Ever fantasized about building an online empire after seeing the astronomical success of Jack Ma and Jeff Bezos? Well, we all have taken that road once–even though in dreams.
While the glam of e-commerce is undeniable, the reality is far from a leisurely stroll. Your odds of success are bleak, only 20-10%, with an e-commerce venture. To ensure you’re not on the other side of this statistic, you need to have a deep understanding of many things, and the best WordPress e-commerce development tops the chart.
Let’s crack the code to WordPress e-commerce development success together!
Choosing the Right E-commerce Plugin for WordPress- The Real Difference Maker
The thumb rule for successful WordPress e-commerce development is to choose the right e-commerce plugins, as WordPress doesn’t come with built-in e-commerce functionalities.
You need to jot down the functionalities you want in your online store and download the respective plugins to bring those functionalities to life.
Think of WordPress e-commerce plugins as a building block. Each one adds a different functionality to your store. Want to let customers save items for later? There’s a plugin for that. Need to track inventory and manage shipping? You guessed it right– there’s a plugin for that too!
This is why the success of your online store largely depends on choosing the right plugins. You must select the one that matches your vision to watch your e-commerce store come to life and turn it into a customer magnet.
WooCommerce vs Other Solutions
When we talk about choosing e-commerce WordPress plugins, WooCommerce is the first name that comes to mind. Isn’t it? Its robust set of features and a large community of developers make WooCommerce a star solution for many.
But, the hassles of integrating different functionalities separately push many away. Developers have to install plugins for basic e-commerce functionalities such as processing online transactions or sending e-receipts automatically. This translates to more work per site and more maintenance migration. As the online site grows, the number of plugins will become mammoth and their management will become backbreaking work.
When we have amazing WooCommerce alternatives such as Easy Digital Downloads, WP EasyCart Shopping & e-commerce Store, and many more, looking beyond WooCommerce while building an e-commerce site seems a smart move.
Testing Different Plugins in InstaWP Staging Environments
As mentioned above, choosing the right plugins is key to success in WordPress e-commerce development. Picking any run-of-the-mill plugins is like digging the grave of your online store.
InstaWP staging sites make plugin testing a cakewalk for agencies/developers engaged in large-scale WordPress e-commerce development. Its staging sites:
- Can be easily spun up with just one click
- Allows you to test extensively without affecting the live site
- Comes with automatic backup facilities
- Are highly customizable; from configurations to PHP versions, everything can be customized.
They are the ideal way out to beat the plugin testing blues without any coding. In fact, agencies can save up to one hour per day on staging with InstaWP staging sites. Isn’t that amazing?
If you want to know more about the power of InstaWP staging, read this.
Now, let’s learn how to use InstaWP staging sites to test the e-commerce plugins you wish to use.
Step 1– Login to InstaWP Dashboard and click on ‘Add New’.
Step 2– Customize the configurations for the staging site and click on ‘Next’.
Step 3: InstaWP allows you to create staging sites from scratch, using templates, InstaWP store templates, and with the help of AI. Select the option you want and then click on ‘Create Site’.
Step 4: The staging site is ready in no time. Click on ‘Magic Login’ to go to the WordPress Dashboard.
Step 5: You’re directed to the WordPress dashboard of the staging site instantly. You don’t have to enter the login credentials.
Step 6: On the left side of the panel, you can see the ‘Plugin’ option. Click on ‘Add New Plugin’ to get the plugin you want to test.
Step 7: Use the search bar to find the e-commerce WordPress plugin of your choice. We searched for ‘cart’ to test the cart abandonment plugin.
Step 8: We installed ‘CartBounty’ on our staging site for testing. You can install any plugin and check its functionalities.
Once you’re sure which e-commerce WordPress plugin you want to test, click on ‘Install Now’, followed by ‘Activate’.
The plugin will be displayed on the dashboard.
You can review the plugin’s functionalities for your WordPress e-commerce development projects.
Optimizing Site Performance for E-commerce
Slugging online stores lose customers faster than a snail in a race against a cheetah. Slow website speeds can be a major turn-off for visitors, leading to increased bounce rates and lost sales, lower SEO rankings, increased cart abandonment state, and many more hassles.
This is why optimizing the site performance is crucial for WordPress e-commerce development. A well-optimized online store soars high and generates more revenue. However, optimizing every client’s site is not a piece of cake for agencies and developers.
It’s tiresome and monotonous. Gladly, we now have InstaWP Live– a hosting service fully optimized for WordPress. It allows agencies and developers to host e-commerce sites on the servers of their choice.
With means like Docker containers for SSH commands, Linux kernel namespaces and cgroups, and site isolation, InstaWP Live provides highly secured hosting. InstaWP Live ensures that your e-commerce store is fast, responsive, and capable of handling high traffic, especially during sales events or peak shopping seasons.
Here is how you can use this powerful feature.
- Do to the InstaWP Dashboard.
- Click on the ‘Go Live’ option on your staging site.
- You have three options to choose from. Select ‘ InstaWP Live’.
- Choose the play that aligns with your requirements the most.
Security Best Practices for E-commerce Sites
Keeping an e-commerce site away from harm’s way is crucial but critical, especially when 500+ WordPress sites are hacked every day. Hence, agencies and developers must adopt security practices, optimized for each e-commerce site, to safeguard the site’s infrastructure.
We’ve got a few recommendations to make.
Implement Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Implementing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is essential for any e-commerce website as it encrypts data transmitted between the site’s server and users. Through this encryption, SSL ensures that sensitive user information, such as credit card details, remains confidential during transactions.
Install the Right Kind of Security Plugin
WordPress brings a world of security plugins to your disposal. Security plugins such as All-in-One-Security, JetPack, and Soild Security are the first line of defense for every WordPress e-commerce development project.
They provide comprehensive protection against malware, brute-force attacks, and other cybersecurity threats while keeping an eye on the site’s health, unauthorized access, and file integrity.
Just arm the e-commerce site with the best security plugin and enjoy peace of mind.
Keep Themes & Plugins Updated
Do you know that 97% of WordPress vulnerabilities might arise due to outdated themes and plugins? Yes, you read that right. As you update plugins, themes, or other software components of your e-commerce sites, you patch them better for security holes, improve their functionalities, and fine-tune the site’s performance.
So, make sure you’re not letting themes and plugin updates slip through the cracks. Set a schedule and keep your WordPress site up-to-date with the latest security patches and features.
Design and User Experience Tips
Fixed the security and overlooked the design? Well, you did a blunder. For any e-commerce site to grow, flawless design and user experience are paramount as 94% of users leave a site because of poor design.
Below mentioned are some of the most common ways to improve the user experience during WordPress e-commerce development.
Focus on the User’s Journey
Try to craft an initiative and engaging journey for the end user. How? Use easy navigation, add clear CTA, and keep the purchase process with minimal friction, and keep every touchpoint of the site well-guided.
Perform A/B Testing
A/B testing is the right bet to make when you wish to use the best possible design for WordPress e-commerce development projects. It enables developers to experience different design elements and find the one that leads to higher user engagement, resulting in more conversion and recurrent revenue.
To make the A/B functional and result-driven, use InstaWP staging. Agencies and developers can use the stage sites to test multiple design variations in a controlled environment without affecting the live site.
They can create staging sites for each variation and can accurately assess which design enhances user experience and drives better results before making changes live. As InstaWP allows you to build a staging site without coding and given you WooCommerce configurations, WordPress e-commerce development becomes less tedious.
Simplify the Checkout Process
The simpler the checkout process is, the higher the conversion is. A lengthy or complicated checkout process can make 87% of your users abandon the cart, according to Forbes.
Customers demand automatic payment populations, one-click checkout, guest checkout, and transparency on platform/convenience fees during the checkout process to be loyal to an online store.
Integrating all these functionalities during WordPress e-commerce development will enable agencies to design online stores rendering simplified checkout, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
Personalized User Experience
Netflix, the trailblazer of the streaming industry, managed to retain 90% of subscribers because of personalized recommendations.
Personalizing the shopping experience with features like product recommendations, recently viewed items, or user-specific discounts can enhance engagement. From content to product recommendations, everything on an e-commerce website should be personalized to increase AOV and customer retention.
Improving SEO and Content for E-commerce Success
Achieving online visibility through proper SEO optimization is a must for any online store to get organic traffic. This is why agencies are recommended to install SEO plugins such as Rank Math SEO, Yoast SEO, or Slim SEO.
These plugins can help agencies optimize the project description, metadata, and internal links for the online store to expand the reach of the online store.
Scaling Your E-commerce Site as You Grow
E-commerce sites can gain unbelievable traction overnight. Hence, ensuring easy scalability remains the prime concern for agencies engaged in WordPress e-commerce development.
When we talk about scaling e-commerce sites, we mean:
- The ability to handle sudden traffic spikes without any breakdown
- Managing a larger inventory
- Ensuring the site’s availability during peak hours
- Optimizing server load
- Scalable hosting
To ensure all this and have best-of-kind scalability of e-commerce sites, InstaWP is the right choice to make. InstaWP migration allows agencies to migrate their clients’ sites to a more robust hosting environment without any downtime.
The 2-Way sync feature of InstaWP allows agencies to make changes in the staging environment and sync them with the live site, ensuring consistency across environments as your site expands.
InstaWP Live is a fully managed and highly scalable hosting for WordPress e-commerce development. It ensures that your site remains responsive and available as it grows with means like automatic back, CDN, real-time failover mechanism, DDoS protection, and malware detection.
Conclusion
Building an e-commerce site is easy; turning it into a thriving, scalable business is the real challenge. With the best WordPress e-commerce development practices such as using the right type of plugins, optimizing performance, security robust security, and many others that we just discussed, you can lay the foundation of a thriving online store.
InstaWP is the best pal to have when agencies or individual developers are on a journey to design powerful e-commerce sites. Through its robust feature suite, including staging sites, managed hosting, 2-way sync, and migration, InstaWP empowers agencies/developers to create powerful, high-performing e-commerce websites.
Sign up today to elevate your WordPress e-commerce development game.