Fonts are a great way to make your website stand out and infuse your brand personality into it. And they have a strong impact on how your brand is received.
In fact, 73% of all Fortune 500 companies use sans-serif fonts in their logos, likely due to their greater legibility and more minimal appearance.
Most WordPress themes have built-in options to change default fonts, at least within a few pre-selected choices. But this is not always the case.
There are some additional options for changing fonts in WordPress if your theme doesn’t offer a font that you want, and that’s precisely what we’ll discuss here today.
Let’s dive right in.
How To Choose Fonts for Your WordPress Site
Before we get into the tutorial proper, let’s first discuss how the process of font selection typically goes and what you should keep in mind when choosing a font.
It’s best to:
Make sure that the font is easy to read. If it’s not legible, then it’s not of any use. View any potential fonts on multiple sizes, headings styles, colors, and font weights to get a real sense of how it’ll look. Likewise, view it on multiple devices in a live preview.
Keep in mind your existing website and brand style. Your chosen font should complement it, not send an entirely different message. If you’re building a new website from scratch, you can disregard this advice. Instead, you can take this opportunity to build your brand style around your font selection(s).
Ensure that individual letters look good in large and small sizes. It’s not enough that your font of choice looks great when displayed as a header in bold. It needs to look good and be legible when formatted as body text, too, especially if you plan to use it for body copy.
Ensure the font is in the correct format (WOFF/WOFF2 or EOF format). That way, it’ll display properly in all browsers. You can use the Webfont Generator to convert your fonts into a web-friendly format.
With these tips in mind, we can move on to the process of changing fonts in WordPress.
How To Change Fonts in WordPress Using Built-In Options
The easiest way to change fonts in WordPress is by using the Live Customizer. All you have to do is access the WordPress customizer in the WordPress dashboard by clicking Appearance > Customize.
If your theme offers font customization support, you should see a tab on the left-hand sidebar that says Fonts or something similar. Click it to make your theme selections.
In some cases, your WordPress theme might use a separate theme options panel for font customization. In that case, you can change the fonts using the settings provided there. If you have questions, be sure to reference your theme’s documentation.
How To Change WordPress Fonts Using a Page Builder
Similarly, if you’re using a page builder such as the Hostdedi StoreBuilder, you can select a template that includes the fonts and font styles you prefer.
You can browse through the numerous template options to find one that includes a font selection and color palette that matches your company’s or personal branding and style.
But what if you want to add new fonts to WordPress — not just select from the options provided by your theme or page builder? There’s a solution for that, too.
How To Add Fonts to WordPress
If your theme doesn’t offer the font you want, you can add different fonts through a plugin pretty easily. There are many WordPress plugins available that can assist with this task.
Take Easy Google Fonts, for example. This dedicated font plugin helps you add any Google Font to your WordPress website with just a click or two. If you have your eye on a Google web font, this plugin can make adding it a snap.
Alternatively, you can use the plugin Use Any Font to add font files to your WordPress website, even if they’re not Google Font typography options. The process is simple here, too. Just install the plugin, make your font selections, and be on your way.
You can also add custom fonts to WordPress manually by enqueueing them through your functions.php file and putting additional CSS code in your stylesheet in a child theme.
The easiest way to do this is as follows:
1. Select a Google font. Click the + icon next to it, then copy the link to the font.
2. Open your theme’s functions.php file. Paste in a code snippet containing your font’s link. Save your work.
3. Open the style.css file. Add custom CSS code to style whichever elements you’d like the font to be applied to.
And that’s all there is to it!
Final Thoughts: How To Change Fonts in WordPress (and Add New Fonts, Too)
Changing fonts in WordPress is not difficult. And you have several options:
Using the built-in customization options in your theme or page builder.
Using a plugin.
Enqueuing the desired font options in your child theme.
The only thing left to do now is to use one of these methods to change the fonts on your website and add a touch of personality or branded cohesiveness to your web presence.
If you want to get started with WordPress, our Managed WordPress Hosting plans simplify the process of creating, launching, and maintaining a website. Just sign up and let us take care of the tech details.
Check out our fully managed WordPress hosting plans to get started today.
When you think of computer viruses, you may think of movies about hackers trying to steal missile launch codes and secret agents trying to stop them. That is unless you’ve dealt with a virus or malware before. Then you know it’s not a suspense movie. It’s a big problem for your business.
Knowing WordPress malware removal techniques can keep your website in good working order and save your business time, money, and headaches. Keep reading to learn how to scan WordPress for malware.
What is Malware?
Malware causes damage to a computer, server, or network. Short for “malicious software,” malware comes in various types, some of which you’ve probably heard of before. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, and adware are all types of malware.
Hackers use malware to steal information, like bank account or credit card numbers, passwords, or even information about the people you work with. Once it gets on your WordPress site, malware can be difficult to detect. To protect your business and your customers, knowing how malware can get on your site and what you can do to remove it is essential.
How Does Malware Get on Your WordPress Site?
WordPress is a robust and popular content management system, and for good reason. It offers tons of customization options and can be modified to run a blog, ecommerce store, or membership site – whatever you want to use it for. But that popularity also makes it vulnerable.
Movies make it seem like hackers are always attacking websites when in reality, malware can show up on your WordPress site in a boring and mundane way. Hackers can install malware on your site through vulnerabilities in apps or plugins. People commonly find malware on their WordPress site after getting free copies of plugins or themes that normally cost money. Making sure you choose plugins and themes from the WordPress repository is a good way to avoid compromising your site.
Additionally, updating your version of WordPress can make a world of difference. Many users ignore the update messages they see when logging into their site. If they let the update go too long, that can be like rolling out a welcome mat for malware.
How to Check Whether You Have Malware on Your Site
Many website owners assume that if their site had WordPress malware, they’d know immediately. And in some cases, malware may change the appearance of a website. But most malware is elusive, which is what makes it so effective.
Your site may have malware if:
Account information, like your login, changed, and you weren’t the one to change it.
Someone modified website files without your knowledge.
The website freezes or crashes.
There’s a rapid drop or increase in site traffic.
If you experience any of these things, it’s time to scan WordPress for malware.
WordPress Malware Removal Techniques
If you suspect your WordPress site is affected by malware, take action quickly. When it comes to WordPress malware removal, there are things you can do to check the health of your website.
Scan Your Site
Scanning your site is a simple way to see if there is any malware installed. Scanning your site will let you know if your site is up-to-date and secure. There are WordPress plugins that can scan your site for you. If your site is flagged, you’ll either need to update it or perform some of the following tasks.
WordPress Malware Removal Plugins
If you find malware installed on your WordPress site, remove it immediately. There are malware removal plugins out there. Before you pick one, review the features the plugin offers to decide if you feel like you can comfortably use it. Every plugin is different, and each plugin has a learning curve. Some of the most popular WordPress malware removal plugins are MalCare, Wordfence, Sucuri, Astra Security Suite, CleanTalk Security, BulletProof Security, Cerber Security, and Defender Security.
Backup Site Files
If possible, make sure to backup your site by using your host’s site snapshot feature. Not all web hosts have this feature, which will likely take a long time since it will be a thorough backup of your entire server. If you can still log into your site after the malware was installed, you can use a WordPress backup plugin. You should also export an XML file of all your site’s content. And for every install of WordPress on your server, you’ll want to back up each one.
Delete Files
After you back up your site, it’s time to delete some files. In your public_html folder, delete all the files except the cgi-bin folder and any clean server-related folders. To do this, use your web host’s file manager.
If you have more than one site you’re hosting on that server, you can assume they’re all compromised. So you’ll need to back up all sites and delete all the files in each site’s public_html folder. Do this as quickly as possible because it’s not uncommon for an infected site to re-infect others you’ve just cleaned.
Reinstall WordPress
After everything is clean, it’s time to reinstall WordPress. You’ll find the option to do so in your web host’s control panel. Make sure to reinstall WordPress where it was originally, which should be in the public_html directory or in a subdirectory. Then, take a look at the backup of your site. Edit the wp-config.php file on the new install of WordPress to use the database credentials from the former site. This process will connect the new install to the old database.
How to Protect Your WordPress Site from Malware
Cleaning up malware can be difficult and takes time and energy away from running your business. Preventing malware from infecting your site in the first place is much easier than cleaning it up. Two ways to protect your site from malware are using a URL scanner and monitoring your site for changes.
A URL scanner is a great tool to show you whether or not your site has been compromised. You can check out Sitelock’s free URL scanner to see if your site is up-to-date and free of malware. Monitoring for changes can help you see if your site is compromised. Checking for malware in your databases, source code, and files can show you if something malicious is installed.
WordPress Peace of Mind
Malware can harm your website, business, and reputation. Ensuring your site is secure and running smoothly can be the difference between a thriving business and a business no one trusts.
One way to achieve WordPress peace of mind in a world full of malware is through fully managed WordPress hosting. Get smart monitoring tools to ensure your site runs fast and stays safe with our managed WordPress hosting.
BigCommerce and Magento 2 are behemoths of the ecommerce industry. Both offer everything you need to start an online store, so choosing one over the other can be challenging.
When you compare the popularity of BigCommerce vs. Magento 2, Magento has the upper hand. Data from BuiltWith reveals that there are three times as many Magento stores on the internet as there are BigCommerce stores.
But choosing an ecommerce platform shouldn’t be based on popularity. It should be based on facts.
To help you decide, we’re comparing BigCommerce vs. Magento and highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. We’ll tell you exactly what each one’s good for so you can choose the one that ticks all the right boxes for you.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Note: Although Magento and BigCommerce offer enterprise solutions with advanced features, we’re only comparing the open source version of Magento with BigCommerce’s non-enterprise plans.
Pricing and Subscription
Magento is an open source platform that’s free to download and use. Your only expense with Magento Open Source is the costs of hosting it. Magento hosting can cost anywhere from $20/month for a DIY server to more than $2,000/month for a managed, enterprise-grade server.
BigCommerce is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform with three sales-based pricing plans. BigCommerce’s plan pricing starts from $29.95 and goes up to $299.95 per month.
BigCommerce supports multiple payment gateways and doesn’t charge you any transaction fees. However, it determines plan eligibility based on online sales in the past 12 months which can increase the cost of ownership.
If you operate a low-traffic ecommerce store but sell a high-ticket item, you’ll be forced into a more expensive plan even if you don’t need the additional features it offers.
Similarly, once you exceed $400k in online sales — the sales limit of its Pro plan — BigCommerce will charge you an additional $150 per month for every $200k in online sales. So if you reach $1 million in annual sales, you’ll pay $750 in subscription fees each month.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Pricing Verdict: Magento wins. Although BigCommerce’s pricing is transparent, Magento is free software and doesn’t make you pay more when you sell more.
Hosting and Maintenance
The downside of Magento’s open source license is that you’re responsible for hosting and maintaining the software. If you know your way around a server, that won’t be a problem for you.
Adobe’s comprehensive knowledge base will simplify your task. But if you don’t have any technical skills, you’ll need to hire a Magento developer or sign up for a managed hosting service.
As a SaaS ecommerce platform, BigCommerce handles hosting and maintenance for you. You won’t need to worry about platform upgrades or server optimization. BigCommerce’s team of experts will handle everything for you.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Hosting Verdict: BigCommerce wins. It eliminates the hassles of hosting and maintaining software so you can launch quickly without hampering productivity.
In contrast, BigCommerce requires no technical knowledge. You can manage your online store operations and add and remove themes and extensions using a web browser. Thus, you can spend more time running your online store and less worrying about routine tasks.
That said, BigCommerce still has a learning curve. You’ll need time to figure out how it works, but you can expect it to be significantly easier than finding your way around a CLI.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Usability Verdict: BigCommerce wins by a small margin. Magento’s admin panel is more intuitive, but you need to know your way around the CLI to manage themes and extensions.
Ecommerce Functionality
According to a 2022 report by GRIN, 54.35% of retail consumers in the U.S. like to buy non-essential items online instead of in-store. That’s because online shopping is convenient.
Magento’s ecommerce features are some of the best on the market. It provides a product management system that can support an unlimited number of products, multiple product types, a robust order management system, and user-friendly customer management features.
BigCommerce offers all essential features with one key difference — it limits access based on your subscription plan. For example, only the Pro plan provides access to product filtering and multi-storefront features.
In contrast, Magento doesn’t restrict access to features. You get access to everything from day one.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Features Verdict: Magento wins. It offers more ecommerce features like product filtering, multistore support, and persistent shopping carts at no extra cost.
Storefront Design Capabilities
Magento provides a free, mobile-friendly theme called Luma and allows you to customize your store content with its free page builder. Although the Magento Marketplace offers a limited selection of themes, you can find hundreds of third-party themes on sites like Themeforest.
Moreover, you can customize your Magento store appearance from scratch using popular frontend technologies without any limits. Magento also provides a collection of developer tools to build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on top of your store.
That’s important because a 2022 report by The Software House found that 42.6% of developers believe PWAs will become more popular by 2024. With Magento, you have all the tools you need to stay a step ahead of your competition.
BigCommerce offers a large marketplace with both paid and free themes. That makes it more convenient for those who want to use an off-the-shelf theme that can be customized easily.
Like Magento, BigCommerce’s website builder tool is intuitive as well. However, If you need a custom theme, you’ll need to hire a development team with experience using BigCommerce’s custom templating framework — Stencil.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Design Verdict: Magento wins by a small margin. Although BigCommerce is just as customizable as Magento, you can only customize it using its proprietary theme engine.
Customization Options
Magento was developed to be customizable from day one. Modularity is a fundamental architectural principle that’s driven the development of Magento. Thus, all its features exist as self-contained modules.
Magento’s modular architecture lets you add and extend its core functionality by creating custom modules and adding third-party extensions. You can build customized shopping experiences without limits.
BigCommerce allows you to customize the design and functionality of your online store within the limits of its platform. As a SaaS software, you don’t have access to its codebase, but you can extend its features using third-party apps from its marketplace.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Customizability Verdict: Magento wins. Although customizable, BigCommerce limits core customization. Magento lets you do it without any limits.
Marketing and SEO Tools
Magento offers several default SEO features, such as a product template with structured data markup and built-in features like sitemap and robots.txt. More importantly, what it lacks, Magento lets you add using extensions.
Magento gives you access to cart and catalog price rules to create complex promotions and discounts. You can create customer groups and offer custom pricing and discounts to improve conversion rates.
BigCommerce offers all essential marketing features like Magento. Although it supports fewer integrations with email marketing tools than Magento, BigCommerce’s marketplace offers apps to integrate with popular tools like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Omnisend.
And unlike Magento, BigCommerce limits its custom pricing feature to BigCommerce Enterprise accounts only. So if you want to sell B2B or offer custom pricing, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Marketing Tools Verdict: Magento wins. Although Magento and BigCommerce SEO features are similar, Magento wins due to its versatile price rules.
Performance and Security
As a self-hosted solution, Magento puts you in charge of your store performance and security. So unless you’re an experienced ecommerce veteran, you’ll find yourself struggling to get the best out of your Magento store.
As recently as Feb 2022, Adobe identified and fixed two zero-day vulnerabilities in Magento that affected thousands of Magento stores running versions 2.3.4 and above. So if you aren’t up to speed with your Magento store security, you risk being hacked.
BigCommerce simplifies store performance and security by managing it for you. Your online store is hosted on highly secure and PCI-compliant servers, and BigCommerce automatically deploys security patches and performance updates to your servers.
It’s worth mentioning that BigCommerce suffers from vulnerabilities and performance issues occasionally. However, its proactive security minimizes the likelihood of a breach compared to a self-hosted Magento store.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Performance Verdict: BigCommerce wins. Although both platforms are inherently secure, BigCommerce eliminates performance and security management for online store owners.
Default Integrations
Magento 2 has API support built into its core. As a result, it can support powerful integrations with virtually any software. BigCommerce also offers a suite of APIs that allow you to integrate with different technologies to run your online store.
But when you consider the default integration capabilities offered by both platforms, BigCommerce wins. Besides the traditional online storefront, BigCommerce offers integrations with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Walmart.
Although you can integrate Magento with alternate sales channels using extensions, BigCommerce does it natively.
That is important because online customer touchpoints exist beyond your store. Data collected by Statista reveals that 55% of social media users in the U.S. between 18 and 24 made at least one purchase through a social channel in 2021.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Integrations Verdict: BigCommerce wins. It supports omnichannel shopping natively.
Platform Scalability
The convenience of online shopping is pushing retail ecommerce sales to new highs every year. Statista predicts that online retail shoppers in the U.S. will spend more than $1.3 trillion by 2025 compared to the $767 billion spent in 2021.
As your online business grows, so will your ecommerce needs. If your ecommerce platform isn’t scalable, it will impact your business growth. Magento’s powerful product catalog and inventory management systems can support millions of product listings.
BigCommerce offers a scalable platform with a global CDN network that can handle large amounts of traffic. However, BigCommerce’s status page shows that it suffers from availability issues from time to time.
Although achieving 100% uptime is virtually impossible, SaaS solutions limit your ability to diagnose and fix issues. With Magento, you can implement fallback mechanisms to deal with sudden spikes in traffic and downtimes.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Scalability Verdict: Magento wins. Both BigCommerce and Magento are scalable, but Magento gives you more control.
Help and Support
Online businesses using Magento’s open source version don’t receive any technical support from Adobe. Technical assistance is only available for Magento’s premium version — Magento Commerce — also known as Adobe Commerce.
Although Magento’s global community of developers and business owners and detailed documentation are great resources for help, it doesn’t provide the same convenience as on-demand customer support. Your only option for real-time support is hiring a Magento agency.
BigCommerce offers complimentary 24/7 tech support over multiple channels, including chat, phone, & ticket. You can jump on its tech support chat or create a ticket for instant access to its in-house experts.
BigCommerce vs. Magento Support Verdict: BigCommerce wins. Magento’s community forums and helpful documentation are no match for BigCommerce’s dedicated support team.
BigCommerce vs. Magento — The Final Verdict
With a final tally of 5-6, Magento wins the BigCommerce vs. Magento matchup. Magento offers more customizability, scalability, and control over the customer experience.
That isn’t to say that BigCommerce isn’t a great ecommerce platform. What BigCommerce lacks in control and flexibility, it makes up for with ease of use. If you’re willing to trade the ability to customize core functionality for a code-free experience, BigCommerce will be perfect for you.
However, if you want unrestricted control and unmatched scale, Magento’s outstanding features and open source codebase won’t fail you.
And if you’re worried about dealing with the technicalities of managing a Magento server, sign up for fully managed Magento hosting with Hostdedi. You’ll get access to fully managed servers, nightly backups, and 24/7/365 support — a SaaS-like user experience without the trade-offs.
Most content optimizes for on-page SEO — like headings, content structure, hyperlinking, and using relevant keywords. Your content might be good, but without a proper off-page SEO strategy, it may not be reaching your target audience effectively.
But what is off-page SEO? It refers to anything done outside your site to promote its visibility in SERPs. For your site to rank, you need to know how to optimize for off-site SEO correctly.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO includes domain authority — how trusted your site is in a particular niche — high-quality link building, social shares, and local SEO.
Off-page SEO is part of your content creation strategy to bring in more organic traffic to your site.
SEO plays a huge role in your site’s visibility. 61% of marketers say SEO and organic traffic are more effective in lead generation than any other digital marketing tactic.
Headline structure, formatting, keywords, and links define SEO for most content creators. All of those are on-page SEO tactics.
But having a good off-page SEO strategy will complement your on-page efforts. As a result, your content will have better outreach.
Benefits of Off-Page SEO for Your Business
You have an idea of what off-page SEO is all about now. So how can it affect your business’s online presence?
Off-page SEO focuses on external efforts like backlinks and social media. An important aspect of off-page SEO is your site’s trust with your audience.
Taking it quite literally, no one shares what they don’t like. Search engines translate more shares and backlinks as a good rapport. People are searching and clicking on your content, and they share it. Google, and other search engines, tend to like that.
Below are some other benefits of implementing off-site SEO:
Higher search engine rankings: Business visibility on search plays a crucial role in complementing your marketing efforts. It means more leads for your business.
Website exposure: The higher the site ranking, the better your exposure is — even on other platforms.
Domain authority: Search engines consider most off-page SEO factors as your trust gauge. Google, in particular, often shows high-authority sites on the first page of SERPs.
Off-Page SEO Techniques
Off-page SEO has a historical association with building backlinks.
Having other websites link back to yours is one thing, but ranking as an authority site is another. To ace the competition, you have to optimize your site with both on-site SEO and off-page factors.
Common off-page SEO tactics include:
1. Link Building
Link building can form the basis of your entire off-site SEO strategy. You can position your site as an authority in your niche with proper and effective use of backlinks.
Decide which authority sites to link to, as they can impact your own domain authority.
Remember that all links should add to your website traffic. Any website that links back to your site should be active and relevant to your niche or topic.
Link building can increase your site’s traffic. Since the backlink’s from a domain that’s already an authority in your niche, you’ll be sharing information their audience already loves.
Call it preaching to the choir.
Link Building With Authority Sites
Your backlinks should come from authority domains. Brand mentions show search engines that your business’s trustworthiness is high. And search engines like Google are more likely to recommend your content to other searchers.
Use natural links with relevant anchor text as recommended during your keyword research. Tools like Semrush and Moz will help you come up with competitive keywords.
Avoid Broken Links
The number one hurdle to the link-building tactic for off-page SEO is broken links.
Broken links don’t affect your discoverability on search engines. But they can hurt your domain authority as your audience won’t get the information they seek. Broken links leading to your webpage can frustrate your audience and cause them to lose trust in your site.
Imagine searching for “how to build a course website,” and a 404 error pops up when you click on a website link. That doesn’t feel good.
That’s why it’s crucial to use the right types of links that add value to your link building strategy.
You can analyze websites in your niche with broken links using a tool like Ahrefs. By using the tool’s metrics, you can identify which websites are fit for your content. Message them asking for a collaboration, and you might get a positive response.
This analysis can form your best page optimization source.
Topical Relevance
While your backlinks should be from authority sites, they should also be in your niche. Niche relevance ensures you get quality backlinks to your webpages.
Remember, you can’t buy oranges from a car showroom.
2. Local SEO
Optimizing for local searches is an integral part of what off-page SEO is, especially for local businesses. The following are ways you can improve your local SEO:
Google Business Listing
Google My Business is an incredible free tool you have to take advantage of. It offers vital details about your business to potential customers, like contact information.
Claim Your Online Business Profiles
Verify your business profile on all online listings. A verified business is more credible and alluring to clients. Also, your business will get recognition from search engines as a brand name.
Business Reviews
Encourage reviews on online platforms like Google, Tripadvisor, and Yelp. You can make more informed business decisions with this raw feedback from real clients.
Contact Information
Put the same contact information on all platforms to build credibility. Conflicting information could turn off potential clients.
3. Content Marketing
Content marketing focuses on content creation, publication, and distribution to a target audience. And on-page and off-page SEO are part of that.So how can you use content marketing as an off-site SEO technique?
Guest Blogging
A guest post on a reputable website linking back to your site gives your brand credibility. To enhance your authority, try to get backlinks on these guest blogs.
The main advantage for a guest blogger is that the audience is already interested in your niche. Your guest post readers are more likely to click on your site and enjoy your quality content. Incorporate infographics that link back to your site for even better market penetration.
Reports and Surveys
Case studies (like white papers and downloadables) can help your site maintain a readership. Surveys are also helpful for audience feedback.
4. Brand Building
Google’s algorithm likes brands.Build your brand around specific keywords in your niche — for example, web development. When someone searches for web development tools, your page rank will be higher on SERPs.
Take Tesla, for instance. You already know what will come up when you search for that keyword: Elon Musk and electric cars. Brand authority prompts search engines to your business for specific related searches.
Brand awareness also has a reputational impact on search engines and potential leads. Be the Tesla in your niche.
5. Social Media
A mobile user in the U.S. spends 123 minutes on social media daily. Getting a portion of that time can boost your shares, leads, and sales.
A 2022 report by Wyzowl shows that 93% of brands increased awareness from videos. That means you should try to leverage videos on social media to promote your brand.
Don’t forget to engage with your target audience on forums such as Quora and comment sections on social media.
Social media is an attractive tactic due to its variation. It can be a goldmine, especially for ecommerce brands. With targeting, you can sell your products without exiting the platform.
Using these five methods to build your off-page SEO is essential, but note that they aren’t the only ranking factors for your brand. Practice each step to maximize your benefits.
Final Thoughts: What Is Off-Page SEO: What You Need To Know
Off-page SEO and on-page SEO work to rank your website higher in SERPs. Make the most out of off-page SEO through:
Link building with authority sites to create trust with your audience and search engines.
Enriching your local SEO by creating business profiles on Google My Business, Tripadvisor, and Yelp.
Expanding your content marketing strategy to get backlinks through guest posting, downloadables, press releases, and surveys.
Building your brand as a trusted source by ranking on specific products or names in your brand.
Leveraging social media marketing to get shares, engage with your audience, and update your information bank on the platform.
Whether it means more sales or increased traffic, your brand will get the most from the internet with these simple steps.
Now that you have off-page SEO in place, host it with speed and space. Hostdedi is a reputable cloud solutions provider for small and large businesses. Contact us today to get custom website hosting that suits your brand.
Business insurance is critical for an online store. Most people in business know this but find it difficult to understand the insurance lingo.
The jargon agents use when buying insurance can overwhelm business owners who haven’t heard a lot of it before. However, it’s important not to let it scare you away because business insurance will help you protect your business assets when things go south.
Insurance agents can help you get a lay of the land, but you shouldn’t rely on them entirely. After all, they work on commission. Instead, educate yourself about insurance before meeting with the insurance agent so you can ask the right questions.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about ecommerce business insurance.
Why Do You Need Ecommerce Business Insurance?
Ecommerce business isn’t risk-free. It’s high-growth — the expected worldwide ecommerce sales for 2022 are $5.542 trillion — which introduces a range of new risks that retailers in brick-and-mortar probably never had to worry about.
Granted, several risks associated with a traditional retail business (such as the risk of bodily injury to customers or staff) aren’t as big a risk for ecommerce stores. But you also need to worry about other risks that a traditional business probably never dealt with, such as a data breach or a cyber-attack that makes your website inaccessible.
Business insurance for online stores can help you mitigate these risks to protect yourself against unexpected liabilities.
Types of Business Insurance for Online Stores
Different insurance policies offer coverage for different liabilities. For instance, you can get insurance coverage for cyberattacks, loss of business income resulting from business interruption, and more. Below, we talk about the major types of business insurance for online stores.
Business Owner’s Policy
A business owner’s policy (BOP) provides three types of coverage under a single policy. The three types of coverage include:
General liability insurance: This type of insurance protects you against property damage or liabilities arising from work-related injury to the staff.
Commercial property insurance: This type of insurance protects you against loss to the business premises (owned or rented) and physical assets in the insured commercial property.
Business income insurance: When your commercial property is damaged because of fire or a natural disaster, it’ll take a while before it’s restored to a condition where it can be used to store inventory. The interruption will cause you a loss of income, but the insurance company will pay for the lost income if you have business income insurance.
Personal and Advertising Injury Insurance
Your online business may be sued for slander, invasion of privacy, or copyright infringement. For instance, many ecommerce businesses run a blog. If one of the articles makes a false claim about your competitor, they might sue you.
Personal and advertising injury insurance protects you against such claims. The policy generally covers both legal as well as settlement costs.
Product Liability Insurance
Product liability insurance is a business insurance policy that protects you against bodily injury or damage to property caused by a product you make or sell.
For instance, say you sell a hair removal product with a sharp blade. You don’t provide adequate instructions, leading to an injury to one of the buyers. In this case, if the buyer sues you, you’ll incur medical costs, legal fees, and need to pay settlement money. But if you have product liability insurance, the insurance provider will take care of these expenses.
Product liability insurance covers injury or damage caused by the following:
Defective products
Design issues
Lack of adequate instructions and warnings
Some ecommerce business insurance policies add product liability coverage within their general liability policy, while others provide it separately.
For instance, if your employee is moving a heavy box of inventory and slips while moving it, cracking their ankle, you’ll need to pay for their medical expenses unless you have workers’ compensation insurance.
Most U.S. states make workers’ compensation insurance compulsory, so most people don’t have a choice here.
Professional Liability Insurance
When you sell a product through your ecommerce website, you’re entering a contract that probably makes a few promises to the buyer. For instance, you might have mentioned product specifications.
If the product isn’t as per the specifications and causes the buyer to lose money, they could sue you. You might also be sued for other reasons related to the product or its delivery that cause the buyer to lose money.
Cybersecurity Insurance
Data breaches and ransomware attacks are a real threat to ecommerce businesses and their customers. With losses to ecommerce businesses from online payment fraud expected to exceed $20 billion, you need to prepare yourself with top-notch security and cybersecurity insurance.
Cybersecurity insurance covers a range of costs, not just legal fees and settlement expenses. For instance, if your ecommerce website’s security is compromised and a hacker manages to get your customers’ credit card information, cyber liability insurance will provide coverage for:
Informing the customers about the incident
Investigating the attack on your website
Providing credit monitoring services
Assessing the risk of repeat attacks
Legal fees
Settlement
Of course, the exact features of the policy differ among insurance providers.
How To Choose Online Business Insurance
It doesn’t make financial sense to buy all types of insurance policies as a small business owner. Since insurance is used for transferring some of the risks to the insurer for a certain amount, you should make sure your business has enough of that risk in the first place and if it will pay off to mitigate that risk.
Below is a process you can use for choosing business insurance for online stores.
1. Determine the Risks You Want to Mitigate
Is your ecommerce business prone to damage from specific kinds of disasters or lawsuits? Do you work from home or have an office? Are you a one-person team, or do you have employees? How do you handle your inventory, and what’s the likelihood of your product harming a customer?
When you answer these questions, you’ll be able to determine the risks you want to mitigate for your business. For instance, if you’re a dropshipping business, you might not need product liability insurance.
2. Select the Types of Policies
Now that you know the risks associated with your ecommerce business, you can select the types of ecommerce business insurance policies.
As an online retailer, general liability insurance, commercial property insurance (assuming you’re using one for business), and product liability insurance may be a good starting point.
If you own a vehicle for making deliveries, you might also consider commercial auto insurance. You can select other types of insurance like cybersecurity insurance and personal or advertising injury insurance based on your needs.
3. Select the Method of Buying Insurance
You can buy insurance online from a marketplace by contacting the insurance company directly or offline through an insurance agency. Most people now use the online marketplace or engage directly with the insurance company since it’s faster.
4. Select Insurance Provider
Once you’ve chosen a mode, find the best insurance provider. Spend time researching online and asking other business owners about the best ecommerce business insurance providers. Request insurance quotes from top providers (most providers offer free quotes), narrow down the list based on reviews from existing customers, and study their policies in more detail.
Here are things you should look for in the agreement:
Coverage and limits
Insurance costs
Quality of customer service
5. Buy the Policy
Once you’ve selected an insurance provider, go ahead and buy the policy using your preferred payment method. Once you’ve made the payment, make sure you get a certificate of insurance if you sell products in an online marketplace like Amazon.
Final Thoughts: The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Business Insurance
A business can never be risk-free. However, you can always strategically mitigate business risks. Identifying the types of risks associated with your business helps you find the right insurance policies.
Once you’ve chosen the insurance policies, you should periodically evaluate if you need to add new policies or discontinue an existing policy based on changing business needs.
There are other ways of mitigating business risks too. For instance, as an ecommerce store, downtime can cost you a lot of money.
Choosing a reliable web hosting with excellent uptime history can keep your website available and minimize the risk of losing revenue to downtime. Need a reliable hosting partner? Check out fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi.
What do you do when valuable files or your entire site is lost due to a simple mistake or catastrophic disaster? WordPress version control can help identify changes made to files or documents, allowing you to restore what is necessary to keep your business up and running.
Keep reading this blog to learn:
What Is WordPress Version Control?
In the world of software development, mistakes are part of everyday life. To make it easier, developers use version control tools so they can track changes to the files and documents and if needed revert them to a previous version. Version control acts like an “undo” button for your site.
If you dislike the code that one of your technicians wrote or even if the code is broken, you can simply revert your entire site to the previous versions. There are a lot of version control tools available. Today we will be focusing on how you can use WordPress with Git and its tools.
Applied to WordPress, version control allows you to track changes made by you or others on your site. WordPress version control can track actions like:
Installing or uninstalling a new plugin.
Changing your WordPress theme.
Updating your core software or any theme or plugin.
Detailed change history.
And much more.
Benefits of Using WordPress Version Control
The most important benefit of WordPress version control is security and confidence with simple execution. With WordPress version control, you can freely change your site. If you don’t like it, just undo the process to the last version you liked.
Secondly, if you have a team of developers working on your WordPress site, you´ll be able to work together, as now you can track everything that is happening. The only thing you need is WordPress deployment flow, or Git Repo. Additionally, you can duplicate parts of your site’s code and “merge” them back once you are happy with the results.
Finally, the last big benefit of WordPress version control is monitoring. With WordPress version control, you will be able to see if one of your editors updated an already published post. If they did, you can see what changed and roll it back if needed.
There are more benefits for you to explore once you get more experienced with version control. For now, this is all you need to know.
WordPress Version Control Options
There are a lot of options with WordPress Version Control depending on your technical knowledge and how in depth you want your version control to be.
Here are WordPress version control options that you might want to learn in more detail:
GIT — There are a bunch of ways you can use Git with WordPress, including hosted repositories like Github. To learn more about Git, make sure to read our guide to GIT and usage workflows.
VersionPress plugin — A powerful open source Git plugin for WordPress.
WP Rollback — A really simple tool to roll back updates for themes and plugins.
Git Hooks — These are commands used to automate your version control.
We’re just getting started — there are more options for you to explore once you get progressively better with Git.
How to Use Git With WordPress
Git is a powerful open source version control system created in 2005, but it’s not the only one. The main WordPress repository is run via SVN, though you can find a Git copy as well. Git offers WordPress users an enhanced backup method and a way to manage changes to a site with a level of granularity that is not possible with most backup tools. Git also has a lot of plugins and hooks to make WordPress version control as easy as possible.
Typically, you’ll want to manage your WordPress site’s code in a hosted repository at something like GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab. Then you can deploy your site from that repository to your live server as needed.
Let’s get a little technical now. What level should the root of your Git repository be in your folder hierarchy? If you are building a theme, then you can make the theme folder your repository. The same logic applies to building a plugin.
It can happen that you are working on themes and plugins at the same time. If that happens, you can make your wp-content folder as the location for your repository. When you do this, make sure to ignore the uploads folder so that you don’t add all the images and uploaded files to the repository. They can clutter up the repository and slow Git down.
VersionPress Plugin
Let’s talk a little about VersionPress. WordPress has a revision tracking system built in. It’s great when you want to recover a paragraph you deleted in haste, or check exactly who made an edit to an article. But it’s laughable in comparison to VersionPress, which is much more user friendly and gives you a quick undo button for WordPress, easy branching and merging of files, and even a WordPress database.
You also get ridiculously efficient backups — and we mean hundreds of fullsite snapshots in a few megabytes. If that doesn’t sound game changing, we don’t know what does.
Just a quick note: VersionPress is young. It works fine on simpler sites and you’re encouraged to try it in your development workflows, but it is not production-ready yet.
WP Rollback
WP Rollback is yet another plugin you can use to help you out. It’s not as comprehensive as the plugins listed above, but it has its purpose. WP Rollback is intended to help WordPress users have a simple way to manage the versions of their plugins and themes.
Although this is not mandatory, life without it may be painful. If you don’t have WP Rollback and something breaks, you will need to restore a whole backup of the site. Or, you’ll have to learn how to find the correct previous version on the WordPress repository, download the zip file, and learn how to use FTP to replace the plugin or theme with the older version.
But with the WP Rollback installed, you can simply choose the previous version from a list, hit confirm, and you are back to your old working version. A quick note: please do not use WP Rollback on a live site without testing the rollback locally.
Git Hooks
Git hooks are scripts and commands to use if you want to automate your version control. To start, you’ll see a bunch of files with .sample file extensions. The files are named to correspond with the hook they run on. So, post-commit.sample runs on the post-commit hook. You can use pretty much any language to write a hook. Git hooks are very versatile but they can be confusing and complicated to work with. Read our blog on Git hooks which covers more.
Git Workflow
We mentioned earlier that with version control you can split the code and merge it back together later once you are happy with it. You can do that with git-flow and Github-flow.
In git-flow, you use two branches with infinite flow. First, the main one which should reflect code that is ready for deployment to your main site or live environment. Second, we have our development branch which is used for our latest changes in the software. When the changes are ready, we can merge them into one again and tag that branch with the corresponding release number.
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The remote nature of online businesses makes customer tracking and engagement a big challenge. Unless you have access to reliable data on customer needs, your ecommerce venture can seem like a leap into the dark.
Whether you’ve been in the marketplace for some time or just venturing out, you need full control of your company’s sales process.
And the sales funnel offers you just that.
Today, we’ll look at what a sales funnel is and how you should use it for lead generation, nurturing, and customer retention.
We’ll delve into:
What Is a Sales Funnel and How Does It Work?
The sales funnel visually represents a prospect’s journey to becoming a buying customer. At each stage, an effective sales funnel moves the buyer closer to making a purchase. A precise sales funnel includes stage-specific actions required to nudge prospects to take the next step.
Think of a literal funnel. A well-structured piece free from cracks will convey whatever content it gathers without loss.
On the other hand, a broken marketing funnel will cause prospect leakage at different stages, resulting in minimal (or zero) conversions.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. It’s possible to seal these loopholes. Start by understanding your potential customers’ needs and taking appropriate action at each stage.
The Benefits of a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel harmonizes lead teams’ efforts to optimize a company’s sales process. Marketing teams create awareness and nurture prospects into the consideration stage. Then sales teams convert them into buying customers.
Here are some specific marketing funnel benefits:
Understanding the customer’s journey: Analyzing customer behavior at each sales funnel stage can help you pinpoint which holes to plug.
Targeted marketing efforts: Knowing the audience’s interests at every step of the conversion funnel enables you to implement stage-relevant marketing techniques.
Higher conversion rate: Defining sales funnel activities applicable to particular stages can restrain you from attempting hurried sales, which puts prospects off.
The Stages of a Sales Funnel
Although business marketing models vary, there are typically four different sales funnel stages.
Stage 1: Awareness
This is where prospects become aware of your product or service — usually through social media, google search, radio/TV, billboards, and word of mouth.
Whether prospects move past the awareness stage depends on the effectiveness of your marketing strategy at the top of the funnel.
Stage 2: Interest
Prospects evaluate your offer based on their needs in this stage. They will conduct competitive research to determine whether your offer is the best fit.
Stage 3: Decision
Now, the prospect is interested in the finer product and buying process details, such as price, quality variations available, and shipping options. Your salesperson can persuade the prospect with calls, follow-up emails, and webinars to push them to the action stage.
Stage 4: Action
The action stage is the climax of the sales pipeline. If prospects didn’t buy, that’s not the end of the sales process. Targeted nurture campaigns can keep them in line for future purchases.
A Sales Funnel Example
Let’s assume you own a skincare product online store. After conducting a buyer persona profiling, you aim at a target audience of men and women aged 25–50 who are mostly on Facebook.
You create a landing page with a form on which prospects can sign up for a lead magnet in exchange for their email addresses. The lead magnet may be a free 30-day step-by-step downloadable pdf skincare guide.
You drive traffic to your website by running a lead generation ad on your Facebook page. Prospects fill out the form with their emails and download the lead magnet. They’ve moved from the awareness to the interest stage.
The next stage involves nurturing the leads on your email list. You share specific types of content to educate them about your product.
Your email messaging (drip) campaign bears fruit when subscribers move past the decision stage and become paying customers.
Your repeat customers are so excited that they voluntarily become brand advocates. Their testimonials and referrals are attracting new leads.
Excluding other attention grabbers such as site navigation
Focusing content on a single goal for targeted audiences
Including audience-specific product descriptions
Optimized more for marketing campaigns than SEO.
Step 2: Make a Valuable Offer
As discussed earlier, place an irresistible lead magnet on your landing page, such as:
Ebooks
Webinars
White papers
Training videos
Product samples
Step 3: Start Nurturing
The prospects who submitted their contact information have moved from the awareness to the interest stage. Share product-related educational content through a sustained email nurture series to move them to the decision stage.
Step 4: Upsell
Entice the prospects at the decision stage with meaningful incentives to persuade them to make a purchasing decision.
Step 5: Keep the Sales Cycle Going
Implement a two-pronged approach — keeping your current clients and landing new ones.
Also, learn why prospects didn’t purchase and focus your follow-up efforts on addressing their concerns. Turn buyers into repeat customers by continually improving customer experience.
Final Thoughts: What a Sales Funnel is and How You Should Use It
A sales funnel will help you establish, track, and achieve your revenue goals. It’ll inform you on what, where, and how to intervene to nurture your prospects into paying customers.
But first things first.
You need a reliable online store on which to build and support your sales funnel. Hostdedi’s fully managed WooCommerce hosting plan comes readily optimized for quick load times, secure operation, and ease of use.
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An attractive Magento store isn’t enough to convert your website visitors into paying customers. You also need a smooth checkout process.
Baymard Institute’s survey of 4,384 U.S. online shoppers revealed that two of the top ten reasons for checkout abandonment were:
1. Customers couldn’t trust the website with their credit card information.
2. The website didn’t offer enough payment methods.
Magento’s default payment module is a reliable and secure way to accept payments online. But when you’re competing globally, you need more than helpful defaults.
This guide will explain everything you need to know about implementing a Magento payment gateway and share five recommendations for different use cases.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Magento Payment Gateway
A Magento payment gateway is a service that helps business owners accept online payments by connecting their stores with a third-party payment processor. It acts as a “gateway” that encrypts and transmits credit card information to the payment service provider.
It’s important to understand that a payment gateway works differently from a payment processor. Payment gateways only collect, encrypt, and transmit transaction details from the website to the processor. It’s the payment processor that completes the actual transaction.
Payment gateways usually charge a fee for their service. For instance, Stripe and PayPal charge a percentage and fixed fee per transaction.
How To Choose the Best Magento Payment Gateway?
Magento payment gateways come in different shapes and sizes. Before you choose the right one for your business, ask yourself these questions:
1. What payment options does your target audience prefer?
2. How often do you process refunds?
3. How many currencies do you support?
Once you have the answers, check the following requirements.
Transaction Fees and Pricing Structure
Like most third-party services, ecommerce payment gateways charge a fee for their convenience. A percentage-based fee and fixed cost per transaction are the norms. But some payment platforms charge additional setup fees and monthly gateway fees as well.
Review the pricing structure of different Magento payment gateways before creating a merchant account. Too many fees or complicated pricing structures can quickly eat into your profit margin.
Payment Method Support
A payment method is how customers pay your business through the payment gateway. Common payment methods used for online transactions include credit cards, debit cards, cryptocurrency, and eWallets.
Make sure you choose a Magento 2 payment gateway that supports the payment methods used by your customers. For example, B2B customers might prefer to pay via bank transfers and company cards, whereas B2C customers might prefer card or eWallet payments.
Extra Features Offered
If you’re selling globally, you will need multicurrency and multilingual support. Similarly, if you’re using Magento 2 bundle products to sell subscription boxes, you’ll need a payment gateway that supports recurring payments.
Thus, choosing a Magento payment gateway that offers the functionality your business needs is crucial. Check currency conversion rates and markups on international cards to avoid last-minute surprises.
Security Features
Credit card fraud is a significant challenge for every online business. According to the 2021 annual report by Nilson Report, losses due to card fraud globally exceeded $28.58 billion in 2020. And Nilson expects that number will reach $49.32 billion by 2030.
It’s vital to ensure your Magento payment gateway implements security measures to protect your customer’s credit card details and offers seller protection features like fraud detection and prevention.
5 Best Magento Payment Gateways
There are hundreds of payment gateways on the market. But not every gateway offers the same features or services. Here’s how the top five Magento payment gateways on the market compare.
PayPal
With over 429 million active user accounts as of Q1 2022, according to Statista, PayPal is the largest payment gateway and processor on the market. But the fact that PayPal is built into Magento makes it the best payment gateway for Magento users.
PayPal’s simple user interface (UI) and comprehensive feature set make it ideal for small businesses. Moreover, with PayPal Express Checkout, you can accept online payments without installing Magento 2 extensions. You only need a PayPal business account to get started.
Pricing: 3.49% +$0.49 per transaction for PayPal payments. 2.59% +$0.49 per transaction for credit and debit cards.
Best Magento payment gateway for: Merchants who need to launch quickly and offer an uncomplicated customer experience.
Stripe
Stripe is a developer-friendly payment service provider ideal for businesses of all sizes. Stripe isn’t a truly out-of-the-box payment solution like PayPal, but it makes up for it with amazing features like 3D Secure and an intuitive UI.
For multichannel merchants who sell through a brick-and-mortar store, Stripe offers Terminal, a software that lets you accept payments offline using a point of sales system. And for online-only merchants, it supports alternative methods like Alipay and Bitcoin.
Key features:
Sophisticated machine learning fraud protection.
135+ currencies.
PCI DSS Level 1 certified.
Recurring payment support.
Hosted payment page that supports 30+ languages.
Pricing: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge.
Best Magento payment gateway for: Merchants who need a scalable payment gateway and support for multiple Magento payment methods.
Square
Square is famous for its point of sale system that enables merchants to accept offline customer payments. But it also offers a customizable payment gateway to accept digital payments called Square Online.
Square enables offline stores to start selling online with a code-free setup experience. Its social media integrations and multiple payment method support make Square the best payment gateway for merchants who want simplicity and value.
Key features:
Support for all major credit cards and alternative methods like Apple Pay and Cash App.
No monthly fees or fees for refunds or chargebacks.
Free fraud protection.
Next business day payment transfers.
Free POS app.
Pricing: Starts from 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Best Magento payment gateway for: Merchants who need a simple payment gateway that integrates with their brick-and-mortar store.
Braintree
Braintree, owned by PayPal, offers a better UI and supports more payment methods, making it an excellent choice for Magento merchants. You continue to enjoy the benefits of using PayPal, such as PayPal Credit and PayPal One Touch.
However, you can support alternative payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. Braintree takes a tech-centric approach to its service, competing with Stripe as a developer-friendly and scalable Magento payment gateway.
Key features:
130+ currencies and 45+ countries.
Customizable Drop-in UI for a streamlined checkout experience.
Code-free setup.
3D Secure 2 — fraud protection.
Supports PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more.
Pricing: 2.59% + $0.49 per transaction.
Best Magento payment gateway for: Magento merchants who want to use PayPal but need a more customizable gateway.
Amazon Pay
Amazon’s proprietary payment gateway, Amazon Pay, provides you access to millions of customers globally. You also get flexible integration options and a fully optimized mobile payment experience from one of the world’s most successful ecommerce businesses.
Support for all major credit and debit cards, including Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, and Diners Club.
Free fraud detection capabilities, chargeback controls, and risk management processes.
1- to 2-day disbursements.
Pricing: 2.9% on domestic transactions and 3.9% on international transactions with a $0.30 fixed fee on both.
Best Magento payment gateway for: Multichannel merchants who sell on Amazon in addition to their online store.
How To Integrate Stripe With Magento 2
If you want to integrate a payment gateway in Magento, consider using Stripe. With a 16.76% market share, Stripe is the world’s second most popular payment gateway, according to Datanyze. It supports multiple payment methods and offers robust seller protection.
Here are the steps you can follow to integrate Magento 2 with Stripe.
Note: Test the integration on a test server before trying it on your production store. And if you’re using a Magento version below 2.4.0, reference Stripe’s documentation for the extra steps needed to configure webhooks.
1. Install the Official Stripe Extension for Magento 2
Purchase the free Stripe Magento 2 payment gateway extension from the Magento Marketplace.
Log into your Magento 2 server and run the following command from the project root to install the Stripe extension for Magento 2 using Composer:
$ composer require stripe/stripe-payments
Once the above command executes, run the following commands:
$ php bin/magento setup:upgrade
$ php bin/magento cache:flush
$ php bin/magento cache:clean
If you’re running Magento in Production mode, run the following two commands:
$ php bin/magento setup:di:compile
$ php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy
2. Create New Test API Keys in Your Stripe Account
Sign in to your Stripe account and go to Developers > API keys.
Toggle the Test mode switch and copy the test API keys for your store.
3. Configure Stripe in the Magento 2 Admin
Log in to the Magento 2 admin panel and navigate to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Payment Methods > RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS > Stripe.
Click Configure, expand the General settings section, ensure Mode is set to Test, and paste your test keys into the Test publishable API key and Test secret API key text areas.
Expand the Payments section and set Enabled to Yes.
Set the Payment flow to Embed payment form into the native flow or Redirect customers to Stripe Checkout.
Enter a descriptive Title to display on the checkout page.
Optionally, configure the Magento 2 Payment methods by clicking on the blue Configure hyperlink, which redirects to the Stripe dashboard.
Set the Payment Action as Authorize and Capture.
To allow customers to save their payment method configuration, set Save customer payment method to Enabled (or Disabled if you want customers to enter their details every time).
Use the Card CVC code setting to choose when to collect CVC codes.
Optionally, add a statement descriptor in the Optional statement descriptor text field and set the Sort order for the checkout page.
You can also configure additional settings using the Wallet Button, Fraud via Stripe Radar, and Subscriptions via Stripe Billing sections. Once you’re ready to test the payment integration, click the Save Config button.
4. Verify the Magento Payment Gateway Integration
Navigate to the front end, add products to your cart, and proceed to checkout. Use Stripe’s test card numbers to complete payment.
Once the payment is complete, navigate to the Magento admin panel and access the order management dashboard. Verify that the order has come through and the status shows “Processing.”
Open your Stripe account dashboard and check if the transaction displays in your test dashboard. If it does, you’ve successfully integrated Magento 2 with Stripe and can start using the live keys to accept online payments.
5. Switch to the Live Mode
Open the Stripe dashboard and go to Developers > API keys. Switch the Test mode toggle off and click the + Create secret key button in the Standard keys section.
Once you’ve created your live keys, copy them and go back to the Magento admin.
Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Payment Methods > RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS > Stripe. Click on Configure, expand the General settings section, and set Mode to Live.
Paste your keys into the Live publishable API key and Live secret API key sections
Change Test Mode to No, add the live keys, and click Save Config.
Final Thoughts: A Merchant’s Guide to the Best Magento Payment Gateways
A secure, efficient, and fast Magento payment gateway can improve the checkout experience and boost conversions. More importantly, it can give you and your customers peace of mind.
If you’re worried about the safety of your Magento store, consider signing up for Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi. You’ll get access to PCI-compliant Magento hosting and proactive security.
You know your business needs a website, but there are many options and details to sift through to find what exactly you need to do for it. How do you build your own website? What does your website need to compete with other businesses? What is managed WordPress hosting, and can it help your business?
Before you click buy on a website design package or choose a web host, weigh your options and determine what will work best for your business.
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
If you’re new to website ownership or don’t want to spend your precious time doing tedious backend website maintenance tasks, managed WordPress hosting is a great option. Simply put, managed WordPress hosting is where a provider manages your site and server for you. It’s a hands-off option for business owners who want to outsource site management and spend more time running their business and doing the tasks only they can do.
There are many options and plans when it comes to managed WordPress hosting, and some plans include more than others. Generally speaking, managed WordPress hosting includes the website setup, security, backups, maintenance, and performance improvements. And if you have more than one site you need managed, there are plans for that too.
Difference Between Managed and Non-Managed Hosting
Comparing managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting can help you decide what will work best for your business. Before you choose, think about your business and what it needs.
Unmanaged Hosting
Unmanaged WordPress hosting is better for business owners who’ve run websites before. The website is set up and then handed off to you so you can run it yourself. When you have an unmanaged WordPress site, you rent hosting space from a hosting company and upload your website to it.
Unmanaged hosting is a popular option for newer, smaller businesses that don’t have the budget for managed WordPress hosting or are simply trying to test out the online business environment. While this option is more affordable than managed WordPress hosting, you’ll spend more time maintaining your website, which will take time away from working on your business. Upkeep and design are up to you. And if your site crashes, you’ll have to drop everything and focus on fixing it.
Managed Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is more expensive than unmanaged, but everything is built and maintained for you. The site functions more like a part of your business rather than something that needs your attention. And that’s a good thing, considering no one knows how much hosting support they may need in the future or what resources they might require. Most site owners assume they’ll be able to access support services, even if they don’t have a managed hosting plan. But if their site goes down in the middle of a product launch, they may be stuck messaging a chatbot and hoping everything works out for the best.
Most unmanaged hosting means your site is on a server with many other sites, meaning your site will get slower over time as more websites are added to that server. But with managed hosting, you get better speed and support, so your site functions at peak levels, which means your business can run more smoothly.
Advantages of Managed Hosting
Fully managed WordPress hosting can make your life as a business owner much easier. There are many advantages to managed hosting plans.
Setup
Sure, the YouTube tutorials make it look straightforward to launch a WordPress site from scratch or to migrate a website’s content to a new platform. And it is easy – for people who do it regularly. One of the perks of managed hosting is saving the time and energy (and the headache) of setting up or migrating a website. It allows the experts to step in and do the thing they do best while you focus your time and energy on your business.
Backups
Your website’s databases are critical. You can always update your website’s look and feel and even change the theme entirely if you’re using WordPress. But if you don’t back up your site’s databases beforehand, you could lose all your blog posts and comments. Making sure your site is regularly backed up is the difference between a fully functional website loaded with branded content and a massive headache for you as a business owner. With managed hosting, your site backups are taken care of, so you don’t have to worry about losing any of the hard work you put into your website.
Support
You started your business to do what you do, not to troubleshoot website issues. With a Hostdedi managed WordPress hosting plan, you get automatic plugin updates and automatic core WordPress updates, so you don’t need to worry about your site going down because one little thing is out of date. Plus, you get access to our WordPress experts, who manage and support sites like yours. Having this level of support means your site is in the hands of people who can help prevent disasters and warn you long before an issue occurs.
Security
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Live chat is an excellent way to interact with customers on your ecommerce website. According to a Kayako survey, 52% of customers are likely to stay loyal to small businesses offering live chat support.
With such a lucrative opportunity to retain customers, which live chat plugin should you use for your ecommerce website?
Here, we explore some excellent options you can try out. We’ll also explore the features to look out for and the other benefits of using live chat for ecommerce.
Let’s dive in.
Live Chat Software for Ecommerce: Features To Look Out For
Here’s what to look for in good live chat apps for ecommerce:
Mobile Optimization
According to Statista, over 173 million U.S. users made at least one online purchase from their mobile browser or phone app in 2021.
Keeping these numbers in mind, always choose live chat tools that optimize for mobile users. Ensure you opt for software that enables you to offer assistance to any website visitor, regardless of the device they access your websites with.
Chat Monitoring
Opt for a live chat solution that gives you real-time information on your active support team. The more your customer support agents engage with potential buyers on your ecommerce store, the more they improve their knowledge and expertise.
Besides that, you can monitor the effects of active chatting on your overall sales and conversions. Kayako’s study found that 38% of consumers who visit a WooCommerce store are more likely to convert if it offers live chat support.
Can your live chat plugin monitor your site, collect analytics and generate reports? This data can be pretty valuable for you and your business. You can use it to optimize the customer experience and increase sales.
Visitor Tracking
Visitor tracking is a remarkable feature to look out for in your ecommerce live chat software. Choose live chat options that track visitors across your website and collect useful information on their behaviors. Such data gives you deep insights into actions like:
Conversion rates
Live chat transcript reports
Agent activities
Visitor chat times and responses
Automation
Can you automate your plugin to respond to common queries simply and efficiently? Automation cuts down the time agents need to respond to common queries. In fact, automation can help most customers serve themselves while facing common challenges on your ecommerce website.
Also, opt for a plugin that supports integrations and APIs.
Such functionality makes automation easier since it helps your agents contact your customers via email, SMS, WhatsApp, or Messenger if live chat fails. Adding APIs to your live chat for ecommerce can help you translate languages and engage with customers worldwide.
Advantages of Using Live Chat
Live chat apps come with certain perks. Here are some of them.
Makes You Stand Out
Using live chat software makes you stand out from other online businesses. That has several effects:
Live chat increases your sales and bottom line on checkout. The Kayako study supports it, showing that 79% of the businesses surveyed reported that using live chat buttons increased revenues, sales, and customer loyalty.
Younger customers engage more with your business. Live chat makes the interaction feel intuitive, much like chatting and getting notifications from friends on social media apps.
Provides an Enhanced Customer Experience
Offering instant assistance to your customers via live chat enhances the customer experience and makes them want to return for more.
Exceptional live chat experiences will increase your customer engagement, loyalty, and recommendations by word of mouth, boosting sales.
Cost Effectiveness
Using live chat for your ecommerce business to connect with customers helps cut down other business costs. For example:
Helping customers navigate your online store and make purchases increases customer satisfaction and reduces returns and refunds.
Live chat can reduce cart abandonment by opening a chat box when a customer attempts to exit the site with a full shopping cart.
Live chat reduces your help desk budget since it’s cheaper than phone calls. Also, it cuts your need for service agents since one agent can serve several clients simultaneously.
Increases Market Reach
Exceptional live chat services can help you break into new markets. Having live chat features that can solve customers’ pain points in multiple languages will help you get into new markets worldwide, increasing your sales, revenues and customers.
Live Chat for Ecommerce
1. LiveChat
2. Olark
3. Live Chat by Formilla
4. Tawk.To
These are the best live chat plugins for ecommerce. Let’s see what they’re about.
1. LiveChat
LiveChat is an all-in-one customer service plugin that enables you to communicate with customers across multiple platforms, including WhatsApp, Messenger, and SMS.
You can download the LiveChat plugin for your WooCommerce store to increase customer interactions.
Key Features:
Supports automation and third-party integrations
Easy to set up and use
Supports multiple ecommerce site builders and WordPress themes
Offers reports and analytics
Best Ecommerce Live Chat Plugin For:
Managing live chats, social media, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, email marketing, and SMS from one platform.
Pricing:
Each paid plan is billed per agent per month annually:
Starter Plan: $16
Team Member Plan: $33
Business Plan: $50
2. Olark
Olark is a real-time live chat software with an intuitive and customizable chat window interface. Once you install this plugin on WordPress, you can refresh your site template and begin to use the chat widget instantly.
You can automate it to communicate with customers before an agent gets to them.
With Formilla, you get a plugin that supports canned responses for common queries, leaving more time for your agents to focus on tougher customer issues.
It also supports multiple languages, which helps you reach a wider audience across the globe.
Key Features:
Supports AI chatbots for FAQs
Can use third-party integrations
Multilingual support
Unlimited live chats
Best Ecommerce Live Chat Plugin For:
Real-time pop-ups and live chats.
Pricing:
The monthly plan starts at $24.99
The yearly plan starts at $19.99
The two-year plan starts at $17.49
4. Tawk.To
Tawk.To is a free-to-use plugin that enables you to monitor live chats on your ecommerce platform with ease. It works excellently across platforms and uses a multipurpose workflow dashboard that coordinates multiple websites and customer agents.
Key Features
Real-time language translation
Supports integrations
Easy to use by chat agents
Supports pre-chat surveys, reports, and analytics
Best Ecommerce Live Chat Plugin For:
Connecting with customers across devices and platforms.
Pricing:
Free.
Final Thoughts: 4 Plugins That Support Live Chat for Ecommerce
Using these ecommerce live chat plugins, you can increase conversions, offer instant support, and enhance the customer experience.
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This blog was originally published in March 2013. It has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
