Daily ArchivesFebruary 18, 2022

As your fully managed hosting provider, Hostdedi wants to make you aware of critical vulnerabilities associated with specific Magento 2 versions and a WordPress plugin, UpdraftPlus. Keep reading to learn about these vulnerabilities, what you can do, and how Hostdedi is protecting your site and your data.

Magento 2 Vulnerabilities

On Sunday, February 13th, Adobe disclosed a critical RCE vulnerability in Magento 2 (CVE-2022-24086) and released an emergency patch. Teams across Hostdedi assembled and put together tooling to identify and patch impacted Magento 2 installations on Hostdedi Classic, Cloud, and Enterprise platforms. We completed patching efforts through February 15th and updated installation tooling for M2 to include the patch.

Then, on Thursday, February 17th, Adobe released a second emergency patch for Magento 2 (CVE-2022-24087) to further mitigate the RCE vulnerability. We reassembled teams at Hostdedi to begin immediately testing and applying the patch across Hostdedi Classic, Cloud, and Enterprise platforms. As of the evening of Thursday, February 17th and into the morning of the 18th, we have completed patching affected customers for CVE-2022-24087.

We encourage customers to please check their Magento 2 installations to understand if you are on a known vulnerable version and to verify that the patch was successfully applied. Although we have a high degree of confidence that we scoped in all vulnerable customer installations, the severity of this vulnerability warrants the additional validation on your part.

UpdraftPlus Plugin Vulnerabilities

Our teams are also acting on a critical vulnerability in UpdraftPlus, a WordPress backup plugin.

This vulnerability could allow any logged-in user, such as customer accounts, to download site backups created by the plugin, providing attackers access to sensitive data. They could potentially hijack vulnerable sites as well. This vulnerability received a high-severity CVSS score of 8.5 out of 10.

The plugin developer has released a patch in 1.22.3 (free version) and 2.22.3 (paid version). Because of the severity, the WordPress.org plugins team designated this a required update for users of the free plugin, so free UpdraftPlus users should see this update automatically. Premium users of the plugin are urged to update their plugin immediately if it hasn’t updated automatically.

We have released an update to our Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect customers until their sites can be updated, and we’ve also communicated to all our customers using UpdraftPlus to urge them to verify they have the latest version and update if needed.

We’re Here to Help

If you have any additional questions, please email us directly at [email protected], or contact us by telephone at 866-639-2377.

As your Managed Hosting provider, we’re working every day to keep your sites and stores fast, highly secure, and available. We recognize that when your business relies on the web, you deserve to have a provider you can rely on.

As always, we thank you for trusting us with your mission-critical sites and stores. We appreciate your business and will always have your back.

Reference Links

The field of ecommerce can be incredibly lucrative —  when done right.

There’s a huge range of areas to consider when creating a successful ecommerce store, including SEO, advertising, and content marketing.

However, one of the most important areas to examine to improve your ecommerce store’s performance is user experience.

After all, online shopping is only as successful as it is convenient, so the user’s interactions with your website should be as streamlined and easy-to-use as possible.

Keep reading to learn the essential ecommerce UX best practices you need to know.

Ecommerce UX Best Practices

1. Make Navigation Intuitive
2. Call Out Special Product Offers and Sales
3. Consider Visual Appeal
4. Optimize Your CTAs
5. Simplify Your Checkout Process
6. Make Product Descriptions Thorough

Let’s look at these ecommerce UX best practices in more detail.

1. Make Navigation Intuitive

Shoppers often come to your website with a mission. Your website should help them find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible, or you risk them clicking away in frustration.

To make your navigation as intuitive as possible, follow standard conventions for website formatting. That means breaking your products down into clear categories and ensuring each page maintains a clear visual hierarchy. Also, include links to your social media profiles.

One of the largest ecommerce marketplaces, Etsy, offers upfront a clear list of product categories. This arrangement is especially successful because the user doesn’t have to click any buttons or hover to see categories — they’re all there from the beginning.

That style may not work for every type of ecommerce store, but it underscores how simplicity and utility win user experience.

If you haven’t already, it’s critical to include a search bar, preferably with search filtering features.

Navigation is essential on the home page, but it’s also important for every page after. That’s why you should use breadcrumbs or a roadmap displaying the user’s current position in relation to the home page.

Breadcrumbs are an ecommerce user experience best practice because they help users orient themselves in a website and encourage more browsing, and therefore more sales.

2. Call Out Special Product Offers and Sales

Especially as consumers are more concerned about value than ever, offering discounts can drive conversions and build loyalty.

Don’t bury sales under navigation categories. A banner or ad at the beginning of your ecommerce site that grabs the user’s attention gets them to click and spend more time on your online store, reducing your bounce rate.

Use large text and bright colors to call attention to your deals, and word the offer so that it’s immediately clear what value the user stands to gain.

3. Consider Visual Appeal

While you want your website to be attractive, the ecommerce UX best practice is not to overwhelm your audience with design elements. The website design should be simple and attractive.

Research-based user experience group Nielson Norman lays out the following UX design principles for an excellent website:

• Scale: Communicate importance with size.
• Visual hierarchy: Use scale, color, and text to guide the eye in an intended order.
• Balance: Arrange elements with visually pleasing symmetry or asymmetry.
• Contrast: Communicate differences with visual disparity.
• Gestalt: Place contextually related elements closer together.

There are many ways to optimize visual appeal, but the bottom line for your ecommerce website is to prioritize simplicity and ease of use.

Finally, invest in high-quality photographs and product images. Even the slightest bit of pixelation or fuzz can lower your website’s perceived trustworthiness and quality.

4. Optimize Your CTAs

Your calls to action (CTA) are the smallest text on the page and the most critical. You want to make sure they’re persuasive and compelling from a sales standpoint.

From a customer experience standpoint, it’s important that your users know exactly what clicking the button will do. They should inspire trust along with the action.

So make your CTAs specific, and overcome potential objections (“it’s free,” “no credit card required,” “takes just minutes”). Social proof, like positive ratings or customer reviews near your CTA, can also help convert.

It is an ecommerce UX best practice to test various locations, headers, and copy to find the CTAs with the best conversion rates with your target audience.

5. Simplify Your Checkout Process

For your customers, shopping is the fun part — and paying less so. Once your user clicks “add to cart,” it’s important to make the checkout process as simple as possible.

24% of users abandon their shopping carts because they were required to create an account, so allow users to check out as a guest.

Other things that cause cart abandonment are surprise fees, high shipping costs, and searching for better prices. Be as transparent as possible about your pricing upfront, and make discount code boxes less noticeable.

6. Make Product Descriptions Thorough

It’s an ecommerce UX best practice to consider the buyer’s perspective when writing product copy. They want to feel confident in the decision they’re about to make.

You don’t want them to need to leave your website for more information, as there’s a good chance they won’t come back. So, provide all the information they may need on the product page to make a purchase decision.

Although your focus shouldn’t be on persuasion, you can use subtle sales tactics like free shipping over a certain amount.

Final Thoughts: UX Ecommerce Best Practices To Make Your Store More Successful

With an emphasis on making your customer’s journey pleasant as possible, your ecommerce business is sure to thrive.

Make sure to follow the ecommerce user experience best practices — make your navigation intuitive, call attention to sales, make it visually pleasing, optimize CTAs, simplify the checkout process, and craft thorough product descriptions.

If you’re creating a new ecommerce website, build a beautiful online store in minutes with Hostdedi’s StoreBuilder. It’s the fastest and easiest way to create an online store with WordPress.

Check out StoreBuilder to get started today.