Daily ArchivesSeptember 8, 2021

Magento is definitely one of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market. It brings certain features that can make your job easier, but there are always new ways of improving your ranking and driving more organic traffic to your online store.

That’s why we’re discussing Magento SEO tips today – to help you build a better marketing strategy and bring your business to a higher level.

Ready to check them out?

8 Tips for Optimizing Magento SEO

1. Optimize Product Descriptions and Images 

Many ecommerce websites may offer similar products, but only a few know how to truly stand out. The first step is creating a well-set product description with all relevant keywords included. Avoid copying descriptions you got from the manufacturer since Google sees it as duplicate content with no extra value added – and doesn’t rank it well. 

Equally important, create informative and relevant filenames for your product images as well. It may surprise you, but around 26.79% of online searches are directed to images – which is why red-women-coat.jpg is definitely better than just IMG00378.JPG. The name you choose will be a part of the image’s URL, so try to use plain English. That way, the search engine will be able to understand and navigate your file better.

2. Install The Latest Updates

New releases will often bring some improved features as well as updates for existing ones. For instance, in 2020, the platform got Magento 2, the upgraded version that brought certain improvements such as advanced built-in security options, better SEO features, bug fixes, increased speed, and some more.

3. Implement a Search-Friendly URL

URLs are supposed to be optimized for the primary keyword you use for your page. When you have a relevantly titled URL, Google knows what your page is about and marks it as a valuable source of helpful information.

Avoid using unwanted characters such as “ # % { }”. Also, don’t go for some stop words like “but, the, of, and”, or some others. This is a simplified URL structure Magento recommends you to use: Website/Category/Sub-category/Product.

4. Build Better Internal Link And Backlink Structure 

A blog is an excellent tool to strengthen your Magento SEO strategy by creating a good internal link network. For instance, if you write a post, back it up with links of your previous articles, pages, guest posts, or other types of content you have. That gives your consumers a better insight into the entire structure of your website and provides them with more useful sources of information. Other than that, it also helps the search engine to understand the hierarchical form of your site.

A backlink, on the other hand, is when someone links to your site.

5. Choose Relevant Keywords

When it comes to the title, put relevant keywords as close to the beginning of your title as possible – that way search engines can easily scan them. Keep your title around 50-60 characters long. Make sure to add proper keywords to your meta descriptions too; their optimal length is 50-160 characters. If you are about to add one or more secondary keywords, try not to stuff it and make it look too forced. Write it in a simple way, like something you would actually say in everyday life.

Bonus tip: go with low competitive keywords first. High SEO ranking requires lots of work that doesn’t necessarily give good results – especially if you’re going for highly competitive keywords from the very beginning. On the other hand, choosing “less popular” keywords has the potential to help you build a higher ranking, engage your target group, and improve search traffic. Keywords Explorer is a quite useful tool where you can see a score called “keyword difficulty” (KD) – that can help you figure out which keyword suits your needs the best.

6. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a tool in charge of measuring your traffic and improving the organic presence in search engines. It allows you to control, maintain, and fix errors that may negatively impact your rankings. 

On the other hand, Google Analytics is an excellent service that gives you valuable insights into the performance of your business strategy. It shows important data such as top-performing pages, specifics of your audience as well as their online habits, mobile traffic, etc.

7. Speed It Up

The loading speed is another important feature that can influence your ranking – not to tell most of the people expect modern sites to be very quick. As a matter of fact, research says 40% of consumers will leave a site if it doesn’t open within three seconds, while 47% of them expect it to load within 2 seconds.

There are a couple of ways to speed your site up, and the first one is switching hosting providers that can offer you a better service. There are numerous web hosts that can offer you a Magento hosting package suitable for your needs and optimized for the infrastructure of this particular platform.

A Content Delivery Network (or CDN) is another helpful solution and platform that reduces the physical distance between the user and the server. That minimizes delays in loading your website so the users around the globe can see the content of the same quality within the same loading time.

Use browser caching. It allows you to store static web content on the consumer’s device. This way, your users don’t need to download the same files every time when on your site.

Try to reduce the number of files your consumers need to request every time they want to visit one of your pages – the efficient way to do this is by merging and minifying CSS files and JavaScript.

8. Work On Top-notch Content

Search engines love fresh and high-quality content that keeps the target audience informed. If you’re consistent with creating content and updating your blog, you’re on a pretty good path to improve your visibility on SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages).

Magento 2 also has an FAQ extension that allows your visitors to ask questions and get answers on time. This way your site remains regularly updated, active, and informative – which, in the end, results in better SEO performance.

Google algorithms go in the direction of “by users and for users”. The customer review section not only gets you a better ranking (especially with positive reviews), but also comes as a valuable source of relevant keywords your consumers mention while talking about your products.

Conclusion

Boosting the performance of your site is a never-ending process that simply requires you to always stay current with the newest SEO practices. Yet, it’s worth it; spending time and other resources to make your business unique and SEO-friendly will eventually get you closer to your target audience as well as bring loyal customers to your ecommerce website.

In the end, we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg here, but hopefully got to some fairly helpful information you can use to successfully maintain and improve your Magento SEO strategy.

One thing is sure: 2021 will be an unprecedented year for ecommerce. 

The COVID-19 situation changed everything the business world and the consumer world knew about ecommerce. 2020 caused financial hardship for millions of people worldwide, and it also saw a previously unimaginable surge of ecommerce adoption. As the worldwide lockdowns set in and people turned to shopping online when confined to their homes, in 2020, ecommerce became all commerce.

The proof of this phenomenon was in the numbers. We watched ecommerce surge: in the United States alone, online shopping had gone up 44.5% by the second quarter of 2020. Several countries are distributing multiple vaccines now, but the COVID-19 pandemic will have left a permanent mark on how ecommerce works.

9 Ecommerce Optimization Tips for Fast & Effective Sites >>

6 Ecommerce Trends for This Year

1. Players to Watch

The ecommerce trends that we are taking into 2021 have common threads: our world is operating more and more like a global village. This effect has only accelerated by watching a virus change every person’s life on a worldwide scale. Large ecommerce companies are at the center of this change. In this era, many large and influential ecommerce brands have emerged in the market. Companies like Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix saw massive and now globally recognized surges. 

However, other brands adopted new market strategies and trends to get more customers and profits. Some industries worth watching are food delivery and workplace solutions. We watched companies like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash gain many customers. Because consumer education has accelerated, we can expect to continue to see consistency in food delivery demand. Workplace solutions will likely benefit from a similar effect: many employees at large companies have now proven that we can work remotely. Work may continue to be done this way across multiple industries. Most notably, Twitter announced that even after the pandemic, the company would remain 100% remote.

In addition to paying attention to industries that will benefit from the consumer learning that happened in 2020, we ought to watch for innovations across all ecommerce. While many companies used techniques in the previous years, such as free shipping, promo codes, and flash sales, to expand their online sales, companies are already adopting new ecommerce trends in 2021. Keep your eyes open for:

2. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Augmented reality allows the customers to visualize the product they are considering purchasing in real spaces: for example, new furniture upon a picture of a room in your home or online-only prescription glasses on a picture of your face. Virtual reality, on the other hand, provides a fully immersive experience. Although Augmented and Visual reality (AR/VR) is not new, more and more brands started adopting these types of displays for their online shopping experience in the last year. It made sense: there was no longer the “fall-back” of retail locations where customers wary of online shopping could test the products to increase their confidence as buyers. With the proliferation of augmented reality and virtual reality in online shopping due to the COVID-19 crisis, more and more ecommerce brands are likely to follow suit. Before, consumers were limited to product images, and indeed, sometimes, expectations did not match the picture, leading to high return rates and increased costs for merchants. As AR/VR develops as a fast-growing ecommerce trend, customers will get used to the expectation they can see custom views of the products they are considering.  Brands like IKEA and Werby Parker have already adopted this strategy.

3. New Digital Payment Options

Commerce is going digital, so this means that digital payments will become a de facto expectation for both retailers and other entities accepting payments online: think donations for nonprofit organizations, consultants, and beyond. As we move into 2021, brands must prepare to offer a digital payment process. Some online presences still lack a proper payment system. As consumer education drives an expectation of easy digital payment options, consumers will quickly become intolerant of low-quality digital payment experiences. A lack of digital payment processing may lead to increases in cart abandonment and canceled purchases. If you haven’t already, consider looking into the long-standing digital payments players such as PayPal, Stripe, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Venmo. For some merchants, it may even be a good idea to begin accepting cryptocurrency. Also, consider the user experience of your digital payment processing: companies like Fast are now smoothing over the process of inputting one’s credit card, shipping address, and billing address into a long form by offering one-click checkout. In 2021, digital payment processing is necessary for an instant, contactless payment. 

4. Buyable Social Media Content

Most brands know by now the importance of social media. However, all ecommerce merchants and brands need to be aware of the increasing trend to enable and focus on the option of selling things through social media posts. More and more social media platforms are adopting posts or advertisements that can be shopped directly on the platform. Consider Pinterest’s buyable pins, a feature that has attracted some of the highest value customers by average order to value to online stores, often without them even hitting your site. As consumers grow to expect seamless content browsing to the shopping experience, ecommerce brands should focus on high quality and engaging content and easy and fast ways for social media users to buy the items they see and love. 

5. Contactless Delivery and Other Delivery Innovations

The Merriam-Webster dictionary published an article about new words that entered our informal discussions in 2020: social distancing, super-spreader, self-quarantine. Alongside these words, we also developed an entirely new set of terms for our pandemic shopping trends: curbside pickup, contactless delivery, and buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS) come to mind. These trends are overwhelmingly popular with consumers and are likely to stay well past the COVID-19 crisis. For example, in contactless delivery, the item – often food and possibly household supplies or even retail purchases – is left at the customer’s doorstep. The delivery person provides notification and ensures pick up. This method is convenient for the customer, who receives a timely delivery without any required interaction. Many companies started offering contactless delivery due to the pandemic and have developed the system to execute it already; they are unlikely to stop offering it. To compete effectively, brands that have not developed their capabilities in these trends should consider its benefits. It may prove essential to gain and retain customers.  

6. Cyber Insurance

In ecommerce, your business is dependent on the internet and the reliability of your information technology infrastructure. With these come the well-known threats of cybersecurity, software problems, and hardware problems. As ecommerce proliferates how consumers research and purchase, it may make sense to bring peace of mind to your business continuity through cyber insurance. Cyber insurance works to preserve the safety of a merchant’s technology investment. Securing your technology infrastructure against potential loss is becoming more and more common for businesses that strictly rely on online sales to drive growth and pay staff. Cyber insurance is a fast-growing trend in 2021. We expect it to grow much more as it becomes an essential insurance policy for businesses observing the need for security from potential cyber damage. 

Conclusion

Ecommerce was already expanding worldwide, and some experts say the COVID-19 crisis accelerates the ecommerce revolution as much as five years forward.  More people buying online presents a valuable opportunity, but this also means that businesses and sellers will need to adapt their strategies to the “new normal” quickly. In addition to this, business owners will have to ensure that we ease our customers into the change we are presenting and continue to find ways to reach out to our customers in an empathetic, connected, and personalized way. Adaptation is critical, and overall, ecommerce in 2021 presents a remarkable opportunity to help many people recover from the COVID-19 crisis and move forward into an ever-connected world. 

Many situations might require a Request a Quote button in your WooCommerce store. You might be focusing on B2B supply, or maybe you want to take quote requests from customers to offer them products at an exclusive price. In wholesale selling, adding a Request a Quote button works well, rather than adding products one by one into the shopping cart.

You can even add the Request a Quote button with or without the Add to Cart button for targeting both casual shoppers and wholesale customers at the same time. This allows your customers to enter a required quantity of products and send a quote request to purchase. Implement this strategy if your store is going through stock issues or if your website is undergoing maintenance work. In those cases, you can accept the quote request from customers and process their order when the stock or maintenance issue has been resolved.

This is an ideal method if you want to sell products very cheaply. Also, it is a better solution to satisfy your casual and wholesale customers at the same time.

Adding the Request a Quote Button in Your WooCommerce Store

Since WooCommerce does not have a built-in option to implement the Request a Quote button, you must use a plugin to do the task. ELEX WooCommerce ‘Request a Quote’ Plugin is one of the best plugins on the market for providing this option to customers. 

This dedicated plugin is convenient and user-friendly, and does not require any technical expertise to install.

How Does it Work?

The plugin displays the Request a Quote button with or without the Add to Cart button for selected products and assigned user roles. When customers visit your store, they are required to add the number of products they need to request the quote. Then, they fill out a form you’ll have configured when installing the plugin, which is different from the default WooCommerce checkout fields available to request a quote. 

When you receive a quote request, you can either approve or reject the quote request. If you approve the request, an email with a link to initiate payment will be triggered and sent to the customer. After they have completed the payment, you can proceed with the processing of the order.

Now, let’s check out how you can configure the plugin on your WooCommerce store.

How to Configure the ELEX WooCommerce Request a Quote Button

1. Subscribe, Install, and Activate

First, you need to subscribe, install, and activate the plugin in your WooCommerce store. For more details regarding installation and activation, you can read through the product documentation.

After activating the plugin, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Installed Plugins > ELEX WooCommerce Request a Quote Plugin> Settings.

2. Configure Basic Settings

This will open a new tab where you can configure the basic settings. Check out the screenshot below:

In this tab, you can add custom text to be displayed on the Request a Quote button. By default, the text will be Add to Quote. You can also choose a custom color for the button at this point.

The button will be displayed on the Shop page as shown in the screenshot below:

When your customer clicks the button, they will see a link to view the quote list. From there, they can enter the quantity and fill out the form to request a quote. Check out the screenshot below:

The customer can then choose an option to display the chosen products list on a dedicated page or a custom lightbox.

If you have chosen to display it on a page, it will look like the screenshot below:

If you have chosen to display the list on a lightbox, it will look like the screenshot below:

Then you can choose a page on which you want to display the quote list.  

If you want to display the quote list on a new page, you can create a page and add the shortcode –  [elex_quote_request_list].

You can add a custom title to the quote list that will display on the selected page. By default, it will be named Quotes List. 

3. Restrict Unregistered and Guest Users

If you want to restrict unregistered/guest users from accessing the option to request a quote, you can enable Disable Quote Request for Unregistered Users. If you have enabled this, guest users will be redirected to create an account on your website before initiating a quote request.

If you do not want to apply the Request a Quote option for specific products, you can exclude them based on their name, category, and tags. 

4. Display Request a Quote Only for Specific Products

Similarly, you can display the Request a Quote option for specific products only based on their category, name, and tags. You can also include or exclude the Request a Quote button for specific user roles with this plugin.

Here is an example of setting the product Album to display the Request a Quote button for it alone.

This will reflect on the shop page as in the screenshot below:

You can include or exclude the products from being available to selected user roles with this plugin.

As mentioned above, the form customers need to request a quote is customizable and different from the default WooCommerce checkout fields.

5. Set Up a Custom Form

Go to the Form Settings tab to set up a custom form. You can add a custom label, field type, placeholder text, and choose the corresponding WooCommerce checkout fields to map them with these fields.

You can click Add Field to add a custom field and enter the required details. If you enable the Required option, it will be shown as a mandatory field that must be filled to place the quote request. Else, it remains an optional field. You can also remove a field with just one click.

Here’s an example of the Request a Quote form in the screenshot below:

6. Set Up Customer Notifications

To trigger notifications to the customer and admin, go to the Notifications tab. There, you can add the email IDs to be notified, in addition to the default admin email ID. 

If you want to trigger an SMS notification to the admin when a customer places an order, you need to create an account in Twilio. After registering on Twilio, add your credentials and the mobile number to be notified. To trigger notifications through Google Chat, you can take the webhook URL and paste it over the corresponding field. 

To trigger a notification to a customer when a quote is requested, approved, or rejected, choose the corresponding order statuses from the drop-down list.

You can enable the debug log option to check the SMS and email notification details such as the subject, address, and mail/message body that are triggered. To get the details, go to WooCommerce > Status > Logs.

Check an example of a triggered email to the customer when a quote request has been approved by the admin.

7. Create Templates for Notifications

You can set the template of emails to be triggered to customers and admin, and the SMS and Google Chat notifications to be triggered to the admin. To configure the same, go to the Template Settings tab. Check out the screenshot below:

Here, you can enter custom email subject, heading, and body. You need to use HTML tags and the placeholders to add the corresponding details dynamically on the emails. If you are not quite comfortable with coding, you can use the sample HTML tags and placeholders on the respective fields. You can simply tweak it into the way you require it.

For setting SMS and Google Chat notification template to admin, you only need to add the text and placeholders.

Check an example of the template that can be used to send a notification to a customer when they sent a quote request to the store owner:

This will reflect on the email as shown in the screenshot below:

8. Hide the Add to Cart Button

Sometimes, you need to hide the Add to Cart button for all products. To hide the Add to Cart button, go to the Hide Add to Cart tab.

You can enable the Hide Add to Cart button option from the Shop page and Product page. If you have enabled this option, it will apply to all products in your store. But if you want to exclude some products from hiding the Add to Cart button, you can select which based on their category, name, and tags. You can also exclude user roles from the settings you have applied.

Check out this example of excluding products from the Music category when the Add to Cart option is hidden for all products in the store.

This will reflect on the Shop page as shown in the screenshot below:

This is how you can add the Request a Quote button to your WooCommerce store with ELEX WooCommerce Request a Quote plugin.

Conclusion

There are many reasons you might want to add the ELEX WooCommerce Request a Quote plugin to your WooCommerce store. This plugin and its advanced features allow you to apply it seamlessly and efficiently. Learn more about plugins for WooCommerce and how to configure them at LearnWoo.

If you’re like many new dropshippers that get into the game only to find out that it’s harder than it looks, this article is probably for you. Before we dive into building a site with name brand products, let’s consider a fictitious business in Los Angeles.

Tina’s Bike Service has been in business for over 10 years serving members of the Los Angeles community. For 10 years Tina has worked out of a small garage tuning, repairing, and building bikes for her customers. Her customers are willing to pay a premium to have her work on their bikes. While business has been great and steadily growing, many of her customers come to her for service, but head to online retailers or local sporting goods shops to purchase spare parts, upgrades, and accessories. Tina has noticed the trend and she’s thinking about opening an online store. She’s hoping that she can make her loyal customer’s lives easier by offering them a curated list of products that can be delivered straight to their door. Tina’s customers trust her, and the only reason they seek out products elsewhere is because she doesn’t offer them for sale (and doesn’t have enough space in her garage for retail).

Why build a dropship site with name brand products vs. AliExpress

When your customers are extremely price sensitive and willing to wait for a good deal, AliExpress is a great drop shipping option. AliExpress vendors often race to provide bargain basement prices (with longer shipping times), and as a result, you can offer those bargains to your customers. While often an effective motivator, price isn’t always the driver behind every purchasing decision. If price were always the driver, we wouldn’t likely see many luxury brands.

Brand loyalty, on the other hand, can be a huge driver for higher dollar sales in your online and offline business. And, if your customers are loyal to your brand, it’s likely they’ll be interested in purchasing other brands recommended by someone they trust (aka, you). If you have an audience or customer base that’s loyal and not price sensitive, you’re likely to do well offering a dropshipping site built with name brand products.

Curation is key

No matter the product category or mix, curation is always important. Curated or niche sites are easier to market, easier to navigate, rank higher on search engines, command higher prices, and, most importantly, get more sales. Because you’ll be selling name brand products for name brand prices, make sure to hand pick items individually or by brand / category. Think of the products and categories that your customers most often ask for and focus on those items first.

Find great suppliers

You may be surprised to know that many suppliers contract with data distribution companies to provide dropshipping to their wholesalers. This means that it’s possible to have a direct relationship with a supplier, get great prices, and also have a dropshipping relationship. Many direct-to-supplier relationships will require some sort of proof of existing business relationships or sales history. Not able to create a relationship with the name brand supplier you need to sell on your site? No problem! Companies like Wholesale2b and Doba make it easy to connect your new store to thousands of name brands through their existing wholesale relationships.

Build a direct relationship with your customers

And now we tune back into the story of Tina’s Bike Service. Her business is known for awesome service. That’s something she doesn’t want to give up as she creates a dropship site. That’s why she decided to publish her own terms and conditions, has strong fulfillment, return, and customer service policies, and has taken ownership of making things right when things go sideways. 

Just because you’re dropshipping name brand products doesn’t mean that those brands are responsible for your customer service. Look at the policies of your suppliers and echo those policies within your store. Then, when things don’t go exactly as planned, you can take great care of your customers with the backing of awesome brands.

Build new direct relationships with suppliers

Dropshipping name brand products is the stepping stone to direct supplier relationships. Take note of how much demand (how many product views) and how many sales you’re seeing on a monthly basis. Break the information down by product and brand and note trends that you’re seeing. Are certain products becoming more popular? Are some brands seeing a high amount of views but fewer purchases? Because dropshipping is often more expensive for everyone (your discount is lower and your shipping cost is usually higher), it makes sense to seek out direct relationships with suppliers armed with the real data you’re seeing in your monthly reports. Then, instead of selling slightly above retail, you’ll be able to negotiate wholesale prices that keep you competitive with others in your industry. As a dropshipper of name brand products, your goal should be to become a direct wholesaler for as many products as possible.

Conclusion

Building a dropship site with name brand products is a great way to roll existing customer loyalty and trust into a new or expanded line of business and reach people where they’re shopping every single day. Of course, if you’re ready to get started building your dropshipping store, the best place to start is with a Managed WooCommerce company. Need help getting started? Just give us a shout!

Currently, the only way to connect a Magento store to social media platforms is through Magento extensions. There are many social media extensions available through the Magento Marketplace that can easily be added to your store. In fact, there are 259 extensions available for Facebook alone.

In this article, we’re going to explore the highest rated social media extensions available for Magento 2.4 available through the Magento Marketplace.

There are so many social media extensions available through the Magento store that in order to create this list, we chose extensions with a 4 to 5 star rating and more than a few reviews. 

Koongo Data Feed Management by NoStress Commerce
4.2 stars, 9 reviews
Koongo is an ultimate product data feed management tool that streamlines the process of product data export from Magento 2 store to any of 500+ price comparison websites, online marketplaces and affiliate networks worldwide. 

Mobile App Builder by SimiCart
4.7 stars, 19 reviews
SimiCart Mobile App Builder is a complete solution to build your own iOS & Android Magento mobile app. Your app will be completely synchronized with your website, including products, categories, languages, store views etc.

OneStepCheckout by One Step Checkout AS
4.9 stars, 10 reviews
OneStepCheckout is one of the most popular extensions for Magento. OneStepCheckout reduces cart abandonment by removing friction for online shoppers as well as making it simple for Magento merchants to customize their checkout.

LiveChat by LiveChat
4.8 stars, 16 reviews
LiveChat is a Magento-specific chat tool for customer support and online sales; designed to provide quick answers and a personalized experience to shoppers.

Nosto by Nosto Solutions Ltd
4.9 stars, 7 reviews
An AI-Powered Commerce Experience Platform designed for ease of use, Nosto empowers retailers to build, launch, and optimize 1:1 omnichannel marketing campaigns and digital experiences without the need for dedicated IT resources or a lengthy implementation process.

Twitter & Facebook Login by Plumrocket Inc
4.0 stars, 9 reviews
Twitter & Facebook Login extension for Magento 2 is designed to let your customers quickly login or register. Once the extension is installed, social login buttons will be displayed on account login & registration pages, on the checkout page or anywhere else on your website.

Instagram Integration by Magenest (Adobe Bronze Solution Partner)
5.0 stars, 4 reviews
Instagram Integration for Magento 2 helps store managers connect their Magento stores with Instagram easily to reach more customers on this fast-growing social media. The admin can create multiple Instagram widgets and out them anywhere.

Gift Registry by Magenest
5.0 stars, 3 reviews
With Gift Registry for Magento 2, you can set up events and occasions where your customers can create a list of gifts that they want to get for their special day.  They can share it with their friends and family, and wait for them to buy those presents. Everyone who receives the invitation via Facebook, Twitter or email can purchase the items on your store.

Australia Post Shipping by Appjetty
5.0 stars, 5 reviews
If you’re a Magento pal from down under, check out this extension. The best-selling Australia Post Shipping extension from AppJetty works on the Australia Post PAC API and shows live shipping & contract rates for parcels and letters in your store. The store admin has the option to select the shipping methods for both international and domestic shipping. Admin can also manage handling charges, signature on delivery, extra cover charges, and more for shipping any product.

For detailed instructions on adding any of these social plugins to your Magento store, read this.

Looking to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2? Or maybe you’re looking to stay on M1 while you consider your options. We’re the Magento experts! We offer free migrations and Hostdedi Safe Harbor for M1 stores. 

If you’re the type of person who checks your website Google Analytics often you might have noticed a spike in traffic at the end of January or early February.

The first thing to know is that this is spam. It was added by several thousand bots coming from different IP addresses. This could throw off your entire analytics & reporting system, so let’s see if we can prevent this type of spam moving forward.

Create an Unfiltered View in GA

One of the best features of Google Analytics is that you can setup multiple views. Each view gets the exact same data but you can filter out different pieces of that data. There’s several great things about views.

One of them is that you can create an Unfiltered view. This will be your backup view that collects all data. 

Knowing you have an unfiltered view then it’s time to create one or more views that removes any unimportant data. I actually have 3 views. The unfiltered view, my master view, and a test view for experimentation.

On my Master view with my filters – I remove prevent a whole bunch of data from coming in:

• My home IP address
• An IP address I often work from
• And a few types of spam I’ve seen in previous years

Setting Up a Filter in Google Analytics

We’re going to do all of the work today in your non-unfiltered view – in my case I call that the Master view.

Here’s how we setup the filter:

1. Go to Admin -> Filters
2. Click Add Filter
3. Configure the filter
   1. Give the filter a descriptive name like “2021Q1BotSpam”. I would avoid names like “bot spam” since a few years from now there might be new type of bot spam.
   2. Filter type: Predefined
   3. Exclude | traffic to the subdirectories | That are equal to
   4. /trafficbot.live|/trafficbot.life|/bot-traffic.icu|/bot-traffic.xyz – you may only see one or two of these in your analytics. But if you look at the event globally you can find these four directories. You might as well block all of these
4. (Optional) “Verify this filter”. Feel free to verify the filter if you wish. I’ve seen others use these exact same filters and they don’t verify.
5. Save

Here’s what it should look like when it’s complete.

Once you’ve done this, the filter is saved and any future data from spam bots will be ignored in this view. If for any reason you messed up, you have your Raw / Unfiltered view which you can reference.

You’ve finally done it. You’ve created your brand, built your WooCommerce store, and loaded your inventory. As the orders begin to come in month after month, you’ve realized that you can make a lot more money if you keep your manufacturing costs down and keep inventory levels consistent. You’re also probably starting to cash in on some other channels like Amazon.com, and you’re struggling to keep inventory numbers synced between Amazon and your website. Then it hits you, wouldn’t it be nice to manage everything in one place? That’s where advanced WooCommerce inventory management can change the game.

If you’re selling one or two products with WooCommerce, keeping track of inventory is simple. If you’re selling multiple items or multiple variations, keeping track of inventory is slightly more complex. If you’re selling across multiple channels or trying to keep track of manufacturing costs and supplier shipments, it’s time to start thinking about more sophisticated ways to manage your WooCommerce inventory.

What is WooCommerce inventory management?

In reality, inventory management with WooCommerce isn’t about a particular product, it’s about discipline. It’s the rigor, process, and procedure you put towards keeping track of costs, knowing when to replenish products, and keeping inventory numbers synced between multiple channels. It’s a more sophisticated way to think about planned and on-hand inventory when your store is enjoying success and you’re looking for the next optimization point.

Sound like something you need? Implementing an inventory management plan is easier than it’s ever been due to the emergence of a handful of great third-party providers and plugins.

Native vs third-party WooCommerce inventory management

The most important thing to decide before implementing an inventory management process is which system will be the point of truth when it comes to product product facts (quantity on hand, price, shipping dimensions, etc). Your choice will likely be driven by which suppliers, marketplaces, and dropship providers work well with your platform. Third-party providers often have a lower entry price point and fewer integration points. Conversely, when using WooCommerce as the source of truth, the entry price point for an inventory management plugin can be higher and the number of integration points can be greater.

Third Party Source of Truth

When integrating with a third party, pay special attention to exactly how the integration will work. When the status of an order changes in the inventory management system, will it change on the WooCommerce store too? When products are disabled in the inventory management system will they be removed from the store? How are statuses related between the two platforms? Being well acquainted with these answers will make integration easier and will result in fewer gotchas down the road.

Two of my favorite third-party property management systems are TradeGecko (now called Quickbooks Commerce) and SellBrite. While pricing of these third-party options can look attractive, make sure to calculate the true cost of implementing these solutions based on your current and projected sales.

WooCommerce as a Source of Truth

Using WooCommerce as your inventory and order source of truth means deeper integration with WooCommerce and more potential for extending functionality and building new tools. It also may mean having fewer options when it comes to inventory management solutions. Because inventory management is a plan, not a product, make sure to let the source of truth decision drive your selection of tools. For WooCommerce native inventory management, ATUM Inventory Management and WOOBE WooCommerce Bulk Editor are solid options.

A quick note on multi-channel distribution

You’ll often see multi-channel distribution bundled as a feature with many third-party inventory management systems. Multi-channel distribution helps to broaden the reach of your store’s products by making it easy to list on larger marketplaces. For instance, you might choose to sell on your WooCommerce store while also selling on Amazon.com. Each selling platform is considered a channel. Since inventory management systems have the keys to your product details and inventory, it’s just a quick hop to enable them to send inventory to and list on other selling channels. While selling on these platforms can be technically easy, make sure to read about the terms and costs associated with each channel.

Whether you’re just starting to look for an inventory management solution or you’re looking for a change, remember to keep your list of business needs front and center. With the many options available in the market, it’s easy to get distracted with fancy features and snazzy integrations. Those extras are always within reach when it’s time. For now, solve the immediate management needs of your business, and reach out anytime if you need some advice.

What are the 7 fastest WordPress themes out there? With a wide variety of free or premium themes available, choosing the right tool can certainly become an overwhelming process. That’s why we’re here today – to present some of the fast-loading, SEO-friendly, top-notch solutions that’ll bring your business to the next level. 

GeneratePress

• Speed/Performance Score: 99%
• YSlow Score: 94%
• Total Size: 39.8KB
• Fully Loaded: 1.1 sec
• HTTP Requests: 10

Our first pick is GeneratePress, a popular and flexible theme with a focus on usability and speed. It’s an admirable SEO-friendly solution that will help you improve your rankings even before you add the content. How exactly is this possible?

Well, SEO optimized themes have a codebase that follows the best search engine practices. This way, it’s easier for Google bots to crawl your website and recognize it as relevant.

GeneratePress is a highly beneficial tool with a 5-star rating and thousands of people downloading it on a daily basis. No wonder, since we’re talking about a lightweight theme you can easily adjust to any preferred niche. It also pairs well with various page builders, together with Elementor, a helpful tool that modifies mobile and desktop versions of your site. Need to use it in some other language? No worries, it’s translation-ready for more than 20 of them.

This theme is free unless you want to upgrade it to the premium version. In that case, the price is $59 annually or $249 if you want to make it a one-time payment.

Astra

• Speed/Performance Score: 99%
• YSlow Score: 92%
• Total Size: 107 KB
• Fully Loaded: 0.9 sec
• HTTP Requests: 15

Astra is another lightweight, speedy, and highly customizable solution that’s lately been rapidly growing in popularity. Once it’s installed on your WordPress, you’ll see it has a completely prepared premade site where you can modify the majority of the theme’s elements without even touching the code. For instance, there are layout settings that offer an option of adding sidebars, headers, or single page layouts.

Its speedy and high-quality performance happens because of eliminating jQuery dependencies – which actually creates delays on your site. This particular theme also offers translations into different languages.

You can integrate Astra with some third-party plugins such as Yoast, LearnDash, or WooCommerce. As a matter of fact, it even has some special WooComerce-related settings you can’t find on some regular themes. So, is this theme worth trying? It absolutely is – and that’s something over a million active users and almost 5000 5-star reviews can confirm.

Same as with GeneratePress, Astra also gives a free base as well as the possibility of purchasing premium add-ons. The starting price for the upgraded version is $47.

Neve

• Speed/Performance Score: 99%
• YSlow Score: 93%
• Total Size: 57.6 KB
• Fully Loaded: 0.9 sec
• HTTP Requests: 12

Our third choice is Neve, which is another reputable, fast loading, and multipurpose theme where you can successfully base your content. It offers plenty of WordPress customizer controls, together with pre-built demo sites made with Elementor.

With Neve, you can modify the header and footer as well as get to choose amongst various layouts. In addition to that, Neve brings over 120 demo websites that may be an excellent starting point to set your WordPress site. The great news is around one-third of them are free.

Same as with previous options, the plain theme is also completely free of charge. The premium version, on the other hand, has a starting price of $59. It offers additional features such as blog boost, custom layout, header, and numerous updates that can help customize your site.

Zakra

• Speed/Performance Score: 99%
• YSlow Score: 87%
• Total Size: 97.1 KB
• Fully Loaded: 0.6 sec
• HTTP Requests: 16

Zakra is the next well-designed, speedy, and lightweight theme with plenty of demos that can help you create a rather unique look for your site. It successfully pairs with various page builder plugins. It’s AMP ready and fully responsive which means your website will be adjusted to any screen and device your visitors use.

One of the things you will certainly like about this theme is how well-documented it is compared to some other free ones. Zakra allows you to adjust your blog’s style with a wide range of grid designs and layouts. There are numerous typography options, rather flexible sidebars, and many more other customizing elements that will help with shaping your page the way you want to.

It’s multifunctional, but also has some eCommerce demos where you get essential customizing tools for your online store. It pairs with Elementor and is quite SEO-friendly.

Its core version is free, while the price for the premium option starts from $149. It actually goes higher, depending on the package you purchase.

Customify

• Speed/Performance Score: 99%
• YSlow Score: 90%
• Total Size: 381 KB
• Fully Loaded: 1.5 sec
• HTTP Requests: 19

Even the name suggests it – Customify is a fast loading theme that’s all about features allowing for advanced-level customization. It’s simple to use and easy to adjust to any type of content. 

Customify brings numerous demo options that will allow you to be creative and change every part of your site in a preferred way. This tool is highly versatile which is why it especially comes in handy for small businesses, eCommerce, portfolios, or sites led by nonprofit organizations.

Its simplistic design offers a flexible header, sticky posts, left/right sidebars, and many other useful features that will come in handy for customizing your site.

It’s well compatible with Elementor and some widely used plugins like WooCommerce. This theme also comes as an excellent SEO solution that will help you reach higher Google rankings.

The price for the premium option starts at $59. 

Page Builder Framework

• Speed/Performance Score: 98%
• YSlow Score: 93 %
• Total Size: 69 KB
• Fully Loaded: sec: 1.2 sec
• HTTP Requests: 11

If you’re looking for a minimalistic, yet well-balanced, combination of customization tools and speed, Page Builder Framework is it. This theme is lightweight and quite similar to GeneratePress and Astra. Still, as the name says, it’s actually more oriented to page building.

You can easily integrate it with page builders as well as develop a wide variety of website designs without interrupting the code.

Page Builder Framework is also an SEO-friendly tool that will certainly help you set up a page Google will be able to recognize as a valuable source of relevant information. You won’t have to struggle with adjusting the website to mobile or tablet screens, because this theme already does it for you.

X Theme

• Speed/Performance Score: 98%
• YSlow Score: 91%
• Total Size: 122 KB
• Fully Loaded: 1.2 sec
• HTTP Requests: 12

Maybe you’re up for X Theme? It’s a modern WordPress theme that brings various useful tools and excellent plugins that may help with extending the functionality of your website. It’s highly customizable so you can make almost any change that comes to your mind.

It’s also multifunctional and integrated with WooCommerce which is why it suits any type of business. Coupled with that, it delivers 5 different demos. Considering there are so many customizing features, you may think it’s not that fast – but it fully loads within 1.2 seconds, which is an excellent speed score.

Even if you don’t have any coding experience, X theme makes it all really simple with its drag-and-drop building system. Layout, navigation options, a choice of content blocks, template manager – it’s all there to help you out with giving your business a new dimension.

Conclusion

Site speed is one of the essential features that will, without a doubt, positively affect customer’s reviews. Not only that; it also improves your SEO ranking and boosts generating organic traffic. That’s the important step that eventually leads to attracting visitors as well as turning them into subscribers or customers.

Google ranking is another element crucial for your business. That’s why these 7 super-fast WordPress themes make this part way easier and turning your business into an SEO-friendly site before even setting the content. They are also quite helpful because each brings some different features and great customizing tools to modify your site in a preferred way.

All in all, it’s impossible to clear out which theme deserves a throne – which is why we hope this list can help you choose one that suits your needs best. Any particular WordPress theme you’d like to add here?

Related Content

The security of your hosting environment, website, and client interactions is more important now than ever before. With constant threats and attacks you want to ensure that your visitors trust that you have their security in mind and are active in protecting their information. Providing a secure connection to your website with a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate is one of the easiest methods of demonstrating to your visitors that you take security seriously. However not all SSL certificates are considered equal or provide the same assurances. Determining which is best for you and your business is an important choice and depends on your particular needs.

What is an SSL Certificate?

To decide which SSL is best for your business you first need an understanding of what an SSL certificate is. An SSL certificate is a digital “certificate” (basically a file) that is used to provide encryption and decryption between a host (you) and a client (your visitor). This certificate certifies ownership and authenticity of a domain. In other words: it tells your visitor (and more importantly: their browser) that the domain they are visiting is actually the domain they believe they’re going to and that it belongs to who they think it should belong to. This certificate also allows their browser to communicate with your website in a safe, secure manner. When looking at the URL / address bar in the browser and you see https, the “s” portion represents the secure connection that the SSL certificate provides. 

How Does An SSL Work?

Before you can choose which SSL best suits your needs you should also understand the process of how an SSL is used. The basic idea is to create a “chain of trust”; a path that begins at your computer with your browser, and ends with an organization that provides the SSL certificate known as a “Certificate Authority” or “CA”. When visiting a site your browser looks at the SSL certificate and starts to “follow” the information it contains, reviewing each step and making sure that the component is digitally “signed” by an organization or CA that your browser trusts. By following this path your browser can guarantee that the information it receives from a site is accurate since each step verifies the last, ending at the CA which has a specific agreement with your browser ^[1].

Additionally, your browser uses the SSL certificate to establish a secure connection to the server of the website you are visiting. There is a back-and-forth series of messages to negotiate or confirm that the site and your browser can communicate securely and that the website your browser is visiting is truly the website you believe you’re at.  

[1] – This is part of the reason why SSLs may have a charge associated with them. The Certificate Authority has to be approved by each and every browser it wants to have SSL certificates recognized by. This is part of the labor cost and is a time consuming and difficult process. It also is the reason why SSL certificates can be trusted: not just anybody can start a Certificate Authority and issue SSL certificates that will be trusted by the most commonly used browsers.

Types of SSL Certificates

To determine which SSL is best for the business or site you operate you should also understand the different types of SSLs and the way that they can be used. This article will touch briefly on four types of SSL certificate that you can choose from:

Self-Signed

This SSL certificate is one that you create and essentially “sign” yourself, stating that you are who you say you are and your site is the site it proclaims to be. These are fine when working with a site that only people you know / trust will be accessing it. They don’t have to worry about the authenticity because they already know exactly who is operating it and that it’s safe. These should not be used for any type of online business or site where random visitors will be stopping by since self-signed certificates will present an error / warning in most browsers about not being trustworthy (which can scare visitors / customers away).

Single Domain

The single domain SSL certificate is going to represent exactly what it says: a single fully-qualified domain name. This does not support any type of subdomains of a domain unless that is what the SSL is specifically configured for (so an SSL for mail.example.com will only provide security and authenticity to mail.example.com, not www.example.com). Additionally, alternate top level domains (TLDs) such as .net, .org, etc… are not covered automatically unless an SSL certificate is explicitly purchased / configured for that domain name TLD.

Wildcard

The wildcard SSL provides security and authenticity for all subdomains of a domain name. The term “wildcard” is representing any and all possible sub-domains that could be used with your primary domain name. This is especially useful if you are unsure how you could utilize sub-domains for your business or know that you have a large number of subdomains that need coverage (enough that the increased cost of a wildcard subdomain is cheaper than buying individual single domain SSLs to cover all your subdomains).

Multi-Domain

The multi-domain SSL, rather than focusing on covering multiple sub-domains provides coverage for multiple hostnames. These Subject Alternative Names (SAN) are listed on the SSL certificate and your browser checks each one individually when visiting a site. After receiving the SSL certificate and reviewing the SANs your browser will identify if the domain matches one of the SANs and if so create the secure connection. This type of SSL is extremely useful if there are multiple domains that you control that you want protected or that all relate to your business as you only have a single certificate to manage and keep updated / configured on your servers.

Validation Levels

Aside from specific types of SSL certificates being offered the various Certificate Authorities can provide different “validation” levels to prove that the owner of the SSL is who they say they are. The various types of validation present themselves differently to your browser and provide visitors to sites using the SSL a visual confirmation of the SSL connection. Further: the degree of validation that went into proving the requestor / owner of the SSL is who they say they are is increased with the various levels offered depending on the needs for your business. A quick breakdown of those validation levels is as follows:

Domain Validated (DV)

This is the most common and easiest validation level to pass. The sole qualifier is that you prove that the domain you’re ordering an SSL for is under your control. This could be responding to an email sent to an address at that domain to modifying a DNS record for the domain so an automated system can review it. This validation method usually takes a few minutes to a couple of hours at most. Browsers will display a lock icon on the address bar indicating that a secure and encrypted connection to the site provided by SSL is being made.

Organizational Validated (OV)

This is a more in-depth and detailed validation. The owner or business is actually contacted and paperwork has to be submitted proving that your business is a legitimate business. The name of the person or organization is associated with the SSL if reviewed; however browsers will display the same visual indicator as with a domain validated SSL. This can usually be completed in a couple of days.

Extended Validation (EV)

This is the most complicated level of validation and takes upwards of a week or more. Public records are utilized to prove the location of your business, that your business exists / is legitimate, and typically requires in-person / over the phone communication to provide additional verification and information. This is an extreme vetting process that requires lots of back and forth communication and follows strict guidelines; however it results in a green bar visual indicator in browsers; the only SSL to offer it and is considered the most trustworthy of SSLs.

Why are SSLs Important?

This article has briefly touched on why an SSL certificate is important, but it’s critical to expand on that point as security is an ever growing need for businesses to take seriously. Customers come to expect that their data is protected and that they can trust the sites they visit. Losing that trust means losing business and reputation. 

There are three primary reasons for SSLs: privacy, authentication, and data integrity. The first, privacy, is extremely important as the SSL certificate and encrypted connection it helps create protects the information your clients give you from being intercepted and viewed in “plain text”. This prevents your client information such as credit card numbers, usernames, or other personal data from being intercepted by malicious attackers. 

This leads into the second point: authentication. SSLs help ensure that only the source and destination know what that data is and can use it, but also to prove to the source that they’re communicating with whom they expect to be communicating with. The SSL certificate is a quick and easy way to prove that a domain is legitimate, that a business has been vetted, and that the site a visitor is viewing is the one they expect to be seeing. Phishing sites are extremely common but due to SSL certificates and the vetting process it’s highly unlikely

Lastly, data integrity. In simple terms this means that the information a visitor sends you is the information you receive (and vice versa). This is just as important as the other two aspects since we want to ensure that if we make a  financial transaction or purchase request that that request is interpreted correctly. The SSL certificate and the encryption / data integrity it provides allows businesses to provide their visitors with a level of certainty that what they ask of you or send you is what you receive.

All of the above points are extremely important for any entity on the internet today. Banking, medical, transportation, and shopping industries depend on protecting data communication. Compliance and regulatory organizations such as PCI or HIPAA have stringent requirements in order to be approved and an SSL certificate is almost always at the top of the list. 

What Makes a Good / Better / Best SSL?

There are a few factors that are different among the various types of SSLs and how they are acquired. The first that you need to be aware of is key length. The easiest way to remember key length and what you should get is that bigger (longer keys) are better and provide stronger security. It’s common practice to now order an SSL with 2048 bits for the key length. You should no longer order SSLs with 1024 bit key lengths as those have been proven to be ineffective and can easily be broken by malicious attackers to snoop on data between your site and visitors.

Above I talked about certificate authorities and how not all of them are accepted by all browsers. This is a major component to consider when acquiring an SSL certificate since you need to know your audience and whether they may be using obscure browsers or only the popular variants. The larger base a browser has the more picky it will be since it needs to ensure that it provides the utmost security for the users it has to consider. The more well established certificate authorities also work to protect their reputation and want to be known for taking their vetting process seriously so as to be thought of as aiding individuals who may have malicious intent behind their SSL requests.

Lastly, the purpose for why you want an SSL. Today we see a push from every major tech company to “secure the web” and utilize SSL across the board. Every site should try and strive for providing the utmost security possible (or practical) to their visitors. SSL certificates, while necessary for businesses, are even relevant for simply informational and news related sites like blogs. Having an SSL for a blog can provide that security and confirmation to visitors that they are at the blog they expect and not a knock-off or phishing attempt or even someone attempting to pass along false information (such as a security blog telling people to use simple passwords).

What SSL Is Best For Web Server Hosting?

With our understanding of SSL certificates and how they are used we can now examine what is best for the common web server and hosting industry. While security is extremely important for any type of presence online we rarely see the need for the extreme vetting that EV SSL certificates require. The medical, financial, and transportation industries tend to have visitors that are wary and initially cautious simply due to those businesses being frequently imitated and targeted for malicious attacks. Additionally, they have stringent requirements for security guidelines that they are required to follow by law. EV SSLs are ideal for them, but not for the typical web server for a business online. 

The organization or domain validated SSL is the ideal choice of validation for the overwhelming majority of businesses online since they’re faster to acquire and provide the same level of protection and visual confirmation. Unless you feel that having certain aspects of your business be identified by the SSL, a DV SSL with simple domain control validation is the SSL that best suits most people, businesses, and sites online.

In terms of what type of SSL to get, I frequently recommend that people plan for the future. The wildcard SSL allows you to provide simple SSL protection for your domain while also providing the freedom to expand with any subdomain that comes within the scope of your business plan or the needs of your site. You may not need to provide SSL protection for your sub-domains, but having the option is always better. Further: by having a single SSL certificate to keep track of you no longer need to be concerned with multiple certificates expiring on different days, reducing operational complexity. A single certificate simplifies replication across multiple web servers and eases administration duties, ultimately reducing your costs and risks.

Conclusion

Overall, only you will know the needs that your site online has and how to best fulfill them. Using an SSL certificate to protect your site and visitors is one of the easiest ways to convey that you take your presence online seriously and the security of your visitors as a priority. Thinking about the growth of your business and where you see your site going can help prevent technical issues for your web servers and how you protect them down the line.