Abandoned cart recovery for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads used to involved a jumble of janky extensions and a couple crossed fingers. That’s a thing of the past.
Here’s a quick review of Jilt, from the reputable SkyVerge. Continue reading “Abandoned cart recovery made simple with Jilt [tl;dr review]”
Update: August 18, 2017
When Chrome 62 is released in October, Chrome will show a “Not Secure” warning anytime someone starts typing into a form field that’s on a non-https page. In addition, the browser (that just so happens to have the most marketshare!) will show a “Not Secure” warning immediately upon opening a non-https page in Incognito Mode.
In other words, it’s crunch time if you still have not secured your website with SSL so it shows “https” in the URL bar.
This also means that eCommerce sites shouldn’t just use SSL for the cart/checkout/thank you pages. All pages should be running within the SSL’s environment.
Not sure if your site is using SSL? Enter your homepage here: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/. You should get a grade of A if it’s installed correctly.
Need a new host that makes it easy to set up SSL? Check out the details about WP Engine below. Continue reading “Chrome will soon mark all non-SSL sites as “Not Secure” [updated: last chance]”
Starting an eCommerce company seems easy on the surface. Slap together a quick website, uploading the product photos, set prices, and launch. Or even better: create a quick marketplace website in a particular niche that allows other people to sell products and you don’t even have to worry about inventory or support! Right?
As they say, “if it sounds too good to be true, it is.” Continue reading “Starting an eCommerce company? Here are common pitfalls. [WP eCommerce Show Podcast]”
Hosting: every website needs it. When we start working with a new client, choosing a hosting provider is one important decisions that we make. For us, that decision is almost always to work with WP Engine.
But, the question that usually follows that is, “Why?”
Personally, I have attempted nearly every hosting situation possible for clients: shared hosting, VPS hosting with cPanel, Amazon Web Services with cPanel, Digital Ocean, you name it. Once I discovered WP Engine a few years back, I never looked back. Continue reading “Why we host with WP Engine”
If you run a WooCommerce store and require a minimum order amount before the customer can check out, you may have come across the WooCommerce documentation that includes code for this requirement. It turns out, this code includes shipping and tax in the “order total.” If you require a minimum order amount for the subtotal only, you’ll need slightly different code.
Here’s the code you’ll want to use in your functions.php code instead:
This code will ensure that the customers are meeting that minimum with just the price of the products they’re purchasing.
Different companies have different requirements and you can choose which is best for you. Despite Woo’s documentation only showing the ‘complete total’ code, I would recommend going the subtotal route instead since you’re not benefiting from shipping and tax fees.
If your store offers free shipping, WooCommerce’s default configuration is to show the free shipping option to the customer on checkout, but not automatically select it or remove the paid shipping options. There’s a code snippet that you can add to your theme’s functions.php file to hide other shipping methods when free shipping is available and we’d recommend this to all stores offering free shipping.
With WooCommerce 2.6 being released last month, you may have updated your store and noticed that this code snippet stopped working properly. Turns out, the new version of WooCommerce requires an updated code snippet, even if you haven’t switched over to the new Shipping Zones system. The documentation has been updated on WooCommerce’s site – or here it is for easy copy and pasting:
You’ve spent a week planning the perfect barbecue. The location is a prime spot on the beach, the weather at the 1PM kickoff will be sunny and warm, the food is purchased and ready for cooking, and the speaker setup will be absolutely killer. When the time arrives, you pack up your things and head to the spot.
When 1PM rolls around, none of your friends have arrived but you start cooking the food. The hamburgers are ready at 1:15PM, but there’s still no one in sight. At 1:30PM, you realize your mistake.
You never invited your friends. You didn’t tell anyone about the BBQ. You spent all that money, put in all that time, and nobody showed up because they didn’t even know it was happening.
The scenario above seems implausible, but it happens with websites all the time. Business owners and entrepreneurs with “the next big thing” burn through thousands of dollars developing their next great idea and forget about marketing, how they will attract and retain visitors, and how they’ll make money to sustain.
You can prepare the best BBQ ever, but if you don’t tell anyone about it, it’s worthless.
[bctt tweet=”‘You can prepare the best BBQ ever, but if you don’t tell anyone about it, it’s worthless.'”]
Continue reading “Build it and they will come: an (untrue) story”