Monthly ArchivesMay 2020

You know it is important to drive traffic to your WooCommerce store, since a portion of this traffic will become customers. However, how do you know whether your site is efficient at turning visitors into customers?

The number of visitors who become customers is called the conversion rate. Conversion rates are important for any growing WooCommerce store to track and work to optimize. One highly effective way to optimize store conversion rates is by setting up experiments using Google Optimize to see what makes your conversion rate improve. 

This article will help you set up Google Optimize split testing with your WooCommerce shop. After completing this tutorial, you’ll understand how you can test design parts and wording to increase your conversion rate. So follow along, you don’t need to be a developer or coder! I promise that I’ll keep things simple.

I’ve broken down this article into three sections:

1. How To Set up your Google Optimize Account
2. Integrate Google Optimize with your WooCommerce shop
3. Configure your first split test in Google Optimize

I highly encourage any WooCommerce shop owner with a reasonable amount of traffic (at least 5,000 unique visitors per month) to set up split tests. They’re a fantastic tool to discover which parts of your site structure or wording limit your conversion rates. You can use Google Optimize to set up these tests for free, which is perfect to begin with. Examples of common split tests are testing which color the “Add to Cart” button should be to encourage clicks hiding or showing trust labels on the Checkout page, the wording of the “Checkout” button, and other important elements on your shop website. 

For this example, we’ll run an experiment on the “Checkout” button and will compare two different colors against each other. Let’s get started!

Set up your Google Optimize Account

Creating your Google Optimize account is straight-forward, especially if you’re already using a Google. Head over to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/optimize/ and click on the “Sign in to Optimize” button in the top right corner. If you do not have a Google account yet, you’ll have to create one.

After you’ve created your account, you’re greeted with a wizard that’ll walk you through the setup process. Let’s go through it together.

The first step in the wizard is that Google asks you to subscribe to their various email newsletters. It’s up to you if you want more emails in your inbox – I certainly do not. So, I’ll tick “No” for all of these boxes.

Step 2 is to configure your first Google Optimize account. You’ll be asked all sorts of questions related to data privacy and GDPR, which heavily depends on the physical location of your business. In the US, you have less strict rules that apply than in the European Union. Here’s a great article on what eCommerce retailers need to know about GDPR.

Since I live in Germany, I have to accept boxes about GDPR. I also do not want my data to be shared with other Google services that I have not linked into my account manually. You’ll want your Google Analytics account linked to Google Optimize – to get the most out of your data. But other than use-cases like that, I want to keep my data private.

That’s it! Your account is now set up and you’re ready to create your first split test experiment.

Integrate Google Optimize with your WordPress installation

After completing your account setup as described above, Google will ask you to create your “first experience”. Experiences are the way Google groups experiments that run on a single website. So if you have multiple sites or shops and you want to integrate them into Google Optimize, you’ll have to create one experience for each of them.

As you can see in the section on the right, we’re 25% done with creating that experience. In this part of the tutorial, we’ll customize the name of our container, setting up the foundation for your split test, and link it to Google Analytics.

To organize containers, I like to use the target website’s URL as their name. You can easily change the container name by clicking on the three vertical dots right beside “Container information” in the right sidebar. 

Click on the “Edit container name” and enter whatever name helps you recognize the website this container is integrated with. For the purpose of this tutorial, I’ll go with “Woo Google Optimize Demo.”

Configure your first split test experience in Google Optimize

Now that you have your container appropriately named, let’s walk through setting up your first split test for your WooCommerce shop. First, click on the blue “Let’s Go” button, which will open a new area on the right of your screen.

In that area, you can specify a name for your experience. I called mine “Checkout button color test” for this example. You have to specify the URL of the page you want to run the experiment on, which would be the Checkout page URL.

You can further specify what type of experience you want to run. Google Optimize offers four different types:

• A/B test. This lets you create one variant of the original page and compares them to each other, by sending one part of your traffic to the original and the other part to the variation.
• Multivariate test. This lets you create multiple variations of the original page. I would only use that when you have a serious amount of traffic, otherwise, it’ll take a long time to deliver trustworthy results.
• Redirect test. You can redirect a part of your traffic to a different page than the original one. This is great if you want to compare two entirely different page layouts, or if you want to drive a part of your traffic to a subdomain of yours.
• Personalization. You can use this type of experience to personalize your website’s content, depending on certain rules. E.g. you can target countries and provide information specific to those countries (like GDPR checkboxes only for EU-based customers on Checkout).

For this tutorial, we’ll set up a simple A/B test to compare two different checkout button colors against each other. 

Click on “Add Variant” in the next screen and give the variant a name that will help you recognize what you are testing. In my case, I’ll switch the “Place Order” button on the Checkout page to a red background color – so “Red Place Order Button” makes sense for this tutorial.

Click on “Done” which will take you back to the overview screen. Before we can proceed to configure the test, we need to make sure that we actually have a product in the cart so that the Checkout page is accessible and we can do the change.

Google Optimize will try to open the Checkout page as soon as you click on “Edit” to configure the variant. So you need to ensure that you have a tab open with your WooCommerce shop, and are on the Checkout page. 

Additionally, please make sure that you have the Google Optimize extension for Chrome installed. Here’s the link to the Chrome Web Store (the extension is free).

Ok, let’s continue and configure the A/B test by clicking on “Edit”. You’ll see that Google Optimize will reload and now open your Checkout page. That’s why we need to have a product in the cart so that we can actually see that page and do not get redirected to an empty cart page.

As soon as you start moving your mouse over the screen, you’ll see that each HTML component of your Checkout page gets highlighted. Navigate to the “Place Order” button and click on it. That’ll open the attributes window you can see in the screenshot above.

Changing the background color and text color is super simple. In that attributes window, scroll down until you see the fields for text color and background color, and update the values to whatever colors you want to test. In this example, the “Place order” button has a black background with grey-ish text. I’ve changed that to white text on a red background in the A/B test.

With that done, I have fully configured the A/B test variant and can hit “Save” in the top right corner of the variation editor. 

Sidenote: do not test more than one element per variant. When you do test more than one change per variant, you will not know which visual change actually caused a change in visitor behavior on your website.

Going back to your overview screen, you’ll now see that the Google Optimize variant will say we’re testing two changes – but don’t let that confuse you. It’s never recommended to test more than one element at a time, and that’s what we’re doing here. One change has been the font color, and the other change has been the background color of the button. It is still just one element that we’re testing.

The next step is to connect your Google Optimize account with your Analytics. Therefore, you need to click on the “Link to Analytics” button in the progress bar or scroll down to the section titled “Measurement and Objectives.”

There, you can click on the “Link to Analytics” button and pick the right property and view. Sidenote: please ensure that Google Analytics is set up properly on your WooCommerce shop before proceeding.

You’ll then be presented with a code snippet that you need to put onto your website. How to implement this exactly depends on your Google Analytics configuration (universal tracking vs. global site tag). For this example, I’m using the global site tag integration, so all I have to do is to add one line of code to my site. Google Optimize does a great job of explaining here, so read through the instructions carefully.

One last step we have to do is to set up a tracking event for the “Place Order” button. We need to tell Google Analytics to track the clicks on the button so that Google Optimize can use the tracked data as a custom objective for the split test. Without that click tracking, Google Optimize will not be able to determine the winning variation from our test – because it will not have the right data to do so.

There are multiple ways to add click tracking to your WooCommerce site; my favorite way is using Google Tag Manager. I will not go deep into setting up the entire tracking process here, as that would be a post in itself. However, I highly recommend reading through this article on Medium if you haven’t set up click tracking before. 

Once you’ve set up Google Tag Manager with the right tags and deployed it on your WooCommerce site (e.g. using this free plugin), you’re ready to set up a custom objective in Google Optimize.

Click on “Add experiment objective” and choose “Create custom.” That will give you a screen where you define your own tracking rules.

Please note that the “Event Label” value has to match the label you configured in Google Tag Manager. For Google Optimize to be able to track this custom event – the click on the “Place order” button – the event labels have to match in Google Optimize and Google Tag Manager. You can also use “Event Action”, “Event Category”, or “Event Value” as rule parameters, but for this tutorial, the label will do.

After saving your custom objective, you can run the Diagnostics tool to validate that your Google Optimize experiment is set up correctly. Remember that Optimize needs Google Analytics to load on your page. So if you excluded your user from being tracked (e.g. blocking tracking for all admins in WP), it’s likely that this validation will fail. If that happens, I recommend that you include your user in the Google Analytics tracking temporarily. Alternatively, you can open your WooCommerce shop in an incognito window and verify that all the codes for Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Google Optimize are being loaded in the code of your shop.

At this point, your experience should be up and running properly. You can use the Live Debug Mode from Google Optimize and browse your site to validate the experience. You’ll see that Chrome shows you an area below the website that gives you insights on how Google Optimize is working on your WooCommerce site.

In this screenshot, you can see that the experience has been applied and some additional information, like the variant I’m seeing and the URL that caused the variant to be triggered.

Finally, you’re ready to collect the test data and optimize your WooCommerce site for more conversions and revenue. This process can be confusing, so if you get stuck at any point, reach out on Twitter and I can help: @iamjankoch. Happy testing!

The WooCommerce team released WooCommerce 4.1 in early May, and with it came two big new features: The Marketing Hub, and WooCommerce Payments. Today we’re going to look into WooCommerce Payments, how it can improve your business, some of the potential downsides, and under what circumstances you should look into using it.

Where You Can Find WooCommerce Payments

Before we get to what WooCommerce Payments does, it’s worth sharing where users can expect to find WooCommerce Payments. It’s built right into the welcome wizard, so every new store owner will see this as an option. And unless you already have experience with eCommerce, and you have a favorite payment gateway (pretty sure I’m the only one that nerdy), you’re likely to choose WooCommerce Payments because it’s made by the same company and has WooCommerce in the name.

WooCommerce Payments is currently only available in the US for stores that use US dollars. So if you don’t see it in the welcome wizard and you are located outside of the US, that’s most likely why.

Their plan is to slowly add more countries and currencies over time. Based on WooCommerce’s international appeal, I expect support for Canada, the UK, and other Western European countries to come next.

Note: if you want to use WooCommerce Payments and you’re outside of the US, you can sign up to be notified.

What You Can Expect from WooCommerce Payments

Payment gateways do two essential things:

1. Accept and process credit cards 💳 on your site
2. Manage payments, refunds, disputes, and deposits.

And WooCommerce Payments does all of these. 😎 

Best of all, WooCommerce Payments does all of this within your site. So you can not only accept credit cards on your site (which is commonplace and best practice), you can also manage payments, refunds, and disputes from your WordPress admin.

Being able to do all of this reduces a lot of friction for store owners. First, it’s one less account you have to manage, and one less username/password you have to get from a client or share with a developer.

It also allows a store owner to do everything from one interface. Since it’s only two clicks to move from the order screen to the transaction screen where I can view the payment details, including fraud risk, previous transactions, and fees, it’s more likely I’ll check those details out. You can also view and manage deposits from WooCommerce Payments into your business bank account. 

This gives store owners a more well rounded understanding of their business, and when you do need to review potential fraud, see when your next deposit will hit your bank account, or dig into financial details it’s going to save so much time. 

This extension makes WooCommerce the hub for your business, instead of simply the place where you update your products.

Requirements for WooCommerce Payments

Before adding WooCommerce Payments, make sure your infrastructure meets these minimum requirements:

• PHP 5.6+ 
• WordPress 5.3+ 
• WooCommerce 4.1+ 
• Jetpack 5.3+ (this is a temporary requirement)
• An SSL certificate (to use the payment gateway in live mode)

Note: PHP 7.3, free SSL certificate, and the latest version of WordPress, WooCommerce, and plugins are included for those on Managed WooCommerce hosting at Hostdedi.

Why You Should Trust WooCommerce Payments

I have used WooCommerce for years and trust them to build high-quality, functional, and customizable eCommerce software. 

But accepting payments is an entirely different field, so you may have some concerns.

Luckily for all of us, WooCommerce is focusing on what they do best: eCommerce software. WooCommerce Payments is a white labeled version of one of the best and most popular payment gateways on the market: Stripe.

If you’ve used Stripe, you know they’re incredibly reliable and offer transparent pricing. 

Limitations of WooCommerce Payments

Beyond being limited to the US and using US dollars, there are a few limitations to be aware of, including functionality, compatibility with 3rd party applications, loss of historical data, and your fees.

Limited Functionality

I’m a huge fan of recurring revenue, and one of the most powerful recurring billing features in the entire eCommerce landscape is WooCommerce Subscriptions. 

Right now you can’t use automatically recurring payment with this gateway. So if Subscriptions are a big part of your business, I recommend staying with your current payment gateway.

Compatibility with Apps

Another great thing about Stripe is that a lot of infrastructure has been built directly on top of it. Some applications, such as Baremetrics, have a direct integration with Stripe. 

So, if you use an application like Baremetrics or another bookkeeping or accounting application, you would have to enter all of that data manually. I’d recommend sticking with your current setup for now.

Cannot Import Historical Data

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m a huge data nerd. If you’ve been in business for a few years, you have a huge amount of data about your customers, including how much they purchase and how often.

A lot of this data should be in WooCommerce, but some data is saved in the payment gateway, and currently you cannot import historical data into WooCommerce Payments.

If you’re a giant data nerd, or have very invaluable data that you don’t want to lose, you might want to wait until WooCommerce Payments lets you import your historical data.

Negotiated Payment Gateway Fees

One of the last points could be one of the biggest depending on the size of your  store. The standard pricing with modern payment gateways like Stripe and WooCommerce Payments is 2.9% + .30.

What some merchants don’t know is that you can negotiate better rates once you start bringing in significant money. There aren’t any rates set in stone, but the rule of thumb is if you make over $80,000+ a month you can negotiate rates with your payment gateway. 

You might be able to go from 2.9% + .30 down to 2.5% + 0.30. That’s a huge jump and helps increase your profitability. This might not seem like a lot for smaller stores, but if you make $1,000,000 in revenue, you could pay $29,000 in fees. With negotiated rates you’ll drop that to $24,000. 

As much as I like the utility of putting a payment gateway directly in the WooCommerce admin, it isn’t worth $5,000 in additional fees. So, if you have negotiated rates, you’ll definitely want to continue with your existing payment gateway.

The Future

WooCommerce is putting a lot of effort into WooCommerce Payments as they expand territories, currencies, and compatibility with extensions and apps.

If you like the idea of WooCommerce Payments, it will very likely be coming to you soon. Some businesses will likely have to wait until the advanced features are added, or negotiated rates become possible, since that’s a huge money saver. But if you’re starting a brand new store, or you just started your store, I definitely recommend exploring WooCommerce Payments.

Offering multiple shipping options is a great way to keep your customers happy and reduce your abandoned cart rates. With just the built in options in WooCommerce you can create a variety of shipping options for your customers and you can do even more with a few premium extensions. 

WooCommerce Specific Shipping Options Overview

The WooCommerce shipping setup integrates smoothly with your WordPress website. When you add the plugin and activate it, you can immediately configure a variety of basic shipping options and create combinations to suit your business. 

There are three steps to follow when setting up basic WooCommerce shipping: 

1. Set up Shipping Zones
2. Add Shipping Methods and Rates
3. Assign a Shipping Class (Optional)

First, set up your shipping zones to specify areas of the world where you ship goods. You can also list countries or geographic areas where you do not offer shipping. 

Once you’ve set up your shipping zones, the next step is to add standard shipping methods and rate options within zones for a flat rate, free shipping, and/or local pickup. There are ways to expand these options, and we’ll cover them later. 

The last step is to assign a shipping class to each item in your product range. This helps you to customize the shipping method and rate for individual items. Let’s look at these steps in more detail. 

Shipping Zones 

These zones let you define specific areas around the world where you will ship goods, and the shipping methods and rates you will offer within that zone.

Zones can be wide-ranging areas such as countries or continents, or they can be specific zip codes or states.  

For example, you could set up three general zones e.g., U.S. Domestic, Europe, and other. Then within each zone, specify the method of shipping available.  

When you’re setting up your shipping zones, you will notice there’s a default zone installed called Locations not covered by your other zones: 

This option will capture customers who don’t fit into any of the specified shipping zones. You’ll want to make sure you have at least one option in this default zone. Otherwise customers will get the message: No shipping methods offered to this zone and they won’t be able to checkout.

Shipping Methods

The core plugin offers three basic shipping methods: flat rate, free shipping, and local pickup. You can add various options within these three methods.  

The flat rate option is a fixed cost you can offer using product shipping classes or per order or by individual product items. 

Free shipping can be offered across your entire product range, or only if certain rules are met. 

For example, free shipping can become an option with a coupon code entered, or when the customer reaches a minimum total cart value. 

However, if you want to offer local pickup, you need to be more specific and identify the regions or zip codes that qualify for this option. One example would be a Los Angeles-based business offering local pickup within the southern California area.

Options could be even more specific and list zip codes within a 40-mile radius of L.A. where local pickup options would be available. 

With WooCommerce shipping you can create as many shipping zone and method combinations you need for your business and customize each zone.

Shipping Rates

The flat rate, free shipping and local pickup options come with the basic WooCommerce plugin. They’re quick and easy to set up and could be all you need when you start selling online. 

However, if you want to offer your customers a wider range of options, the WooCommerce table rate shipping extension lets you do this. For example, you can create a shipping rule based on an item’s weight by defining the minimum and maximum weight range or number of items per package. 

You can be even more specific by listing the shipping classes for which this rule applies, or add rules based on destination and price. You pay a monthly or annual subscription fee for this but many feel it’s worth it for the additional flexibility it adds to your WooCommerce shipping options. 

Assign Shipping Classes

If all of your products cost the same amount to ship, or you’re going to use some of the premium extensions for getting rates from providers, then you don’t have to setup shipping classes.

But if you have products with very different shipping costs such as t-shirts and framed wall posters, you can set up a shipping class for each product type. And you can use these classes to affect how much shipping costs in the checkout process.

Each time you add new products to your store, you can assign a unique class, or group them with other product lines under shipping classes you’ve already set up.

WooCommerce Extensions and Plugins for Premium Shipping

Using third party plugins lets you expand your range of WooCommerce shipping options and offer real time shipping methods from main carriers like FedEx, UPS, or the United States Postal Service (USPS). 

The WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping plugin enables you to set up unique shipping options using a range of variables e.g., product class, shipping zones, weight, or the number of items being shipped. It can be used for domestic and international deliveries. 

Several shipping carriers offer their own dedicated plugins (USPS and FedEx are two examples). Using these extensions with your WooCommerce store lets you offer real-time shipping quotes from your regular suppliers. 

If your business ships internationally or has distribution centers overseas, there are plugins that let you access local postal services in specific countries — like SAPO International Parcel Service. This gives you real time shipping rates within the South African postal service, and lets you offer shipping options by air or ground. 

ShipStation

ShipStation is another powerful WooCommerce plugin that connects smoothly with your WooCommerce store and helps you automate order fulfillment and sales processes. Although you still need to install shipping plugins (e.g., FedEx or USPS) to get up-to-date costs, ShipStation lets you monitor your business for order processing, invoicing, and inventory levels, and gives real-time analytics.  

If ShipStation is more than you need, WooCommerce shipping plugin Print Invoices & Packing Lists lets you easily manage invoices, packing lists, and customer emails within your store, and you can customize documents to mirror your business brand. Customers can also check their order status and invoices any time with the My Account option. 

If you run a dropshipping business, the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin helps you manage your customer orders and dropshippers.

Shipping Extensions for WooCommerce

This list offers a few WooCommerce shipping plugins and premium extensions you can use with your online store. Explore their different features to find the WooCommerce plugin that’s ideal for your business.

How Does WooCommerce Calculate Shipping?

When a customer adds items to their cart, WooCommerce calculates shipping charges based on the products selected, shipping class, size, and weight. Once the customer enters their delivery address, the WooCommerce shipping calculator works out a cost based on their location and the shipping methods available. The customer can see this information on the cart page. 

You can also manually adjust your shipping rates and add additional charges for multiples of an item, discounts for purchasing specific products, handling fees, or taxes.

Let’s set up WooCommerce shipping for our T-shirt business, and create options for shipping using the ready-to-use features already loaded into WooCommerce. 

How to Set up Basic Shipping in WooCommerce

Here are the basic steps for setting up shipping in WooCommerce. This excellent WooCommerce Shipping How-to from FitSmallBusiness.com has additional details if you need them.

1. Create Your Shipping Zones 

On your WooCommerce dashboard, select WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping

Next, select Add shipping zone

Give your new zone a name, add the zone region and set up as many as you need. 

When you’ve set up your zones, you can leave them as general regions, or edit them to list as regions or zip codes. 

To edit a zone, Go to the Shipping zones screen. Move the cursor over the zone name to see the Edit and Delete options.

Select Edit and add regions or zip codes on the next screen. 

Save your changes. 

2. Add Shipping Methods

For each zone, select Add shipping method and highlight one option from the drop-down list. 

Select Add shipping method to save. 

By repeating these steps, you can offer multiple zone / shipping method options within your store.  

Edit Shipping Methods 

To edit shipping methods, hover the cursor over the zone name, select Edit then hover over the method you want to edit, and select Settings.  

In Flat rate Settings, you have the option to set the Tax status to None or Taxable. Your choice will be applied to all flat rate costs for this zone, and tax rates are calculated using the business address you entered when setting up your store.

If you want to add extra charges within your flat rate shipping option, add them using the Cost field and the formats below.  

Flat Rate charge per order – to add a charge to every order, enter a number (e.g., 4).  You don’t need to add currency symbols as WooCommerce uses the currency you chose during the store setup. 

Flat Rate charge per item – to add a charge to every item placed in the cart, enter the formula, [qty]*1.50. For our T-shirt business, it means $1.50 is added to every shirt purchased. If a customer buys five items, then $7.50 will be added to the total cart value. 

Flat Rate percentage charge – to add a fee based on a percentage of the customer’s cart value, enter the formula [cost]*12. In this case, an extra charge of 12% will be calculated and added to the cart total. 

3. Add Shipping Classes

Use this option to group specific products together or create shipping methods for individual items. For example, our framed artwork will have its own unique class as it’s oversized and heavy. But our T-shirts could be grouped with other items in an existing class. 

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping > Shipping Classes  

At the bottom corner of the screen, select Add shipping class.

Enter the name of your class. Leave the slug field blank as it fills automatically and use the Description field for notes.

Select Save shipping classes. The new class will appear. 

The number 45 on the T-shirt line is the number of products grouped under that class.  

By completing all these steps, you have set up basic shipping options in your WooCommerce store, and can offer your customers flat rate, free shipping, and local pickup.

In 2019 I ran a Kickstarter campaign for my game Fry Thief. I successfully funded and delivered 500 packages to my backers. That left me with a little under 1,500 copies remaining, which I hope to sell through conventions and through my website. In the interest of time, I set up a quick store on Shopify.

Functionally speaking, the site works great, and I think it looks pretty good too. When people find my site they choose one of the two versions of my product they want, they place their order, Shopify calculates shipping costs, taxes, and processes the credit card. From end to end, it is a functional eCommerce store. However, I did have one big problem:

My site felt slow, but I didn’t know how slow, so I loaded up GTMetrix to evaluate my speed.

• It took 6.4 seconds to load
• My PageSpeed score was 71% (C )
• YSlow score was 61% (D).

If you think 6.4 seconds is a long time, to load you’re correct. It’s a very long time in the ADD world we live in.

And the data supports this. To look at just one example, according to Akamai, a two-second delay in page load time can increase bounce rate by more than 100%. That’s basically half of my potential customers walking into the store and immediately leaving without even bothering to look at my product. So speed is incredibly important.

Now that the fundraising campaign is in the rearview mirror, I want to move to a faster platform. My hope is that I can improve the speed of my store and therefore the number of sales (without having to do any extra marketing). 

Migrating to Hostdedi

The first step is to move everything over to WooCommerce. That includes products, customers, and orders. It’s easy enough to export all of those out of Shopify through the admin.

Unfortunately, each eCommerce software exports & imports data in a unique format. So there are two choices:

1. Import the data yourself
2. Use the free migration service on Hostdedi

I highly recommend you send all of the data to Hostdedi. They can import and validate the data for you since it’s incredibly easy, and there won’t be data loss.

In my case, since I only had a single product and a few dozen orders, I thought I’d want to learn how to do it myself. WP Import All comes with the Hostdedi Managed WooCommerce hosting account. It took a little over an hour to import my customers, orders, and products without errors.

Once I loaded all of my data, rebuilt the home page, and customized my theme, I took another speed test. This time my site loaded much faster!

• It took 2.3 seconds to load
• My PageSpeed Score was 72% (C )
• YSlow Score a 66% (D)

It’s interesting to note that my site loads a whole 4 seconds faster just moving to the Hostdedi platform. This performance increase is mostly from moving to higher quality infrastructure. If you notice my PageSpeed Score & YSlow Score are still pretty terrible and there’s a lot of room for improvement.

“My site loads a whole 4 seconds faster just moving to the Hostdedi platform”

Performance Improvements on Hostdedi

One of the lesser known things about Hostdedi is that we have a 15 day performance challenge where we’ll copy your existing site over to our servers and show you how fast it could run.

I had one of the amazing engineers take a look at my site and in a single afternoon he optimized the site faster than I had hoped. 😍

{{image of speed test}}

• 0.6 seconds to load
• My PageSpeed Score is 97% (A)
• YSlow Score a 87% (B)

The site now loads 10X faster than my Shopify site and performs all of the same functions.

Since I’m a technology nerd there are still a few areas I can try to optimize to get my YSlow Score up to an A grade.

I can’t imagine any user abandoning a site while waiting ½ second. In fact, because the website is so snappy, users just have to read a few seconds, make their decision, and then (hopefully) checkout.

Other Benefits

The main reason I migrated from Shopify to WooCommerce was speed and that was definitely solved. But another reason that was annoying was that I could never receive email notifications.

I had to constantly check my store and eventually I installed the Shopify app on my phone so I would get a push notification. I reached out to support who were friendly and promised to send the issue to developers but I never heard back.🤷‍♂️

One of the advantages of an open system like WooCommerce is if something doesn’t work (like email notifications) you can switch that system out for a new system. You could hire a developer to debug the issue yourself, if you find an area to fix you can create a patch and either submit it to WooCommerce core to help everyone or if it’s something specific to your setup you can use it yourself. 

I love ♥️ being on an open system. The next time I run into an issue I’ll fix it myself or hire someone to help.

Wrap Up

There are lots of incredibly easy-to-set-up eCommerce platforms. And if you need to build a site quickly and you don’t want to worry about a thing then a closed platform could be great. But as soon as you want to customize or optimize your store in any way then you really want to look into an open platform like WooCommerce or Magento. 

Open platforms like WooCommerce or Magento let you replace any individual piece that you don’t need or any piece that’s underperforming. As you can see, I did most of this myself and moved my site from 6.4 seconds down to 0.6 seconds load time. Speedy sites make happy customers. And happy customers lead to more sales.