If you run a website, you know how important it is to keep your website up-to-date. WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) out there, and it makes updating and maintaining your website a breeze. With its user-friendly interface and easy-to-use features, WordPress has made managing websites accessible for everyone.

Are you tired of worrying about your WordPress site's backups, speed, security, and important updates? Well, worry no more! We’ve worked tirelessly to provide you with a comprehensive guide on updating and maintaining your WordPress site.

Why is WordPress Maintenance so Important?

WordPress has revolutionized the world of website creation, making it easier for anyone to design and publish a website. However, despite its user-friendly interface and convenience, WordPress is not immune to issues that can compromise its functionality. This is where WordPress maintenance comes in.

WordPress maintenance is essential because it ensures your website remains up-to-date with the latest features and security upgrades. Regular updates help keep your site secure from threats like hackers or malware attacks. Regular maintenance also helps optimize your site's performance by removing any unnecessary plugins or files that may be slowing down your website's speed.

By performing regular checks on your WordPress site, you enhance its performance and ensure that customers have a seamless experience when interacting with your brand online.

The post WordPress Maintenance Tips You Should Not Ignore - Updated 2023 first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

Here are six burning questions which your WooCommerce firm should answer before hiring a firm to help you with your WooCommerce store:

1. Does the WooCommerce have a maintenance plan they offer to clients?

This question is a good one because more prominent firms do not want to waste time on small jobs. However, the little jobs are usually what store owners have after a site has been launched. Plugin updates, debugging code, minor fixes to design, or changes take minimal time but leave store owners frustrated because the WooCommerce developers they found to build their store do not want to maintain it or help with small updates.

Recommended services to look for:

• WooCommerce Store Management Plans

2. Does the WooCommerce firm have online marketing experience?

You do not want to get stuck with a disgruntled developer with no personality who works in a silo and does not want to understand how your business works and sees just the code. Unfortunately, there is a lot of this going around, so it is essential to find a team of diverse individuals who all have something to bring to the table to support your business. Relying on just one guy is never a good thing.

Recommended services after the launch of your website:

• PPC Management Plans
• Email Marking Plans
• SEO Plans

3. Does the WooCommerce firm own developer licensing for the plugins they recommend?

So you hire a WooCommerce firm which you provide all the requirements only to find after you pay the deposit your being asked to pay an extra expense to buy five plugins which cost over $500 and the renewals each year updated code. Make sure when you get a quote the cost for any third-party code is added and the firm has developer licensing for renewals.

Recommended tools:

• https://yithemes.com/
  One of our favorite tool suites is YITH because they offer a monthly subscription to their entire suite for developers. There are many enhancements for coupons, specialized product configurations, upselling, role-based pricing, and more.

4. Will the WooCommerce firm do on-page SEO before launch?

On-page SEO should be standard. However, most of the time website developers either do not understand the intricacies of SEO or care to perform any of these tasks. Each page should have relevant metadata, and the sitemap submitted to all major search engines.

Recommended tools:

• https://yoast.com/
  Yoast is, without a doubt, the most robust suite for SEO on-page optimization. The free version gives all the tools needed to get your website in the right place for SEO.
• SEO Grader
  Once the site is launched. You will want to do an SEO audit. Try out our free SEO grader to get a quick audit of your website.

5. Will proper reporting be installed and configured for the website?

The best part about selling online is the data so you can understand all of your marketing channels and the visitors who come to your site. Google Analytics is a robust and free reporting tool which can give you plenty of insights, so your digital marketing is on point. However, getting all your e-commerce data reporting can be difficult if done manually.

Recommended tools:

• https://www.monsterinsights.com/

Monster Insights is an outstanding tool which can easily integrate your websites sales into Google Analytics. There are also additional tools to track the user’s every step, form tracking, popular post tracking, and more.

6. Is the firm WooCommerce certified?

Finding a firm that works exclusively and is specialized in WooCommerce will save you a lot of pain and headaches. Fortunately, WooCommerce has a vetting process and has selected some of the best firms around the world to support its platform correctly. We are proud to say Bright Vessel is WooCommerce Certified Expert.

The post Best WooCommerce Firm - 6 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Development Firm first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

So, it’s happening: you’ve decided to make the jump and start selling online. Whether you’re starting a business or want to expand to the web, it’s a big commitment. Many companies of all industries have an online presence at this point, and the competition can be brutal. Having a WordPress or WooCommerce website today is much more complicated than it used to be, especially if it is your marketing tool for the business. Websites continuously need to be updated for WordPress maintenance, security, and marketing and if you’re trying to make your bottom line, maintaining your site can drain a lot of time.

As a WooCommerce Certified Agency, at Bright Vessel, we know a thing or two about this online sales platform. We’ve tried and tested many strategies and studied each outcome, and we’re committed to what works. That’s why we’ve prepared these WordPress Maintenance & WooCommerce Sales tips to help you sell online.

WordPress Maintenance Plans Tips

1. Pick a WordPress Maintenance Plan Based on the Size of Your Business

If you are a start-up and not using your site or even have time to get involved in improving your website or online store. You will want to consider the right partner that can help you.

A start-up is going to need guidance on how to market their website vs. just maintaining. Choose a maintenance partner who has experience in promoting website online and lean heavily on on-page SEO optimization

1. Find the Right Team for WordPress Maintenance, hosting companies are not specialized in development.

Pick the right developers not the host for your WordPress website. Hosting companies fall short in having the right team to provision servers and perform development tasks. It is best to work with a company that has your best interest in mind and is continually monitoring the uptime, updates, and speed of your site.

It is hard to find a good company that can do everything, so it is good to ask the right questions when reviewing companies to perform ongoing WordPress maintenance.

2. Ask a Vendor the Right WordPress Maintainance Plan Questions

1. Do you monitor Uptime?
2. What are the specs of the server?
3. If you’re on a shared hosting account, How many sites are currently on that server?
4. Do I have access to a hosting control panel to administer your site altogether?
5. Do you have full-stack developers on your team?
6. How do you prepare sites that can have a burst of traffic?
7. Do you monitor for Malware?
8. If someone hacks my site, will you clean it, or is this an extra charge?
9. How many hours does the pan include?
10. Do you do any design services, ex: banner designs?
11. How much is your hourly for additional development time?
12. Do you perform SEO audits?
13. Do you include any SEO tools for keyword tracking?
14. Do you have a quickly deployable staging area?
15. Do you perform updates on staging and not live site?
16. Do you optimize the site for speed?
17. Do you include and caching tools?
18. Do you perform minification to CSS and Javascript files?
19. Do you include a CDN (Content Delivery Network) in your fee?
20. Do you have a ticket system for change requests?
21. What is the turnaround time for an average request?
22. Do you have a Slack channel, I can speak with developers in realtime?
23. Do you include additional services such as Paid Search and Local Advertising?
24. Is the agreement month to month or will I be locked-in contractually?
25. If I pay yearly, can I get a refund for remaining month of I to want to leave?
26. Do you include plugin licensing for popular plugins I may need for my site?
27. Do I get any discounted services or access to services like PostMarkApp, WPMUDEV, YITH, MalCare, WebArx, Etc?
28. Do you provide any one on one training on how to use WordPress and WooCommerce?
29. Do you provide a free transfer or move of my website from the current host to new servers?
30. Do you offer web development or any allotted time during the month in my account for customization?

3. Make Sure Your WordPress Maintenance Plan Covers Additional Paid and Free Tools

WordPress websites need to be continually updated every month for bugs and more importantly security. It is crucial to have periodical backups and include offsite backups in case of a catastrophic event.

We have outlined a few things your vendor or yourself should be doing for WordPress maintenance.

WordPress Back Ups

It might be relevant to highlight that this point could be one of the most important ones in connection to maintenance because if something backfires then your webpage can become:

• Slightly messed up.
• Irreparably broken.
• Instantly gone.

These are concepts that you might want to avoid, but if they occur, you should know how to solve them. That is why backing up the website will give you the chance to restore it from the most recent backup. Plus you do not need to be an expert to do it, WordPress has many options to help you.

You might see that there are a lot of free options for you to do a manual backup and restore your website. We recommend the paid option WPTimeCapsule.com.

It will provide a staging area, backups, and offsite backups very quickly and is worth every penny.

Updating Core, Themes, and Plugins

If you find an update available for core, a theme, or plugin that you have then, you should make that update. What is more, if there is a security update you might want to do it soon because it will plug holes and make your website less vulnerable to hackers and other evil-doers.

When multiple components need updates at the same time, you should go about them in the following order:

• Plugins (the smallest element)
• Your theme (the medium-sized part)
• Core (your most significant component)
• Keep WordPress Database Optimized
• All the content of your website such as blog posts, pages, etc., will be stored in a database. So, over time, it might become bloated and full of extra, unnecessary elements which will make your site slow.

Cleaning Up Your WordPress Database

To help the speed and efficiency of the site. You should perform periodic database clean up of the following items:

• Post Revisions
• Deleted posts
• Unapproved or spam comments
• Unused categories and tags
• If you are determined to clean it proactively, it will be healthy and fast

WP-Sweep can help identify all the erroneous revisions and deleted items for removal.

4. Installing Security Plugin

WordPress needs to harden, which we can efficiently perform through Security tools. It is very probable that your website host does not cover all of the security needs even if you’re paying for a fully managed WordPress or WooCommerce website. Nevertheless, there are some low-cost plugins and services which might make it simple to secure your website.

Defender Pro - This plugin is an excellent tool and part of a broader suite of great products.

WebARX Pro - Provides additional security and monitoring for defacement and blacklists along with a website firewall.

MalCare Pro - Is a reliable product with automatic malware scanning, firewall, backups, and more.

What Most WooCommerce Maintenance Plans do not Consider

When selecting a firm to help you with your WooCommerce store. You should consider whether or not they know anything about effective UI/UX design, conversion optimization, and or SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Having a competent firm to update your site is one thing, but having another which can also help you grow your business changes the game entirely.

1.  WordPress Speed and Optimization

One of the most critical items that need to be looked at because if you fail here. No matter have pretty your site is your SEO and Conversion will tank. So you need to ensure that the maintenance plan your joining has in mind.

Before jumping on a new plan, check your current speed by going to Google Page Speed.

A huge part of improving the overall experience of a site is making it run as fast as possible. Speed is particularly crucial in WooCommerce, as the perfect result for you is that visitors purchase. You want the experience to be pleasant and fast so that potential customers can navigate at ease.

A site that takes a few seconds longer to load than others is at risk of losing visitors. People doing online shopping want things fast and hassle-free. Plus, fast-loading sites do better with rankings, as Google and other search engines consider speed.

So, how do you improve speed? A few WooCommerce tips:

• Test your site on Google PageSpeed Insights. There are many tools to do this online, but this is the most readily accessible – not to mention free. Through PageSpeed Insights you’ll see how long it takes to load each page. You’ll also receive suggestions on how to improve overall speed.
• Optimize images. You want beautiful pictures showcasing each of your products in full HD, but the photos can be hefty. It’s easy for visitors to get bored when they have to wait too long to see a page’s images. There are plenty of online image optimizers that can help you preserve quality while also compressing.
• Deactivate the plugins you’re not using. A common issue on WordPress sites is that you have too many plugins at the same time. Cut them to a minimum and keep the ones you need. And only activate them when you’re using them!
• Use a CDN (content delivery network). That means keeping your information on different servers around the world instead of all in the same place. A CDN will help visitors land quicker on your site.

2. Design & Navigation

Make sure your new WordPress Maintenance firm is going to help you excel. Before hiring a firm, ask them for an evaluation of your site prior so that you may know what items they can improve and then ask about which items would be the low hanging fruit for the site. Naturally, speed and SEO should be the first things to work on

We’ve created four different sections to help you build your WooCommerce site, covering the technical aspects, layout and navigation, SEO, and WooCommerce Subscriptions.

The first thing users need when buying online is easy navigation. That’s why the following three WooCommerce tips are essential!

3. Add Live Search

Visitors might already know what they want the second they reach your website. Alternatively, they may have also been there before and want to go back to one specific item. That’s why adding live search to your site becomes essential. This way, potential buyers will be able to:

• See the most relevant articles on this WooCommerce site.
• Easily navigate through similar products, thus being able to compare.
• Generally speed up the process, as they won’t have to go into each subcategory.

We recommend two different ways to add live search to your site: choosing a theme with built-in search or through the WooCommerce Product Search Extension. You should try both to see which one fits your needs best!

https://yithemes.com/themes/plugins/yith-woocommerce-ajax-search/

Home

4. Add Categories & Subcategories

Adding categories might be the most obvious-looking of all the WooCommerce tips on this list, but it’s also essential. It’s easy to forget to place products into different categories, but there are two main reasons to remember:

• Categories and subcategories make things easier for customers. While some visitors may know what they want the minute they come in, it’s not the case with everyone. You can make the design friendlier by sorting the products in a way that’s logical to everyone.
• Your SEO rankings will appreciate it. Categorizing makes it easier for Googlebot and other search engines to crawl into websites. Use highly specific long-tail keywords to help you rank for precisely what you’re offering.

5. Save Visitors Any Extra Clicks

In the spirit of making the user experience as straightforward as possible for your visitors, the best of all WooCommerce tips is to simplify. The basis of the online shopping experience is speed, and you need to dispose of any barriers. If visitors have to click ten times between categories and subcategories, they may become impatient. You don’t want them to leave and miss out on all your great products!

The best thing you can do is try horizontal navigation on your site. Through this strategy, you can:

• Display the links to the most relevant products or new content on your homepage.
• Save visitors lots of clicks.
• Make it easier for Googlebot to rank your site’s different sections.
• Improve the all-around internal linking structure of the website, which is excellent for SEO.

Generally speaking, it’s a win-win situation to link to your most essential pages from the get-go. Not only are you making it easier for visitors to navigate, but you’ll also allow crawlers to see your most important pages quickly. Every moment counts!

6. Technical Aspects

A few WooCommerce tips on the development side of your website.

Customize with Plugins

Yes, the previous example of WooCommerce tips said you should be wary of plugins. We’re not trying to confuse you, but it is essential to customize. That way, your WooCommerce will look exactly how you need it to look.

• Find the perfect theme for you. See that it adapts to the kind of WooCommerce you want to build.
• Get the extensions you need. Decide how you want your WooCommerce to look and get plugins that help you achieve that. Keep in mind that there may be extensions that include multiple features.
• Don’t overstuff it!

Redirect Pages of Out-of-Stock Items

It’s a fact: when your business is sales, there will be times when you’ll run out of stock. If you don’t expect ever to have that item again, you’ll want to delete its page from your site. But what of those other times, when it’ll take a few weeks or months? It’s too long a time to leave the page as is, but you’d lose all previous SEO work by deleting it.

So we recommend two options.

Option #1 - Remove the page and do a 301 redirect to a similar product. In other words, redirect visitors from the out-of-stock page to something that resembles what they were originally searching. The best way to do this is by using the SEO > Redirects option on the Yoast plugin.

• Deleting reduces the number of ranking pages on your site. You’ve already put in some time and effort to make your pages rank, and they’ve been up for a while. Why lose all that work?
• You might have that product in stock again eventually. If you delete it, you’ll have to start from scratch.

Option #2 - Add a powerful message that indicates where the user can find a similar product which is in stock.

Example: “Thanks for shopping with us. The item that you’re looking for is currently out of stock. Please see this similar product (Link to the new product). Please use discount code FREESHIP and enjoy some free shipping on us.”

• Adding a message with a link to a similar product could be a good tactic for your usability.
• Giving a discount promo code can entice the user to continue and purchase.

Does Your WordPress or WooCommerce Maintenance Plan Cover Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

If a website sells terrific products, but it doesn’t rank it Google, and nobody sees it, does it sell? SEO is an essential part of any site, and particularly useful for WooCommerce. Here are our three favorite SEO WooCommerce tips!

1. Create Your Own Copy

It’s easy to copy and paste product descriptions from other sites, particularly when you’re not the manufacturer. However, duplicate content can prevent you from going up on Google and other engines.

• Write a fresh copy for each product description.
• Add original images from your library to the product. Photographs are particularly important if you’re selling items people can find on different websites.

2. Include Real Reviews

If you’re starting and your WooCommerce isn’t well-known, you’ll need to showcase you’re trustworthy. One of the best ways to do that is through reviews, as online shoppers pay close attention to them. And, if you’ve decided to add a section for reviews of your store, they need to be real.

• Encourage customers to leave reviews, in their own words.
• Verify the reviews that appear on your site. You can do this by checking the “Verified owners” box under WooCommerce > Settings > Products. That way, only people who have purchased the product can comment.
• Consider installing a review plugin such as TrustedSite reviews. Through that, you can get real reviews after a third party requests them and deems them appropriate.

3. Work on Internal Linking

One of the best WooCommerce tips you’ll get, anywhere: work on building internal links. A healthy website is well-connected within itself, making navigation easier. Every section of a website should be linking internally, from blog posts to introductory pages. For WooCommerce in specific, internal link-building is an excellent strategy to help all your product pages succeed.

• Add Upsells to the items on your site. WooCommerce has a built-in option to allow Upsells, which will recommend similar products to visitors. You’ve seen it before: the idea of “if you liked this, you’d also like…”
• Add Cross-sells. Another built-in option on the WooCommerce menu, visitors will see Cross-sells when on their shopping carts. They’ll get suggestions for complementary products.

Do you Plan on Expanding your WordPress Website and Selling Products in the Future with WooCommerce?

Partnering with a team that already has a handle on WooCommerce will be a critical decision because developers get acclimated with your site if they do not have the necessary skill sets to work with WooCommercc or know how to effectively market an online store. It could be very costly to either get things built poorly or have a more experienced team fix or in most cases rebuild code correctly.

Important Decisions for Expanding into Ecommerce

If you’re thinking of taking things further and going premium with WooCommerce Subscriptions, you’ll need a few additional rules. Here are our three important WooCommerce tips for the premium service:

1. Choose the Right Host

Your hosting service is the basis of everything you build on your website. If you choose well, you’ll be on the way to a thriving business. Otherwise, things may become overly complicated, and you’ll need a whole extra set of WooCommerce tips.

Keep in mind:

• You need more from a WooCommerce Subscriptions host than from your regular WordPress one. You’ll need a host that allows you to run a web application and go well beyond merely blogging.
• The WooCommerce hosting solution you choose will be behind your payments. Through that host, you’ll be able to control payment data, so you need something secure and trustworthy.
• Changing hosts can be a long, tedious and expensive process, so it’s best to research beforehand. Find a host that fulfills your current needs and allows growth in the direction your WooCommerce needs.

2. Be Mindful of WooCommerce Code

As an open platform, one of the great things about WooCommerce is the myriad of options it offers. However, it also means a line of code can change and mess up a good chunk of the site. That’s why one of our top WooCommerce tips is to be very aware of your code.

Extensions on WooCommerce Subscriptions can fail in a big way, and you may have issues with payment. Being selective with code becomes critical with a plugin that directly deals with money.

Here are a couple of ways to prevent significant issues:

• Test updated plugins on a staging site before going live. Test a recurring payment (which won’t go through on the staging site) to see if it works correctly.
• Pick plugins, extensions, and themes with a good rep. There are seemingly endless options in WooCommerce, but they’re not all equal. To avoid possible issues, always choose new additions with good reviews and general feedback.

3. Make Decisions About Receiving Payments

Among the critical WooCommerce tips on this list: figure out how you want to manage payments What you’ll need to do:

• Choose a gateway. Go for something with modern and adaptable APIs, plus easy-to-use dashboards. It’s important to note that some regions will have a smaller pool of options, so be sure to research ahead.
• Find the payment gateway extension that works best for you. Some factors to consider should be whether they offer support if the developer is well-known and if they offer the various types of payments for your customers.

At Bright Vessel, our primary goal is helping you achieve the WooCommerce solution of your dreams. Our WooCommerce Certified Agency and the team of experts focuses entirely on the WooCommerce tips that work for you. We have a robust WordPress Maintenance Plan that covers every item in this post. Do you need more information about our services? Please reach out to us!

Check out these post for more helpful tips:

The Ultimate WordPress Maintenance Tips You Should Not Ignore

The post WordPress Maintenance Plans - How to Find the Best One first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

When you build a website, you should focus on creating great content. From your end, the limelight has to be connecting with your audiences through useful posts and products. However, the fact is that WordPress maintenance is a requirement for websites running on the platform.

At this point, you might wonder what should you be doing for WordPress maintenance. Below, you’ll find the eight essential practices!

The 8 Best WordPress Maintenance Practices

1. SEO Optimization

You probably already know this: the way to get noticed online is Search Engine Optimization. Best known as SEO, it’s a series of practices designed to get websites seen by Google, Bing, and others. It’s also ongoing work and an essential part of any WordPress maintenance plan.

Some of the practices included in SEO:

• Build backlinks. A backlink is when another website links to you, and it’s essential to rank up on search engines. Some ways to get backlinks include press releases, guest posts and using guest posts.
• Create inbound links. You also need to link to different sections of your website on your various pages. That way, the whole site is connected.
• Optimize blog posts. It’s essential to use the best possible keywords on each post, plus customize all the metadata.
• Rank monitoring. You need to continually track how your current SEO strategy is panning out, taking note of what’s working and what isn’t.

2. WordPress Core and Plugin Updates

A healthy website runs appropriately, and that means with the newest software version. It’s critical to have a WordPress maintenance plan in place because, sometimes, updates can come with issues. You can end up in recovery mode, so having a method can help you navigate errors.

In any case, you need to make sure that:

• You update WordPress as a whole or any theme or plugin as soon as you get the notification.
• You add the relevant license codes to paid plugins. That way, you’ll be able to update them regularly.

3. Backups

It is crucial to back up your website regularly, at least once a week. It’s the best way to safeguard your content in case of issues such as updates gone wrong.

• Back up all the files from your website.
• Although some hosting providers include backups in their services, it’s best to make an extra just in case. You can never be too careful!
• You have two choices: use a WordPress backup plugin like WP Time Capsule or FTP.
• We’d recommend getting an expert to handle your site backups, as it’s technical work and the health of your site may depend on it.

4. Broken Links

You need to regularly check that all the links on your site are functioning correctly. This practice may seem trivial, but broken links can damage user experience and SEO.

For great WordPress maintenance, you should scan for broken links once a month. We recommend you use any of these tools:

• Google Console. This tool can crawl around indexed sites the way Googlebot does, showcasing missing or broken pages.
• Broken Link Checker. This WordPress plugin can show you which internal and external links don't work. You can then repair issues from the plugin. We’d recommend deactivating the checker when you’re not explicitly scanning for errors, as it takes up a lot of space.

5. WordPress Website Site Security

Hacking continues to be a reality, and as part of overall WordPress maintenance, you need to be on top of security. Some of the awful things that can result from hacking:

• You will spend a lot of money.
• Your search engine rankings will suffer.
• Losing all your data can happen quickly.
• Your customers’ information may suffer.
• The reputation of the site (and the company) will take a hit.

So, what should you do to avoid getting hacked? Here are the basics:

• Keep a close watch on your website’s files to prevent signs of tampering.
• Always have the most updated hosting PHP version on your site, as to meet current standards.
• Mix up your passwords and change them every few months. Make them as cryptic as possible!
• Block suspicious IPs after they’ve attempted to hack you.

Two WordPress security plugins we love are Defender Pro and WebARX, which can get you started.

6. Google Analytics

Google Analytics might be the most all-around essential tool in the arsenal of website management. Here are some of the most crucial features that can help your WordPress maintenance:

• Analytics tells you which pages and posts are most successful. This feature is particularly useful for blog posts, as it can help you define future content to the taste of your audience.
• Conversions. Analytics lets you see how landing pages and forms are performing with visitors. You can learn how they’re working in terms of conversions, which can help you strategize further.
• Bounce rate. Seeing bounce rates for your site can help you reexamine the content and look of each page. Why do visitors flee from a specific page? Are there any errors, or should you work on the copy?

7. Updated Pages

A website is a living thing, and keeping it relevant is a crucial side of WordPress maintenance. There may be pages on your site that require that you update them somewhat regularly. A few examples:

• All-around changes to page content.
• New services or products.
• The company’s ever-growing portfolio.
• Testimonials.
• Product information.

8. Content

The easiest way to keep a website alive is by having a rich blog that gets regular updates. Ongoing content makes you look like an expert in your field, both to visitors and search engines.

Keeping a blog is an essential part of any WordPress maintenance plan, as it helps your site stay relevant. That means:

• Creating new posts.
• Optimizing the posts you’ve already uploaded.
• Checking which posts are most successful and building similar new ones.

You also need to track comments and respond to them promptly, as it shows your commitment to your audience. It’s equally important to delete any spam that may taint the look of your blog posts.

Should You Get a Professional for WordPress Maintenance?

In short: yes, you should! The main focus of any site owner should be on the products and services they’re providing. That’s kind of hard when you have to look into every little detail to keep the website functioning, wouldn’t you say?

The best decision you can make is to leave WordPress maintenance to a professional. The Bright Vessel team of experts can take care of the technicalities while you focus on building a great business and website.

• These items should be the focus of a team of WordPress experts:
• Always keep your content fresh and updated.
• Maintain the site at all times with the newest security updates.
• Make time to perform software updates as soon as they appear.
• Have a fully operational content marketing strategy that includes content, SEO, SEM, and a social media presence.
• Work on an aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate design.

Many little details need to work for an all-around WordPress maintenance plan. And it shouldn’t be you wasting time on them: you have enough on your plate as it is.

At Bright Vessel, we believe that website owners need to be all about generating an excellent product. It’s why we want to take care of the little details of WordPress maintenance for you! Read more about our WordPress management plans right here!

The post 8 Essential WordPress Maintenance Habits to Make or Break a Business first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

WooCommerce Support is Critical for Growing Stores.

WooCommerce is the future and I’ve got the data to back it up! Above is a pie chart, using data from BuiltWith.com, detailing the most popular e-commerce platforms. WooCommerce is the most widely used individual solution.

Even according to HollarBox’s compilation of WooCommerce statistics, it is neck-and-neck with Magento in the enterprise world.

But why?

If you’re a business owner that is new to selling online, you might take a look at WooCommerce and think it is a complete hassle!

For a typical installation, you have to first buy hosting, then get WordPress all configured, install WooCommerce, and, finally, follow through EVEN MORE configuration.

Compare this to Shopify’s 5-minute store setup and you may think that you’d have to be a complete loon to go with a solution like WooCommerce!

But that’s where you’re wrong.

WooCommerce is a different beast than most other solutions.

The key difference is that it is a WordPress plugin—allowing you to turn any WordPress site into a fully-functional store.

I could write you a whole book on how WordPress is the most powerful tool for your online business, but I will spare you from that in this article and instead give you a few key points to take into consideration.

• YOU are in control of your data. If you don’t like your web host, you can simply migrate to a different one.
• There is a HUGE number of themes and plugins; both free and paid. You’ll find over 50,000 plugins and over 1,000 themes in the official WordPress store. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the number of themes and plugins available elsewhere.
• Limitless control over your site. There is no feature you cannot add to your WordPress site. Need a forum? Want to create a membership site? No problem.

Setting up WooCommerce does not have to be hard

If you find yourself a good support partner, all of the pains of the setup process could be taken away.

Having a support partner could save you from the stress of setting up a new WooCommerce-based website, save you money by providing additional products and services at no cost, and give your WordPress installation the hardened security it needs to keep your customer information safe and private.

This article will cover everything you need to know when choosing a WooCommerce support partner.

Feature #1: Security

It all starts with security.

On its own, WordPress is very secure. However, some sites still, unfortunately, get hacked.

The most common reason WordPress sites get hacked is out-of-date WordPress installations and plugins.

When choosing a support partner, be sure that they offer scheduled or automatic updates and some form of security monitoring.

Another aspect you’re going to want to look into is security monitoring.

We offer 24/7 security monitoring for our clients. This means that if anything goes wrong, we’re ready to take action to protect your site.

A popular security tool is WebArx. They put out a great article on how it can help you secure your WordPress website. It is actually what we use on the back-end to keep our clients’ businesses safe.

A solution like this provides a slew of benefits such as downtime monitoring, SSL monitoring (ensuring your SSL certificates are valid and not expired), daily security scans, and more.

Feature #2: Speed and Caching

If you care about SEO, the effectiveness of your pages, and users actually sticking around, it’s time to improve your site speed.

Here’s what the Search Team over at Google have to say about speed:

You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed.

That’s right! If it takes a visitor seconds upon seconds to view your page, it’s going to hurt your search rankings.

Not only is it going to hurt your rankings in Google but it will also drive away potential customers in general.

KissMetrics has determined through its data that over 40% of people will leave if a website does not load in three seconds or less.

The question now is how we can increase the speed of our site.

Earlier in this article, we covered CDNs. That’s the first step we should take.

Actually, it’s the first step your WooCommerce support partner should take! You’re going to want to have a fast, reliable CDN out of the box.

After you have a CDN set up, the next part is caching.

What is “caching”

Picture yourself as a police officer in Rome. Every single day you have tourists asking you, “Where is the Colosseum?” It’s distracting, repetitive, and just plain annoying to you.

One day you decide to get clever.

You print off a stack of 100 index cards you can easily keep in your pocket. The index cards detail the same exact instructions you would have spoken out to the tourists.

The next day, every time a tourist approaches you, you hand them one of the index cards without saying a word.

The result is that the tourist gets their answer a lot quicker and you are less stressed.

Now, replace yourself (the police officer) with your WordPress site, the tourists with your website visitors, and the index cards with a cached version of your page.

In order to save both time and stress on your server, your WordPress site hands out these ‘cached’ versions of your pages to your users.

Beyond caching

We’ve covered a very basic form of caching.

If your WooCommerce support partner gives you access to a powerful caching plugin like WP Rocket, there are many other options to improve your site speed.

Some of these other methods include:

• Image lazy-loading: Prevents loading of images until the user scrolls to them
• Minification: Optimizes Javascript and CSS files
• GZip compression: Compresses the size of requests, making your website use less bandwidth

Feature #3: Off-Site Backups

Imagine spending years building a business, writing the perfect product descriptions, and accumulating hundreds of SKUs.

Then, your site gets hacked, everything is gone, and you have no backups.

Unfortunately, this terrible situation has happened to many small business owners.

It is important to go with a support partner that offers frequent backups in an off-site location.

How frequent you might ask? The recommended schedule is every single night.

You also might be curious to learn why a backup of your site should be “off-site” and what that entails.

If you have an “on-site” backup—a backup made on the same server (or in the same building) as your website—you are in danger, my friend.

If a natural disaster occurs, a network-wide-hacking happens, or the server gets corrupted, both your live website and backups will likely be destroyed without a chance for recovery.

If your website is hosted on a server in Houston Texas, the server dies out, and your backups are safe inside a data center in Miami, Florida, you have nothing to worry about.

In short, off-site backups buy you peace of mind.

One service that we offer is WP Timecapsule.

Feature #4: CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Have you ever heard of the term “reddit hugged”?

It’s when reddit—one of the most popular social media websites and the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet”—shares a link to somebody’s website, it goes viral, and it gets WAY too many visitors, causing the site to crash.

Your first thought to solve this problem might be to upgrade to bigger and worse servers. While this surely would help, there is a more efficient way to reduce the strain on your website.

A lot happens when you visit a website.

1. First, a bunch of “code” is returned that is more properly called “HTML”.
2. Then, the HTML is read by the web browser and any additional images, scripts, or stylesheets needed by the page are downloaded.
3. From here, it’s up to the web browser to process all of the HTML, CSS, and Javascript in order to properly display the website.

The second step is the most costly, especially if you are loading large images.

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) does two important things for your website.

1. Images, scripts (Javascript), and stylesheets (CSS) are loaded from THEIR servers; NOT yours.
2. CDNs load these images, scripts, and stylesheets on a server that is closest to the user. This means that if you are viewing your website on a vacation to Peru, the CDN will attempt to load the content from the server that is geographically closest to Peru. This results in much faster page load times.

Ideally, your support partner should support CDNs out of the box. Be sure that the support package you purchase includes a full CDN service and not “CDN support”, as that might mean you will have to purchase and hook up a third-party CDN service.

Feature #5: The Staging Site

Once you start getting a lot of traffic, making small errors on your site can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars lost.

Ouch!

Whenever you are making modifications to your site—configuring a new payment gateway or changing the design of your home page for example—you don’t want your users to see your incomplete changes.

A staging site is an exact clone of your website, but it is not publicly visible. It’s a sandbox if you will.

Anything you want to change, you do it here first!

Once you’re happy with the results and you have made sure there are no errors, you can push the changes from your staging site to your live site.

Another big advantage of this kind of workflow is if you hire a web designer.

They’re going to make all sorts of changes and you might not like their work. If that’s the case and all of their changes are done to the staging site, you don’t have to worry about your visitors being exposed to it.

One service that we offer is WP Timecapsule.

Feature #6: Analytics

Google Analytics is the most popular analytics platform and for good reason.

It’s very powerful and can give you valuable insights into the demographics of your visitors as well as what actions they are performing on the site.

Adding Google Analytics to Your Website

While you can add Google Analytics to any WordPress site, some support partners make it extra easy to integrate.

The questions you should be asking your support partner are…

• if they will help you set up Google Analytics
• and also if they will help you set it up in a way that allows you to track your most important e-commerce metrics, such as what products are being purchased and what the conversion rate is on your product pages.

It’s also worth investigating what other sorts of web analytics perks they offer.

One service that we offer is MonsterInsights.

With Google Analytics, you typically have to fumble around with the tracking code, properly set it up for your specific e-commerce business, and then you have to go about the challenge of learning the Google Analytics interface. (Which is quite hard for beginners!)

MonsterInsights makes the whole process dead-easy for our clients.

It just takes one click to set up and, after that, you can view all of your analytics data right inside the WordPress dashboard.

It’s lovely!

Feature #7: Search Engine Optimization

Ready to be blown away? 43% of e-commerce traffic comes from Google searches.

For that reason, it’s not in your best interest to skip this section.

The first step to SEO starts on your website. When you’re picking a WordPress theme, or having one designed, it has to be designed with SEO in mind.

While evaluating themes, you should keep the following in mind:

• Does the theme load quickly?
• Is the design simple and effective?
• Is this theme intended for e-commerce shops?

The third tip is important and a lot of beginners neglect it.

There are hundreds of thousands of WordPress themes, yet not all of them are great for e-commerce businesses; some are intended to just be blogs.

After you pick a nice theme, it all comes down to the plugins and the configuration of your site.

As mentioned in a previous point, the speed of your website is crucial. A plugin like WP Rocket will not only increase the speed of your site, but also offers search-engine specific improvements such as cache preloading.

The #1 plugin for SEO is Yoast. They have been around for a very long time and are highly trusted.

It’s a quick, easy setup and Yoast offers many user-friendly tools to help you create search-engine-friendly content.

Does your support partner offer SEO tools?

SEO tools can be expensive!

That’s why it’s nice when a support partner includes a few choices tools right out of the box.

As an e-commerce store, the two most basic features you need are rank tracking and the ability to audit your website to pick out critical issues.

Feature #8: Perks & Additional Services

A good WooCommerce support partner should offer a variety of perks.

These perks should not only be tremendously useful to you, but they should also save you money.

That’s right, save you money.

Web hosts and support partners are able to get deals on an assortment of services for significantly lower prices.

These savings are passed on to the clients. For example, over at Bright Vessel, we are able to provide over $1,000 of products and services at no additional cost to the user.

Buyer beware: ensure proper licensing is included

Sometimes, support partners will include an assortment of plugins but you have to purchase individual licenses to use them.

Be sure that your support partner has active licenses, intended to be used by clients like you. If a license is not active, the plugin will not receive updates and that opens you up to a world of security vulnerabilities.

How You Can Get All of These Features Today

We take our clients’ businesses very seriously at Bright Vessel.

You can find more details about our WooCommerce Support plan here.

Whether you are a brand new startup or an established shop, we have a plan with features that meet your needs.

Once again, I want to reiterate that we include over $1,000 worth of products and services at no additional cost to the user.

We include access to one of the world’s fastest CDNs, as well as the popular WordPress plugin, WP Rocket. Your site will experience load times lower than ever before.

I hope you have learned a lot from this article! These eight points are critical for deciding on a support partner.

The post WooCommerce Support Partner - 8 Features That Are Critical first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

You can get WooCommerce answers from many places. We’ve compiled our list of favorites below, in four subcategories: official sources, expert communities, social media groups, and specialized sites. Let’s get to it!

WooCommerce Support 

Official Sources

Of course, you can get WooCommerce support directly from the companies.

1. WooCommerce Website

To get WooCommerce support on their official site by submitting a ticket, you have to be a customer on the platform. It’s also important to note that, for people working with the free WooCommerce plugin, the options are limited. That said, you'll find many guides and walkthroughs available on the site.

Head to docs.woocoomerce.com to find the entirety of WooCommerce’s official documentation. There, you’ll discover WooCommerce support for the core plugin, plus the list of their official extensions. You can purchase them directly right there.

Other things you can do on the WooCommerce site:

• Access documents directed at developers.
• Contact the company for further information (particularly on the basics of the plugin, technical aspects, and sales)
• View WooCommerce articles on how to install and set up, plus their courses.

WooCommerce Support from Expert Communities

You'll see plenty of forums and expert communities online, and offline that offer WooCommerce support!

2. WooCommerce Forum on WordPress.org

The WooCommerce forum on WordPress.org might end up being the first place you go to for WooCommerce support. As one of the most popular plugins in WordPress, the forum is active. You’ll need to be registered at WordPress.org to access.

• People answering questions here are users and WooCommerce developers.
• You’ll get answers, but it will take a while.
• The responses tend to be a little basic.

You can begin your quest for WooCommerce support here. However, if you’re looking for in-depth answers, there are better sources out there.

3. Quora

Quora is the Internet’s most significant go-to place to ask questions, and you can get info here about everything. Of course, that also includes WooCommerce support.

Keep in mind that Quora is an open platform, so everyone can answer. That means a lot of non-experts can end up giving you poor advice. Also, many people end up responding to link up to their websites and gain traffic. Just be very aware of the nature of the platform, so you don’t end up damaging your site by mistake.

4. Slack

Slack is a collaborative tool, and one of the most widely used in the world. However, one thing many don’t know about Slack is that it’s also possible to build communities in it. Among the many communities Slack on different topics of interests, you’ll find a WooCommerce support one.

Slack is a very active community that includes WooCommerce developers, and it’s a little more focused on programmers. You can ask about something a little more general and let them know if you only have “basic” knowledge of the platform. Experts here will be able to guide you through an issue, even if they get a bit technical.

Here’s how to access the Slack WooCommerce community:

• Sign up by clicking on this link.
• Receive an official invite by email.
• Ask away!

5. Reddit

Reddit is another potentially significant source of information on nearly every subject. There’s an ongoing thread on the site for WooCommerce support, which you can access here.

• There’s a lot of activity in the forum, and you should get answers fairly quickly.
• They have a team of Redditors that make sure the thread is clean and devoid of wrong info, links, and spam. Still, errors might slip past them, so be aware at all times.
• You’ll find experts for every level of WooCommerce support, although it’s a little on the technical side.

6. Local Expert Groups

Larger cities may have enough specialists and agencies to offer in-person meetings. Los Angeles and Chicago, for example, hold regular meetups for Woo-enthusiasts to mingle or share ideas. In these scenarios, you’ll find Woo enthusiasts who could offer some WooCommerce support. Who knows, you could even end up with potential business partners!

Social Media Groups

WooCommerce is so big that you'll notice communities in the most popular social networks. You can find our two favorite places to get answers on Facebook:

7. WooCommerce Support Group

A new group mainly made up of members in the US, is WooCommerce support which tries to weed out all the solicitors and focus strictly on helping store owners with fixing and learning the ropes with their websites.  WooCommerce Support Group:

• Answers to every level of queries about WooCommerce. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert, you’ll find feedback.
• A strong and helpful community.
• An interesting place to hang out in and gather tips from fellow users.

8. WooCommerce Advanced Facebook Group

A great alternative for those who have been using WooCommerce for a while. Another closed group, all you need to do is apply and wait for confirmation. A few things to keep in mind:

• As the Advanced on the group title will have you believe, this is directed at experts. Here, you’ll find discussions from WordPress developers and longtime fans of WooCommerce and webmasters.
• You’ll see a lot of discussions about advanced functionality in the WooCommerce platform.
• In general, it’s the place to go for in-depth doubts.

Specialized Sites

A few sites we love with great WooCommerce support.

9. WooBeginner

For webmasters starting out their WooCommerce adventure, WooBeginner is the place to go. It’s great for people who:

• Search for guidance while starting an online business presence.
• Could use some “hacks” to their WooCommerce experience.
• Want to elevate their profits by improving their WooCommerce presence.

WooBeginner has a huge library of articles dedicated to helping out those who dip their toe into WooCommerce. Here you can also find out about upcoming updates, and their newsletter is very helpful. If you have doubts, you can contact them directly for further guidance.

10. Youtube

What's the next best thing after saying "Google it"? We think "Tubeit". There are vast amounts of videos online that walk you through WordPress, WooCommerc, plugins, etc.

We have selected some great channel that you can subscribe to and get the most out of online video tutorials for WooCommerce Support.

Darrel Wilson
124,435 subscribers

Darren is one of the most popular WooCommerce and WordPress Youtube broadcasters. His videos range from Real Estate, How to Make Money Online, WordPress, and WooCommerce.

See Youtube Channel

Ferdy Korpershoek
74,429 subscribers

Ferdy is an established Youtube broadcaster who has created educational videos for WooCommerce and WordPress. He also has videos on popular themes, plugins, and marketing tips.

See Youtube Channel

11. Bright Vessel WooCommerce Store Management

You need not only a great web hosting company but also full stack website developers who know intimately WooCommerce for getting the right help. Whenever you’re building a new website, and especially for WooCommerce. You want visitors to feel comfortable when shopping with you. Security should be the number one priority when looking for a hosting server. Our WooCommerce Support Services are trustworthy and offer everything you need, such as:

• Weekly updates to WordPress and WooCommerce core files
• FREE hosting with your store management.
• Fast sites that load quickly in top performance, with few downtime occurrences.
• Great tech support in many different channels.
• SSL certificates that protect visitors’ data.
• Sites that work well even during spikes in traffic.
• Licensing with Yith Themes, WPMU Dev, WP Time Capsule, Gravity Forms, and more!
• Dedicated Slack channel to communicate with team members
• Daily offsite backups
• Include development time for enhancements
• Membership to Over 100 online WooCommerce video tutorials
• Access to Brigth Vessel SEO tools comparable to Moz.com

Bright Vessel is a WooCommerce Certified Agency. For years, our team has specialized in bringing custom solutions for businesses of all walks of life. We believe every business can benefit from a strong online presence. Whether you’ve been a WooCommerce enthusiast for a while or want to start fresh, we can help. Visit our WooCommerce Store Management Plan to find out more about Bright Vessel, or contact us for more information!

The post 11 Sources to Get the Best WooCommerce Support Everywhere in the Web first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

The short answer to which professional to hire is that it depends on what you’re searching. You might want a simple project or a more complex one. Perhaps you’ve run a WooCommerce website for a while and now need some tweaking, or you’re starting it from scratch. The level of complexity of your site can guide you through the type of expert you need.

On the WooCommerce website under customizations link. They give two options for help. WooCommerce Certified Full-Service Agencies and Codeable.com

This can be a bit misleading because it states projects from $5000 but there are several WooCommerce Certified Full-Service Agencies who do work on small projects and offer maintenance plans for store owners.

How do we know, because we're a Certified WooCommerce partner:

https://woocommerce.com/experts/bright-vessel/

As an example, we offer WooCommerce and WordPress store management plans and bill by 1/2 hour increments with no job too small. We feel this is important for WooCommerce store owners to know because some of the experts specialize in start-ups and small stores while going to extra mile in providing education to new online store owners.

In addition, we have been certified by Codeable. Making Bright Vessel one of the only WooCommerce Experts which is also certified by both WooCommerce and Codeable with a 5-star rating.

So which path is better for a WooCommere store owner to get support?

To decide whether to hire a WooCommerce Certified Agency Vs. Codeable Developer, we’ve created a guide of possibilities. We’ll talk about who you’ll need in the following scenarios:

• When you require front-end work, including visuals
• In times where you need to tweak the backend and functionality
• When you have trust issues hiring a single developer
• If you’re not looking too far into the future

WooCommerce Certified Agency Vs. Codeable Developer

Front-End Work

Front-end work constitutes changing simple details on your WooCommerce store. You don’t need a WooCommerce specialist to improve the visuals of your eStore. Some examples of simple front-end work are:

• Changing the theme
• Switching the order of items
• Generally speaking, any aesthetic aspect of WooCommerce

Bright Vessel founder Judd Dunagan elaborates on this:

“Templates, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, structure and other cosmetic changes are fairly universal. A WooCommerce specialist will be able to switch up the look of your eStore, but so will a WordPress developer. It’s when functionality makes an appearance that you need someone with a more specific set of skills and in-depth knowledge of how and why stores convert into sales”

Customizing the visuals of your WooCommerce site should be a piece of cake for a WordPress developer. The structure of the plugin is very similar to the WordPress layout, and toggling its look works the same. However, if you’re looking for more in-depth customization, you will need a WooCommerce specialist who knows the code and has a direct line to WooCommerce developers.

In some cases, a bigger WooCommerce Certifed Agency does not do one-off jobs for design and layouts (Shameless plug: We love to do web design and can help). However, Codeable has many website designers that you can hire which have no issue in providing one-off services, including Bright Vessel.

On Codeable, the experience is a little different. You go through an estimation process with several developers who try to outline what you're looking to do. You then choose a developer which most manage the projects in different ways and some work communication only through the Codeable platform for your project. So the client experience is a little different than hiring an Agency. However, most Codeable developers also have agencies (Ex: Bright Vessel) so it is a matter of knowing what you're looking for and finding the best match that makes you feel comfortable.

Back-End Work

The backend of WooCommerce is precisely where you’ll need a WooCommerce Certified Agency. Why?

• Although visually similar to WordPress as a whole, WooCommerce has very particular workings.
• A WooCommerce specialist will know about the code and upcoming changes to the platform.

For Judd, this is why you should find a WooCommerce professional:

“The WooCommerce backend is very complex, and it can have a lot of minutiae depending on what you’re selling. While a WordPress developer might be somewhat familiar with the platform, WooCommerce is very peculiar. It’s also constantly undergoing improvements, and someone with superficial knowledge of the platform won’t be aware of every new thing. A WooCommerce specialist will know about every update to the plugin. You’re going to need someone with a vast understanding of the mechanics of the backend, and WooCommerce in general. If there’s a major change in the platform, you want someone who optimizes the site thinking ahead. While WooCommerce does take a lot from the standard WordPress view, the fact is you’ll need an expert to get things done well. Once you’re in a deeper territory, it’s time to hand the keys to a pro.”

• The best WordPress developer will focus their knowledge on the all-around platform.
• The nuances of WooCommerce might escape developers, as there are so many specific functions and aspects to it.
• For a highly technical scenario, the best thing you can do is hire a WooCommerce specialist that knows their way around.
• A WordPress developer won’t have the full grasp of the ever-changing landscape of the popular eCommerce plugin.
• There are many specific functions to a WooCommerce store, and the platform undergoes constant improvements. You need to hire someone who knows about the current and upcoming changes and, above all, what are the new best practices to follow.

The wp_update_post function is a prime example of how WooCommerce is constantly changing. Judd has this to say about it:

“It’s easy for someone who isn’t an expert to make mistakes with the wp_update_post function. Right now, it’s easy for you to use it for an order, post or product because they work as posts in the database. However, WooCommerce announced that they'd move away from the standard database of posts and their meta information, using their database structure. Soon enough, WooCommerce will optimize the platform on its terms, so it’s not the best idea to post products through the wp_update_post function. Once WooCommerce moves to its proprietor database, the code won’t work anymore. You’ll be stuck with obsolete code, and you’ll need to spend even more time fixing it. This logic applies to a lot of functions on WooCommerce that remain from previous versions and you shouldn't use. A WooCommerce specialist will know which functions to avoid.”

Can’t Afford a WooCommerce Certified Expert?

If you’re starting your WooCommerce store, there’s a good chance you may reach out to a few Expert vendors on WooCommerce which may be out of your prices range.

• Keep in mind that setting up a business will require investment. It’s just a fact of life.
• Skimming expenses at first can potentially cost you much more in the future. You’ll have a contrived setup that will inescapably require more work in the future.
• If you need specialized work, a specialist is always the way to go.

One thing to remember is that you don’t need a completely perfect store from the get-go. The best way to go about building your WooCommerce on a budget is by constantly adding to it.

Many businesses have been able to afford a WooCommerce Certified Expert by taking things slowly through agile development or Minimum Viable Product or MVP. These formulas work around building the eStore slowly instead of doing everything at once. Judd adds:

“If the issue with hiring a WooCommerce Cerified Expert is one of money, there’s a way around it. The iterative approach to building an eCommerce is prevalent among smaller businesses. Here’s how that works: you get the WooCommerce Expert to create a Minimal Viable Product where you can start an online business that makes money. Once you’re at a comfortable pace, you can start adding additional changes, from functionality to different types of products. Bright Vessel can guide you through the process of building the best eCommerce for your growing needs, as you grow. The first version of your eStore doesn’t have to be the final one.”

The iterative approach allows you to:

• Run a basic version of your eStore to get things started
• Make money from it
• Improve the WooCommerce store as your business grows. Make additional investments somewhere down the line to add as many layers as you need from your store

Both WooCommerce Certified Agencies and Codeable Developers are the best choices you have and why WooCommerce recommends both paths. Now you could be paying the same on either place and we recommend checking all WooCommerce Experts before trying the Codeable route because you will be surprised on how many are willing to help.

You Have a Trustworthy WordPress Developer

If you’ve had a website for a while, you probably have a go-to WordPress developer. They’re trustworthy, and you know they work well. You prefer working with someone who has already shown you good results.

If you only need to get a few basics done on WooCommerce, this isn’t a bad idea. It depends on what features and enhancements you want out of your WooCommerce store, however. For Judd, the solution is simple:

“Work with your trustworthy WordPress developer for as long as you can. You’ve already established a good rapport with this person. However, when you’re building your WooCommerce store, it’s also important to have an honest conversation with the developer. How much are they able to manage before calling an expert? There will come the point in which they won’t be able to help anymore. That’s where the WooCommerce expert should make an appearance.”

In other words:

• Maintain a good relationship with your developer
• Work with them for as long as you can
• Talk to them about their knowledge of WooCommerce to see how far along they can accompany you

Not Looking Far Into the Future

You might not be thinking ahead when it comes to your WooCommerce store. If you’re only thinking of the next few months, the issue might be not planning. Business growth is a factor to consider, and one you should anticipate. It might seem like a good idea to economize at first, but it can ultimately harm you. Judd explains this well here:

“One thing we frequently see at Bright Vessel is cleanup. A client comes in, and they’ve had their store set up before, and there are a lot of things that shouldn’t be in the backend. Clients can end up losing sales during the process of backtracking and trying to fix it up. It’s always going to end up being more expensive to do cleanup than to start with a WooCommerce specialist from the get-go. Why? Because there’s code to fix instead of the custom code done from scratch. The best thing you can do is hire a professional who knows their way around WooCommerce from the start. It’ll save you a lot of headaches down the line, as you’ll end up paying two people to do the same thing at different points.”

In other words:

• Hire a WooCommerce Certified Expert the second you decide to build a WooCommere store.
• Hiring a professional to do reworking will end up being more expensive.
• Your business can suffer from having to close the eShop while undergoing fixes.
• You’ll eventually need a pro anyway - don’t fight it!

In Conclusion

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, and a WP developer should know a little about it, but the best course of action is going with a WooCommerce Expert. They’ll guide you through exactly where your store needs to go so it can be profitable and grow.

The Bright Vessel team of WooCommerce specialists has worked with the platform for a long time. We pride ourselves in our hard and customized work for clients from all walks of life. Contact us to get help and find out more about our plans and prices!

The post Should You Hire a WooCommerce Certified Agency Vs. a Codeable Developer? first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

It is not an easy task, and sometimes, it might be a bit overwhelming. But it is not impossible; here you will find all the items you need to consider when planning your marketing strategies.

Defining Your Marketing Plan

When setting your marketing plan, you should take into account the following concepts:

• Develop a Marketing Map

Brand promotion to the customer base is a crucial component of any marketing strategy and a great way of ensuring that any promotional material is retained and valued is through the use of mapping. Messages that are highly visual can have a significant impact on both customers and prospects.

• Define Your Customer Journey

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience your customers have with you. It helps to tell the story of a customer's experience with your brand from original engagement and into a long-term relationship.

• Building Personas

Create each customer persona. Think about WHO your ideal customer is and you have to aim that target when planning your marketing strategies.

Customer Experience Improvements

Your customers are the pillars of your business, reason why you should take care of them and please them in every opportunity you have. Here you will find a set of ideas to improve your relationship with them and so, their experience with your brand.

• Product Reviews

A third party review system will increase traffic to your website. That's why we work with external expert SEO agencies to ensure this benefit. And because we also partner with Google, you’ll get star ratings in your paid ads, which increases click-through rates by 17%.

As Google only approves specific ratings and reviews providers, and not individual companies, if you’re using an in-house system you won’t get this benefit.

• Cart Abandonment

You will find many reasons for buyers to abandon their carts such as unexpected shipping cost, having to create a new user account, long and confusing checkouts, among others.

Cart abandonment is a huge problem, you might lose up to 75% of your online sales because of this and in some cases, up to 83 %.

What you can do to reduce this abandonment is to implement Cart follow up emails. By doing this, you will redirect your customers to the purchasing page allowing them to continue buying. No matter the reason they left they can come back to complete the purchase.

• Product Page Improvements

One way to improve your product page is to add push notifications. You will benefit the customer by providing a direct method of communication; they are the best form to speak them directly. Forget about spam filters or inbox messages which are rarely checked.

• Upsell and Cross Sell

An Upsell is used to get the customer spend more money by buying a more expensive model of the same product or add some features. In some other cases, also warranties that relate to the product in question. On the other hand, a Cross-sell is used to get customers to spend more money by adding more products from different categories than the product being viewed or purchased.

• Thank You Page

Your thank-you page is a critical component of an eCommerce checkout process, but it is also an opportunity to squeeze more value out of your customers. However, most eCommerce stores waste the chance.

Marketers consider the “thank you” page the end of the sales funnel, while this might be partially true, you should also see it as a part of a broader relationship with your customers.

When a customer reaches this page, it means they trust you with money. They like your products and believe you will follow through the end of the transaction. This is why the probability of selling to an existing customer is 50-60 %, while the likelihood of selling to a new customer is only 5-20%.

So, you should consider offering some coupon on the next purchase, adding a survey, upselling related products or asking the customer to share purchases socially.

Capitalizing On New and Existing Channels

At this point, you might have already some channels that you regularly use with your customers. Now, let's see how you can take full advantage of them to improve your sales and get more customers.

• Email

Build Your Email Channel: It will help you grow your subscribers.

#1 Create a free opt-in offer - one of the best ways to capture email addresses organically is to give away something valuable for free.

This freebie could be any form of content that shows off your brand´s expertise. You have to offer a more top-of-the-funnel piece of content to people who need a little more nurturing before making a purchasing decision. And for those who have explicitly expressed interest in your product or service, you can offer something more bottom-of-the-funnel.

What you create and send is up to you, but the underlying strategy is the same: deliver something useful to your audience, and they will happily trade your email address in return.

#2 Make subscribing to your email list easy - Many brands tuck their newsletter signup boxes way down at the bottom of their homepages. There's A good chance this prompt will go unnoticed by many visitors. But if your primary goal is growing your email list, then you need to prioritize placing multiple opportunities for people to give you their email address throughout the page.

Nurture Your Email Channel

When you take the right step to nurture your relationship during this initial period, odds are much higher than your readers will turn into evangelists for your brand. This is a pivotal moment when you can encourage your reader to share your information with their family, friends and social networks.

An easy way to get to this point is with another (automated) thank-you message. After your reader completes a defining action, such as finishing your five-part email series or buying the project, set up an automated message that thanks them.

In that email, consider encouraging readers and customers to share your content with their friends and family since they found it helpful. A great way to build awareness is to make satisfied readers and customers into advocates for your brand.

Segmented Lists

Segmenting your list ensures that you are delivering the right message to the right reader. It also provides a more personalized approach to connecting with your reader based on where they are in your funnel, which will naturally increase your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

MarketingSherpa found that segmenting your email can increase the amount of revenue generated by 50%. Unfortunately, despite all the positives associated with segmentation, 42% of marketers do not send targeted email messages.

Furthermore, they reported that sending irrelevant content was the #3 reason why consumers marked a message as spam. That's what happens when you don't segment your list: you risk your email being marked as spam.

Build Subscribers

The most popular way to divide your list include separating users by the following traits:

• Lifecycle stages (subscribers, lead, MQL, SQL, customers)

• Demographics (gender, age, location, job title, or buyer persona)

• Behavior (did they complete the email course, or did they stop after the first two emails?)

• Buying frequency (do they purchase your product monthly, quarterly, or yearly?)

• Where they signed up (did they sign up for your newsletter or a content offer?)

Start segmenting right away. The sooner you categorize where your customers are currently at, the faster you will be able to deliver targeted content and see the positive ROI that makes email marketing worthwhile.

• Browser Push Notifications

Browser Push Notifications are clickable messages that can be sent from a website to its subscribers on both desktop or mobile devices. These notifications get delivered in real time, even if the website isn't open on the user's browser when they are sent. Also called Web Push Notifications, they are a great way to re-engage with your visitors without knowing their email or any other contact details.

When a user arrives on your website, a small dialog box asks them for their permission to send push notifications. If they click on ‘Allow´, your website can start triggering notifications even when they are not present on your website.

Benefits Of Using Push Notifications

• It gives you the power of instant communications - Browser Push Notifications can be seamlessly delivered without delay to your user's desktop browser or in the notification slider of the user´s mobile phone, even if they are not on your website.

• Works similarly to Mobile Push Notifications- Push Notifications on Chrome, as well as FireFox, work the same as native notifications which are sent by apps on your phone. So, there's no need to manage a separate mobile app.

• Assured delivery- Browser Push Notifications overcome one of the biggest flaws of Email Marketing- messages not getting delivered because of spam filters, or some other reason. It's a one-hundred percent consent driven communication channel.

• Wide reach across browser- desktop internet usage accounts for 42% of the total internet time. Browser Push Notifications work on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari which have a combined market share of more than 75%.

• Re-engage with both users and visitors- by using Browser Push Notifications; you can reach out both your users and website visitors, given they´ve subscribed to receive browser push notifications form you. It gives you the ability to re-engage with your audience without knowing their contact details.

• More opt-ins and higher conversion rates-  Studies prove that Browser Push Notifications produce better results in term of opt-in and click-through compared to other marketing mediums. Since browser push notifications only require the user to allow permission with just one click and users can unsubscribe at any time instantly, the opt-ins for these are higher than Email or SMS.

• Affiliate Channels

Whether you are a retailer or a publisher, affiliate marketing, like anything in the digital marketing world, is not going to fix your dying balance sheet by itself.

What it can do, however, is to add another revenue stream without the need to expand masses of effect or money. This is particularly important for publishers with the rise of ad-blocking.

But brands that go down the affiliate marketing route need to remember that it is effectively a form of advertising, and individual responsibilities come with that. Namely: protecting the trust in your brand of products.

Recruiting the Right Affiliates

One of the best practices when recruiting affiliates is to give a chance to everyone. In affiliate marketing, the Pareto rule still applies: 80% of sales come from 20% of your affiliates. The problem is that you don't know who belongs to the 20% group. You can use the affiliate selection tool.

Commission Junction is the perfect example. While it does not have a formal affiliate approval process, they strongly recommend you possess the requirements. Otherwise, you won't be successful as an affiliate.

1. Commit to affiliate marketing. Many people jump into affiliate marketing thinking they'll be making money on the internet the first week and live happily ever after; the truth is, there is no magic bullet. Earning money as an affiliate publisher can be difficult unless you are genuinely committed.

2. Create a game plan. A solid game plan on how you can maintain and continually build traffic to your website is essential, and figuring out what set you apart from others will improve your chances at winning.

3. Set yourself apart. By CJ´s Publisher Service Agreement, a publisher account that does not generate any ‘commissionable’ transaction for six months will be deactivated, and a non-refundable $10.00 (US) Dormant Account Fee will be assessed.

Setting Your Objective and Strategy

It is a must to set objectives. This clarity allows you to select the right affiliates and define your commision.

Some common objectives that you might have for your program could be:

• To increase the sales volume by 5% year on year,

• To increase the sales value by 10% month on month,

• To increase the average order value by 20% by October 2019,

• To increase the number of active affiliates in the program by 30% by the end of the year.

Once objectives are defined, you need to set up the strategy that helps to reach them. This strategy is divided into four parts: terms and conditions, setting PPC rules, approach to validating sales, and recruiting the right affiliates.

Within the terms and conditions of the program, you will focus on how affiliates can promote you. The terms and conditions can, therefore, play a big part in how you are represented online and how successful you will be at achieving your objectives.

Within your terms and conditions, you need to define what can and cannot be promoted through PPC. The most apparent restrictions are brand terms and misspellings. So one of your objectives could be to increase your visibility on search engine affiliates, and you can do this by targeting only long tail keywords. Other things to consider are whether affiliates can link PPC directly to your site and whether they can use your URL in the ad copy. There are decisions you need to state in your terms and conditions.

Now that you have all these details information, it is time to plan your marketing strategy carefully. Remember that your customers and visitors are your top priority, so you need to attract them to your brand. Apply one, some or all the strategies that suit your purpose and let your business grow considerably.

If you're looking for a team that can steer you in the right path for your website development and digital marketing, please contact us. We promise the initial call will provide enough insights to make it more than worth your while.

The post Marketing Strategies for WordPress & WooCommerce Websites first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

Websites have a central role in creating an online presence. Potential customers are likely to search for online information before heading to a restaurant or even shopping at an online store. A local business website will help visitors follow the path you want them to adequately meet you.

While small businesses spend a lot of money on creating a website, often more needs doing. There are critical deficiencies in most small websites, from lack of information to ignoring proper Search Engine Optimization practices. Bright Vessel is here to help you create the site your brand deserves!

How to Improve a Local Business Website in 6 Steps

1. Get Your Info Out There

While your website is the first step toward connecting with customers, you should have more channels available. Each of these channels should be easily visible on your site:

• Add your contact information on every page of a local business website. Instead of hiding your email on the Contact Us page, leave it at the end of every page. Don’t make it difficult for customers to find alternative ways to locate you.

• Funnel customers through top priority channels. Keep in mind which is your preferred method of communication, and lead site visitors there. If you want them to visit you, have the address visible at all times, and so forth depending on the channel.

• Add widgets to social media sites. In this day and age, customers communicate with brands through a myriad of channels. Whatever social networks you’ve chosen to work with, ensure visitors are aware of them. Link to your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

• Ensure you provide updated and consistent information. If you’ve changed addresses, your site should reflect it immediately. Also see that you’re checking the most popular listings for business, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google Places. It’s critical to have a firm grasp of the info available on your activity on all fronts. Customers will know you’re serious if you’re making it easy for them to find you. Your online presence needs to be all-encompassing, covering every possible side.

2. Be Approachable

Your local business website should serve as a way for potential customers to clear all doubts. You don’t have to wait for them to show up on the doorstep or give you a call.

• Consider adding a live chat to your local business website. There are several services like LiveAgent that allow you to engage with site visitors at any time, answering visitors' questions. It’s an excellent way to help build trust with the customer base.

• Put contact forms on your site. Let visitors add themselves to your lists, so they can ask questions or share concerns. Not only can you then provide custom answers to queries, but you’ll also have their information to let them know about future endeavors they may find interesting. Plus, you can sort contact forms by request type, which will make it easier for organization purposes.

3. Design an Appealing & Mobile-Friendly Website

Gone are the days when unpleasant-looking websites dominated the web. These days it’s necessary to provide a visually appealing experience to make a mark on the online world.

Investing on a web designer will not just make visitors want to stay longer; it’ll also make you look more professional. Having a professional working on your website’s image can help you build trust.

• Check that your local business website is error-free. We’ve all seen it happen: you go into a site, and some details make it difficult to navigate. The images are too heavy, broken links are everywhere, and there may even be text boxes with the wrong formatting. These are all avoidable faults and they make a lot of noise to visitors. Some might even leave because they find the website tedious.
• Avoid building the site on Flash. Although it’s visually appealing, the cons might be more significant than the pros. First, Flash doesn’t work on many mobile devices, which can make you lose out on the market of on-the-go shoppers. Also, search engines can’t read Flash pages, so all keyword work will be in vain. Generally speaking, the compatibility issues might be better suited for bigger companies that don’t need to focus on SEO. When you’re growing an online presence, it’s not the best move.
• Become mobile friendly. For years, there has been a growing trend: people increasingly perform shopping research on their smartphones and tablets. If your site doesn’t adapt to mobile well, you may be losing a lot of potential customers. According to a recent vSplash survey, almost 95% of small business sites don't work well on mobile. Even if your mobile version isn’t as full as your desktop one, it’s crucial to have a presence for those coming from smaller devices.

4. Add Keywords Without Cluttering

A great SEO strategy is the first thing that will put your name on the map when it comes to an online presence. You need to touch base with customers and know what they’re searching for them to find you. There are many essential factors in building a local business website with SEO in mind, and many revolve around keywords.

• Research the right keywords. Write down the keywords that you think apply best to your products and services, and look into them in tools like Google AdWords and Google Trends. Track what’s trending in your field and work from there. While you may want to prioritize layman’s terms, you should also have keywords with technical jargon, as some visitors might know more about you’re offering.
• Incorporate your keywords throughout each page, but be mindful. Google doesn't award overstuffing keywords anymore, and search engines nowadays look for a natural-sounding copy. Write your copy with the reader in mind, not Google. Adding a keyword in every other sentence will make your text look unnatural to visitors, and you won’t even get extra points with Google.
• Add each page’s specific keyword to your SEO title. Instead of repeating the content from your headline or merely the name of your business, customize each page. Have the page’s specific product or service be the star of the SEO title. Remember: SEO titles should be 70 characters, tops.
• Add your keywords to your slugs or page URLs. Having your keyword on the URL will make it easier for search engines to assert that you’re relevant for those particular search terms.
• Write meta descriptions including your focus keyword in a seamless and natural-sounding way.
• Your images and videos should also include your keywords. Although Google can’t read the pictures and videos of your local business website, it can read the filenames and descriptions. Once again, it’s vital to avoid overstuffing, but we encourage you to add your keyword to filenames and alt descriptions. For videos, tags should also feature the chosen keywords.

For WordPress websites, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin, which can ease the way to set up keywords in the sections above.

5. Keep Your Content Updated

One of the best possible practices we can advise to anyone with a local business website: don’t neglect it! Managing a site is ongoing work, and it certainly doesn’t stop once you’ve gone live.

• Spice up your homepage. At least once a month, change your homepage to reflect what’s going on in your business. Whether you’re offering special sales during the month or releasing a product, it’s important that anything new takes center stage. Be sure to remove any deals, products or services that no longer apply: you don’t want your visitors purchasing an item you no longer have.
• Blog it away. The best way to keep your website always providing fresh content is by writing a blog. Here, you can update your visitors on products, deals, or even industry news. For example, if you run a business selling embroidery materials, this is the place to put patterns or DIY ideas. Besides providing exciting content to your visitors, a blog will help search engines establish you as an authority on the field. It’s also content to add to your social media. Just remember to update it regularly - we recommend between one and three times a week!

6. Become Friends with Google Analytics

Now that your local business website is up and running with the best practices, it’s time to track results. Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t know how to measure their website’s performance, lacking the knowledge on how to work on Google Analytics. Analytics is the best tool for site owners, as knowing the numbers can help them lead their site in the right direction, focusing and what works and scraping what doesn’t.

Some of the things you’ll be able to see through Analytics:

• The number of visitors coming to your site.
• What keywords lead them to you.
• From where are you getting visitors.
• The type of content that gets bigger responses.

Bright Vessel is located in Jupiter, Florida with clients all over the world. We're leading in small business service for website design and marketing. Contact us to find out how we can work together!

The post 6 Tips to Build a Local Business WordPress Website first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

You’re an ambitious entrepreneur with a great product. You’ve conducted your market research and identified a gap in your chosen market. You know that there’s quantifiable interest in what you have to offer, and you know that e-commerce is the best way to deliver your products to the masses. This is the 21st century after all, and while the notion of running your physical store may appeal to you, the savvy entrepreneur understands that 75% of people in the US alone regularly make purchases online.

But here are some deeper online shopping statistics:

• 20% of online shoppers shop every week
• 40% of online shoppers shop several times per month
• 15% of online shoppers shop once per month
• Only 2% of online shoppers shop once per year (Say what!)

Even if you don’t intend to solely use online sales as your bread and butter for the foreseeable future, it makes sense to have an e-commerce component within your business plan. Moreover, starting out by selling exclusively online will enable you to begin trading quickly without the costly overheads associated with a brick and mortar premises. While you may be itching to start making sales, it’s first vital to ensure that you have the correct infrastructure in place. Unless you have the proper logistical architecture, your journey in online business will be a short one. Here are five essential steps to take before you make your first sale.

Here are some tips before setting up your online business

1. Setting Up Your Business and Keeping It Legal

Before you can begin trading, you need to take the proper steps to establish your business and make sure that it operates within the right legal boundaries. If you haven’t already decided on your business name, it needs to be succinct and catchy. It also requires to establish what your business does without sounding too dry. Your next port of call is to secure your brand. Each state has different regulations on how to register your business, so it behooves you to investigate what your home states are. It’s a good idea to trademark your business and file a DBA (Doing Business As). Carry out a corporate name search to ensure that your business name isn’t already taken and register a domain in your business name.

A vitally important decision to make is how to structure your business. There are several business structures, and it’s up to you to decide which is best for the nature of your enterprise;

• Sole Proprietorship- You are a one-person operation, and you can do business under your name.
• Partnership- You own and operate the business with several others. They may be general partners or limited (silent) partners who invest in your operation but don’t handle the day-to-day operations.
• S Corporation- An S corporation is a small business that is separate from its owners and can have up to 100 shareholders. As it is different, its liabilities are separated from those of its owners.
• LLC- A Limited Liability Corporation is very similar to an S Corporation except that there is no limitation of shareholders and its members are allowed a participatory role in the daily operations.

It’s also up to you to acquire any permits or licenses that your state may require for you to trade legally. You’ll also need a Federal Tax ID which can be obtained through the IRS.

Remember, even if your business is only a side hustle, your income from it is still taxable!

2. Set Up Your Business Finances

Even if you’re a sole proprietor, it’s probably a good idea to keep your personal and business finances separate. Not only does it make managing your personal and business finances much easier, in many territories, but it’s also actually a legal requirement. As a digital merchant, you’ll need to be able to accept payments via credit or debit card, and as such, you’ll need to open a business checking account. Take the time to shop around and find an account that suits the emerging needs of your nascent business.

Some Finance Items to Think About:

1. Business License
2. Setting up a Corporation or Business Entity
3. Business Banking Account
4. Legal Documents
5. Talk to an accountant and or Bookkeeper

1. Choosing A Platform And Building A Website

Now that the legal and financial matters are in hand, it’s time to get to the fun, creative stuff! Before you set up your website to which customers will flock to make purchases, it’s essential to choose the right sales and web design platforms. Sure, you could peddle your wares through a third party like eBay, Amazon or Etsy, but this will eat into your profit margin. Moreover, Etsy’s search algorithms make it notoriously difficult for new sellers to get noticed unless they have an inventory of over 100 items.

Many smaller online businesses opt for a managed WordPress site which supports e-commerce plugins like WooCommmerce. On the other hand, an ‘in the box’ solution like WooCommerce or Shopify will provide you with a platform for both web design and digital commerce. Be aware, however, that the web design capabilities of the latter are more limited than the former.

Online While investing in an outsourced design consultancy may represent an overhead; it can ensure that you have an attractive website with great UX that is designed to subtly influence user behavior, reduce bounce rates and facilitate conversions.

4. Securing The Tools Of The Trade

Of course, when it comes to the tools you need for sustainable success in online sales, a beautiful and user-friendly website is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll also need to invest in the tools that will enable you to generate leads and manage your inventory successfully. You’ll also need analytics tools like Google Analytics to help your business to stay agile and respond reflexively and efficiently to changing consumer trends.

E-commerce is a fast-moving and ultra-competitive field, so you’ll do well to start off with some lead generation tools, a CRM platform (Salesforce is popular and user-friendly), inventory management solutions and accounting software to ensure that you stay on the right side of the IRS.

5. Creating Customer Personas

So, now you know what you’re selling and how you’re selling it’s vital to ascertain who you’re selling to. The better you know your market, the better primed you are for success. Therefore, before you start trading it behooves you to create client personas. Who has the most need for your product? Where do they work? What do they do in their spare time? What social media platforms do they use? How old are they? Are they married with kids or free and single?

Being able to answer these questions will enable you to deliver targeted marketing content with increased focus and efficacy.

Sure, there are a lot of boxes to check before you can begin trading, but starting out with the right infrastructure will lay a firm foundation for success!

Download an example of a Customer Persona PDF

At Bright Vessel, we can help you to set up your first e-commerce and start selling right away. Do it like a professional, and you will be benefited from your work. Remember that a taking your potential customers into account is important. We can assess you on how to cover all areas and give your audience what they want. Contact us for more information. We are ready to help you!

The post 5 Essential Steps to Take Before Your First Ecommerce Sale first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

Before we begin, I always like to mention the term buying personas when working with clients. Because each person is different just like a personality, a buying persona is the buying style of a user. There all several styles to consider but not many. Some experts will say six while others will say five. Let's get them all in this posts as an example.

Good Ecommerce Header Design

Buying persona:

• Decisive
  Could be considered the "Driver" and one that wants to get it done and mess around thinking about it. Does not care about the details and typically already made up his or her mind before entering the site.
• Collaborative
  This buyer will get a lot of opinions before buying. Likes to feel good about the buy based on maybe looking at reviews, asking a friend, and expects not to be pushed into the sale.
• Relationship
  This buyer wants to feel at one with your brand. They're looking for social interaction and a welcoming entry. Do not oversell to where they are stuck in the technical details.
• Skeptical
  This buyer is a very critical thinker. More introverted and does not care to communicate. There are going to be sold on facts and data. Make your products easy to find and then reinforce with trust messaging or a form of confidence for buying your product.
• Analytical
  This user is going to look at everything before making a buying decision. They need to understand the product, who's buying and why, what are the reviews, and does the brand align with any organizations that matter. In short, your hardest sell. A good user experience and brand experience will be important for this sale.
• Innovator
  Considered the creative one of the bunch. Likes to give input and will be the most likely of the 6 to give reviews about the product. Like upgrades, new models, and pushing the limits because they are never happy with the status quo. Always on the move most likely swayed by limited time deals.

So when thinking about designing and laying out the elements, you should consider that not everyone is like you giving more in most case will be better. What we like to do at Bright Vessel is break down the elements required by clients and then add or subtract items that may or may not fit into the header.

Common Header Elements:

1. Logo
   Branding will be the most important element in the header. You want your logo to easily be identifiable to the customer and resistant so first time user will recognize your brand later.
2. Company Specific URLs
   These URLs will be about the company which could be "About Us, FAQs, Contact Us, Etc."
3. Checkout URLs
   These are your shopping and checkout URLs. These are critical. Do not bundle up with brand URLs. When a user sets down this path, you do not want them turning around.
4. Search
   Probably one of the most essential items for conversion on sites which have an extensive catalog. Make this prominent.
5. Tagline
   This is where you speak directly to your user by showing the brand differentiator and key benefits.
6. Shopping URLs
   If your site were a local store, these would be your isles. Having easy access to your categories or type of products will be critical to all kinds of buyers.
7. Outstanding Deals
   Having your most important deal front and center is a common practice and one that converts. This could be text like "Free Shipping" or could be a designated sales area for many of your products.
8. Contact Details
   In a few of those buying personas, we just talked about a key element was trust. Having the ability to easy contact customer service will make the user feel comfortable not to mention phone sales convert in some cases 800% more than web sales.

We recently worked on a site called Miracle Botanicals and launched a refreshed version of the header. Before completely redesigning your site, consider rolling out changes to specific areas to test results. Changing the complete user experience could make a dip in conversion before seeing it improve.

Before Header Changes

After Header Changes

For more great tips on designing an e-commerce site, check out this article 21 Tips for WooCommerce Website Design.

If you need help in improving your website design or want to achieve a better conversion through testing certain areas. Feel free to contact Bright Vessel for a consultation.

The post What Makes a Good Ecommerce Header Design first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.

Clean up your filters

As your site grows and your inventory grows, the faceted menus and drop-down options also grow. While it might feel intuitive to give your shoppers as many choices as possible, it is harder for people to make decisions when there is an overwhelming number of options. Menus that are too big will effectively paralyze your audience, and they will click away in search of something that feels easier and more comfortable. Collapse your filters, narrow down the choices, and help your users focus on making decisions and, therefore, purchases.

Here are two WooCommerce plugins you can try out:

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter

WooCommerce Product Filter

Don't "let" users leave the checkout page

Once a user has items in his or cart, lead that user to complete the purchase. As stated above, having too many choices available can result in a person making no decision at all. Remove the menu and navigation buttons from the checkout page so that the user feels directed to complete the purchase instead of being tempted to wander away from his or her cart.

This can be done by creating a custom template for the checkout page or by using quick CSS. If your building from scratch, we recommend using the Enfold theme.

They have built this theme in a way that you have a page builder, and you can hide the header and footer on any page.

Make buying easy with your buy buttons

The Buy Now or Add To Cart button should be prominent on each product page across all browsers, devices, and interfaces, even if the user is scrolling on a small screen. Ensure that the purchase button is always in the frame so that a shopper can make a purchase with a single click or tap and doesn't have to scroll up or down to make it happen. The color is also critically important and may not necessarily have to follow your brand colors. It can be in some cases its color.

In a study by Joe Hallock, men and women were found to favor different colors as follows:

Product images are important

Professional imagery support your brand quality. Mismatch images or images of poor quality can hurt your sales. If you are selling clothes or cosmetics, implement a model so that the user can "try on" your product. Show your shoppers exactly how they will benefit from buying what you're selling by demonstrating how it works, additional angels, and if you have variations make sure you display each one.

Here is a WooCommerce plugin that can help with product variations.

WooCommerce Additional Variation Images

Catch them on the way out

You may already be using an exit pop-up (and if you aren't, you should be!) But you'll find that you get better results if you add a call to action or other compelling material to that pop-up. Re-engage your customer and bring him or her back to your WooCommerce site to make or complete a purchase.

We love Popup Maker

The base plugin is Free, but you will need to purchase the extension.

https://wppopupmaker.com/extensions/exit-intent-popups/

Highlight customer reviews

E-commerce revolves around the theory of social proof, which shows that people like to do what other people like to do. If your clients are pleased with your product or service, make sure that their reviews are featured prominently on your WooCommerce site. Their words will sell your stuff better than almost any marketing copy. Also, once you have a few positive reviews, people will want to jump on the bandwagon and add their voices.

Try WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro

With this plugin, you can make even easier for a user to give a review and provide additional information.

Personalize the experience whenever possible

Referrals can generate a lot of qualified leads, and if you depend on them as many sites do, greet your new visitors with a personalized welcome bar or pop-up that references their referral source.

The Popup Maker will also cover this item.

Quality-check your WooCommerce website

Then do it again. Make sure that there are absolutely no dead-ends that could cause a shopper to leave in search of a WooCommerce site that works as it is intended to. Check every bit of the process, especially the crucial cart and checkout buttons, on a wide range of browsers and devices to ensure that no customer will be left hanging when he or she is ready to purchase and pay.

We like the WPMU suite for clients.

https://premium.wpmudev.org/

Offer shopping options

Of course, most people who are on your WooCommerce site will do their buying on that site. But it never hurts to offer additional channels such as shops on Etsy, Ebay, or Amazon if you have those.

Here are some options you could use:

WP-Lister for Amazon, the premium version will let you synchronize sales and create orders from your Amazon account. You will get priority updates and instant support. The price is $149.

WP-Lister Pro for eBay You can sync your the product inventory between your store and the eBay account. You can create an order when an item is sold on eBay. Some useful features include uploading product images to eBay, importing products from eBay, split variations, advanced eBay options, etc. Try the Pro plugin for $149.

Or you can use a service like Veeqo - https://www.veeqo.com/integrations/woocommerce

Their mission is to simplify the shopping process; They provide easy solutions for integrating your WooCommerce store with Amazon and eBay. They make it so you can easily keep track and sync the products in your WooCommerce store and the Amazon and or eBay accounts.

Video Sells

Lastly, one of the most important items you should be thinking about is a video of your product. It has been tested and solidified that having a video will allow your to convert more than eight times then just having a picture. The world is changing and video and content about your brand will be the last measure that will turn the tide in your conversion.

If you like this post, check out 21 Tips for WooCommerce Website Design

Bright Vessel is a certified WooCommerce Expert who can help you build, promote, and improve your storefront. Contact us today.

The post Multiplying Your WooCommerce Site Conversions first appeared on B2B Website Platform Developer - Bright Vessel.