Running an online store is difficult in itself, but if you are a beginner and have little experience managing the technical aspects of a WooCommmerce store, mistakes are bound to be made. And in this era of visibility and reach, any mistake could impact your sales and conversions. Thus, we are going to list down some of the common WooCommerce mistakes so you can avoid them before they can occur.
WooCommerce although provides multiple out-of-the-box features and plugins to help you kickstart your website and run your business easily and smoothly, there are a lot of aspects to cover. Such as from inventory management to customizing a site and then delivering the products, all of which can lead to common mistakes if a step is missed or done incorrectly.
And since we cannot leave these problems up to chance, let’s recognize and tackle some of the most common WooCommerce mistakes to provide an optimum user experience.
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Common WooCommerce Mistakes to Avoid
- Not Backing up your Store
- Not Updating Routinely
- Not Using Staging Site for Testing
- Not Determining Selling Locations
- Not Working on Security
- Not Checking System Status Report
1. Not Backing up your Store
This might seem like an obvious mistake to point out, but you won’t believe how many WooCommerce store owners make the common mistake of not backing up their stores and securing their clients, products, etc. For example, if you don’t back up your store, and face a virus or a hacker, you don’t just have to deal with lost products, but your entire site becomes compromised.
Backups make sure that your site can be up and running in no time, despite a threat to security or any harm caused by a virus.
You can either back up your store manually, which is no doubt a time-consuming and tedious process, or you can use plugins to automate the entire process and even schedule them weekly.
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2. Not Updating Routinely
WooCommerce is a highly efficient eCommerce platform that releases new versions after every few months. If your online store is built on an old version and is not updated whenever a new version comes out, you are in serious trouble. Outdated versions make your site vulnerable to malicious attacks and viruses. They can wipe out your entire store or affect certain aspects of your business, resulting in poor performance and speed.
Similarly, the plugins and themes provided by WooCommerce are also updated by the developer routinely, and you need to update them as well or else it would affect your site speed. Many plugins are not updated by the developers themselves and thus, you should check those and remove them from your site.
The simplest way to ensure optimum performance is by routinely checking and updating all your plugins, extensions, themes. Even the WooCommerce version in the staging site and then enable it on your store.
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3. Not Using Staging Site for Testing
Another common WooCommerce mistake that most online business owners do is that they don’t use a staging site to test new releases, versions, or plugins. A staging site is a live clone of your business website where you can perform multiple tests and see if they are affecting your site speed and performance.
A WooCommerce site is different from a WordPress site, as blogs don’t have to deal with customers or orders, the risk is minimum. But with WooCommerce stores, you can lose data, orders, and much more. Thus, this is a risk that no business should be making willingly.
This is also a great way to test new plugins, extensions, and themes before introducing them to your real-time site, to avoid errors and complications.
4. Not Determining Selling Locations
Not setting your selling locations is a common WooCommerce mistake and one that is not valued nearly enough. It’s because many WooCommerce stores do not deal internationally or do not sell to certain regions. If not specified, an order from a certain location would result in cancellation and thus a negative user experience.
To prevent that, it is important to define the locations that you operate and sell in, to avoid such errors. You can easily do this by going to WooCommerce > Settings > General, where you will find an option for setting the “selling location”, choose your preferred option from the dropdown menu.
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5. Not Working on Security
Do we even need to point out this WooCommerce mistake? Yes! Because it’s common and many businesses do not provide their websites with sufficient security to earn customer trust. Your WooCommerce store deals with business and customer payment information and personal information. Thus, if not protected, exposed to malicious attacks and could lead to loss or wrong use of that information.
To build customer trust and ensure sales, buy an SSL certificate. This certificate is available separately or can be provided along with your hosting plan.
6. Not Checking System Status Report
Despite all precautions, there are still unknown mistakes that could have been made during the developing process. For this reason, WooCommerce provides an in-built system status report feature that gives you insights and alerts on various aspects, such as:
- Theme-related details
- Version of plugins
- PHP version
- Web server version
These reports alert you to any problem that is in the code or system and also provides possible solutions. These reports are often ignored by online store owners and result in vulnerabilities and poor performance.
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Wrap-Up
And these are the top 6 common WooCommerce mistakes that every store owner makes at least once. We don’t mean that by taking precautions against these mistakes, your store will be completely optimized. Online stores are constantly evolving with new trends, plugins, and marketing strategies. Make sure you stay updated and routinely check your site to provide a smooth shopping process.
