications. All in all, custom development is not advisable for all projects. While challenging, custom development tells us that there will almost always be a solution. For most website owners, custom development is a necessary step in creating the website that they envision. To pursue this path, the site owner must accept the challenges of custom development.

Examples

1. Here’s an example of a WooCommerce checkout that we’ve customized. Instead of the standard WooCommerce checkout page, we’ve separated certain sections grouping them together. We ended up with four sections, namely Billing Details, Shipping Details, Payment and Confirmation.

During the process, we encountered an error that cost some time to troubleshoot. So apart from the customization itself, we also needed to deal with unexpected complications.

It turns out that it was caused by a conflict with an idle plugin activated on the site. Deactivating the plugin fixed the issue.

2. Here’s a product page that we’ve customized according to our client’s specifications. For this particular project, not only did we have to customize the product page, we also had to migrate an existing database of non-WooCommerce products to a WooCommerce website. This was complex as the existing products had attributes not compatible with WooCommerce.

The only viable solution we could think of was to make use of separate paid plugins to manage the attributes. In the end, the client had to purchase a separate premium plugin, WP All Import and the Advanced Custom Fields add-on. Unexpected costs like these may deter some website owners from custom development. However, these are often necessary.

3. One of our clients asked for the functionality to create a list of the site’s most regular customers. She had installed a plugin for it. However, upon checking, the plugin has not been updated in over 2 years. As there are no alternative plugins, we figured that the most viable option would just be to build custom code for it.

The custom development itself was straightforward. Still, we needed to strike the right balance between spending time creating the code and spending time testing for errors. In the end, we were able to complete the custom development with the bare minimum in functionality in just a bit above 2 hours.

Final Advice

Here at Wooassist, we bill the work we do by the hour. So when it comes to custom development for your WooCommerce store, more complications can mean more time spent than expected. Most of our clients still prefer this arrangement as it is still cheaper than fixed price custom development work. Also, it is easier to arrange changes to the project along the way. Agencies that offer fixed-price quotes for free usually offer them at a premium as the client is also paying for the time when they didn’t get the work. And once the project has started, it is difficult to arrange changes without incurring additional charges.

But for those that would still prefer a fixed price quote, we can offer our Custom Project Roadmap product. When you purchase it, we will spend time researching, analyzing and defining the scope of the problem and solution. After these, we will offer a fixed price quotation. By having a clear strategy that is pre-assessed to be viable, we can minimize the complications. And when complications do arise, we won’t be billing you anymore for additional charges so you have control over the expense.

How to Show Only Blog Excerpts in Storefront Theme

November 30, 2016 By John 7 Comments

Having a blog has a huge impact on e-commerce sites. A blog helps drive up to 55% more traffic. Blogs are all about providing relevant content to drive visitors to the site. Most blogs in the past prefer the full post display but recently, the snippet view or blog excerpts view has become quite popular. With blog excerpts view, the blog content is more scannable, with posts lined up and a Read More button available after each one. This lets the visitor browse through the posts and just click on the article he/she wants to read more about. In this article, we talk about how to show only blog excerpts in Storefront.

Why Show Only Blog Excerpts?

Increased Visibility

When you have a lot of posts on your blog, displaying only blog excerpts will make more of your content visible. Your latest post may not be the one that the reader is interested in. Having short excerpts of each post will show your visitors that you have a lot of content that they can indulge in.

Ease of Use for Visitors in Choosing Content that Interests Them

With a lot of posts in view, your visitors will be able to easily choose which article to read. This also helps bring more attention to your old posts so keeping those old posts updated with new information will also pay dividends. Readers can scan the blog page easily and may click not just one, but several articles that spark their interest.

Trims Down Lengthy Posts

If you create a lot of long blog posts, then having an excerpts view will make your blog more manageable. A 2000-word blog post is enough to cover a few screens which take attention away from other posts in a full-length view.

Reduced Page Load Times

Since you are only loading post snippets, your blog page will load much faster. Just imagine the number of images on a few of your blog posts and how much longer it would take to load all those.

Increased Page Views and Time on Site

With more content to browse through, showing only blog excerpts will increase your page views. And as visitors read more of your content, you also effectively increase user’s time on your site giving more opportunity for conversion.

Displaying Blog Excerpts in Storefront Theme Using a Plugin

You can switch to a blog excerpts display by editing the WordPress template files. However, you have to be familiar with the WordPress loop and edit the normal content with the excerpts function. An easier method is to use a plugin.

The Storefront Blog Excerpts plugin is made to work with Storefront theme by WooThemes. This also adds a section in the WordPress Customizer for you to modify how to display your blog content in excerpts view.

How to Use Storefront Blog Excerpts

In the plugins page, click “Add New”. Search for “Storefront Blog Excerpts” in the WordPress repository. Click on “Install” then activate the plugin.
After activation, the blog archive will be automatically replaced by the excerpts display.
You can further customize how your blog archive is displayed. Go to the Appearance > Customizer and find the Blog Excerpts section.
You can modify the following properties in this section.
- Excerpt word count – The default value is 55. The average word count of an academic paragraph is around 100 – 200. 55 is around half of it. Based on this, adjust how many words you want to display in each excerpt.
- Excerpt word end – The default value is “…”. You can customize on the symbols that you can use to indicate a continuation. Other not so common symbols are “>”and “->”
- Read more button text – The default value is “Read more”. This is the basic call-to-action. You can be more descriptive on the text and try “Go to Full Article”.
- Featured image size – The default value is “Full”. Here, you can choose different sizes of feature images.

Have you tried displaying only blog excerpts on your WooCommerce store’s blog? If you haven’t, you should consider doing it as it might just get you more page views and increased time on site. If you have tried the plugin above, let us know your experience about it and your ideas on how it can be improved.

Why Use Long-Tail Keywords for your WooCommerce SEO

October 13, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

Are you optimizing your WooCommerce products but find that you are not getting any traction? It could be because you are optimizing for the wrong keywords. Many e-commerce businesses find more success with long-tail keywords. But what are long tail keywords and why use long-tail keywords for your WooCommerce SEO?

What are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific keywords; much like a keyphrase. For example, if you are running an e-commerce store that sells frying pans, you could be tempted to optimize for keywords such as “frying pans”. However, ranking for “frying pans” would be very difficult. Do you expect to beat Wikipedia or Amazon who holds the top two spots in Google’s search results page? Even if you hire the most expensive SEO agency, that’s going to be hard to topple.

Let’s try to improve the keyword “frying-pan”. “Non-stick frying pan” is an improvement. It is more specific compared to just “frying pan” but this can still be made more targeted. “Non-stick stainless-steel frying pan” or “non-stick stainless-steel frying pan for induction stove” is taking it a step further.

Benefits of Using Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keywords Produce Targeted Traffic that Converts Better

Long-tail keywords may or may not result in less traffic. The traffic that you do get will be more targeted and that means better conversion. Don’t stress yourself too much about losing traffic because traffic is a useless statistic. The important statistic to watch out for is your conversion rate because this is the moneymaker. Optimize your e-commerce store for increased conversion; not for increased traffic.

Long-Tail Keywords are Easier to Rank for

Because there is less competition for long-tail keywords, it is easier to rank for them. With a properly optimized page, you can land a top spot in the search results page. As long as you follow other known SEO best practices, this is achievable.

But They Have Low Search Volume?

You might be looking at search data using Google’s Keyword Tool or any other tools. Then you see that there is no search volume for the long-tail keyword that you want to target. Don’t fret. Having no search volume does not mean that it will not show up in search results. Long-tail keywords are actually valuable. In the video below, Rand Fishkin talks about how valuable long-tail keywords are.

How to Choose the Right Long-Tail Keywords

Choosing the right long-tail keyword for your WooCommerce store is not difficult if you know who your customers are. If you already have a definitive image of your customers, then that’s a good thing. If not, it is imperative to identify your customer persona.

When you’ve created your customer persona, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think. What keyword would you search for if you were looking for the product you are selling? There is no single correct way to go about this. Most of the time, you will find that customers are looking for something specific. And once you identify that, that’s what you optimize for.

How Does Long-Tail Fare vs Popular Keywords?

If you choose to optimize for regular keywords, then you’re going to have a hard time getting to Page 1 of Google’s search results page. And if you don’t hit page one, then it won’t even matter. Page 1 of the search results page shows the top 10 results for the keyword. If you are ranked 11th, you’ll hardly get any traffic. This is not meant to discourage you to pursue the big keywords since it is not an impossible feat. It is possible but it’ll take some real genius or a lot of luck. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are easier to rank for.

Use Long-Tail Keywords with Other SEO Best Practices

Using long-tail keywords alone won’t make your e-commerce store a conversion powerhouse. You need to use these keywords with other known SEO best practices. If you are using long-tail keywords right but doing everything else wrong, then it is not likely that you will get conversions.

You should create quality content that is easy to read. You should use proper URL structuring. Make your URLs readable. Implement proper navigation and good user interface. Upload a sitemap and make sure search engines can crawl your site. Use images properly and optimize your site for increased conversion. There’s a lot more to this but here’s a guide from Google to help you get started on best practices.

And that explains why you should use long-tail keywords for your WooCommerce store. If you have any questions, let us know in the comments.

12 WooCommerce Tasks You Should Outsource

August 18, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

How much value do you put on your time? As a business owner, this is a question that you should be asking yourself. Ideally, you should be working on your business rather than in your business. This entails hiring staff to handle the day-to-day operations and outsourcing works well for this purpose. Outsourcing is not easy but it can do good for your e-commerce business.

We’ll take a look at some of the benefits of outsourcing. We’ll also discuss the challenges that come with outsourcing, how you can deal with them, and the tasks that you can outsource.

Benefits of Outsourcing

You may opt for an in-house staff, but why is outsourcing a popular alternative? Here are a couple of reasons.

Getting a WooCommerce Expert to Do the Job

Outsourcing an experienced virtual assistant is made simpler. With some digging, you can find a WooCommerce expert who doesn’t charge exorbitant fees. With the right approach, you can even find someone who will stick with your company for years.

Reduced Costs

Hiring a virtual assistant will cost less than hiring a full-time in-house staff. You won’t need to invest in an office space for the outsourced worker. The outsourced worker will have his/her own computer with internet access. You may however need to provide some online tools and resources specific to your business.

You may have to offer a higher salary (still cheaper than your local rates) or offer some benefits if you want to keep a good virtual assistant. Do some research to find out what benefits are afforded to employees in certain countries. For example, virtual assistants from the Philippines will expect a 13th month bonus. Incentives for good performance are also good.

Challenges with Outsourcing

Outsourcing comes with its share of risks but these risks can be controlled.

The Need for Training

When you delegate work, the outcome may not always meet your expectations. To improve on this, make sure you create systems that the virtual assistant can follow. Provide ample time in training the outsourced worker. Familiarize them with your business processes. This will help in paving the way for a long-term mutually beneficial relationship.

Confidentiality or Security Issues

You want to protect your business and that’s understandable so you might be hesitant in hiring someone from the other side of the world. When hiring a virtual assistant, you will most likely be sharing sensitive company information. On top of that, you will be providing access to your site and other accounts. Before hiring, you can do your research on the person that you are hiring. Check out social media profiles and other mentions on the web. Charles Haines also offers some interview tips for measuring integrity.

During the first few weeks, you can consider providing the outsourced worker limited access to your systems. When you are more comfortable, you can start providing more access.

WooCommerce Tasks You Should Outsource

As you work on growing your business, you may find that you spend a lot of your time on tasks that you can delegate. Outsourced WooCommerce tasks are web design and development, marketing, SEO and other back-office roles.

WooCommerce Tasks

1. Create and Edit Products – Creating and editing WooCommerce products can be time consuming. You need to set up products with different attributes and optimize and upload images for each one. Delegate this task so you can use your business expertise where it is needed.

2. Product Image Editing – Images need to be optimized before being used on your WooCommerce store lest you risk bloating your site and increasing page load times.

3. Improve Product Copy – Writing product descriptions that highlight your product benefits will help you sell. Copy writers and virtual assistant know this. Speak to your target market and convince them to make the purchase. This is one less task to worry about, as professional copy writers can do this for you.

Web Design and Development

4. Update Plugins and Core – It’s important to keep your WooCommerce store protected from the latest known vulnerabilities. A WooCommerce expert can help improve security and site performance by keeping everything updated.

5. Design Tweaks – Improving user experience (UX) is a major factor in the success of your online store. A professional web developer can recommend and apply design changes to your site to optimize UX.

6. Analytics and Webmaster Reports – When optimizing your site to increase conversion or improve user experience, analyzing and interpreting existing data is invaluable. A virtual assistant adept at Google Analytics can analyze and interpret your website data. This can help you make sound decisions.

7. Technical Solutions – Don’t get wrapped up in the technicalities of developing and maintaining your website. An experienced WooCommerce developer can optimize your design and add new functionality in a fraction of the time it takes you to do.

8. Secure Your Site – Apart from WordPress and plugins updates, a WooCommerce expert can help you set up automated backups and set up other security features.

9. Speed Optimization – Keeping your site running at its fastest will improve user experience and will reduce bounce rates. Notably, site speed is also an important ranking factor for SEO. A WooCommerce developer can help you optimize your site speed. This can include optimizing images, optimizing the HTCaccess file, setting up caching, minification, and DNS.

Marketing and SEO

10. Search Engine Optimization – Make it easier for potential customers to find your WooCommerce store by ranking high in organic search results. This is no small feat as SEO can take a lot of time. However, many virtual assistants make a living through SEO so finding an SEO expert is easy. A WooCommerce SEO expert can help optimize your product pages and blog posts to rank better in search engines.

11. Email Opt-in Solutions – To improve your site’s lead generation capabilities, a WooCommerce expert can help you add email opt-in forms in strategic locations on your site.

12. Landing Pages – An effective landing page should help you achieve your site’s goals. A WooCommerce expert can help you optimize your landing pages for this purpose.

Final Notes

Outsourcing a WooCommerce expert can help you save your time so you can focus on other things that need your attention. You now have a better idea of what tasks you can outsource to save your time. A WooCommerce expert can do tasks in a fraction of the time that it would take you. While outsourcing can be a challenge, the tips above should help ease the process.

Do you have any questions? Have you tried outsourcing? Do you have any tips that you can share? Let us know in the comments.

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Your WooCommerce Store

April 11, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

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

There are a lot of SSL plans available. An SSL certificate is generally priced depending on its scope and type of validation.

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.