Starting an online business with WordPress is easier than ever nowadays. E-commerce WP plugins have revolutionised the way people make their online stores. Few years ago, people were wondering how to add a blog and other pages to their specialized and functionally-limited ecommerce scripts. Now it’s the other way around: the online stores are becoming natural additions to the websites.
Although user interfaces get easier, business processes more clear to comprehend, when you start a new web store there are specifics that you should be aware of in order to prevent issues after the launch of your new store. I’ve created a checklist of things you should consider for your online e-commerce site that will help you start and spare you trouble in the future.
SSL Certificates – The encrypted information transfer is consider a must for the online stores. So I will discuss topics like: why do you need an SSL certificate and how to start with it? Should you simply push all your pages through SSL or keep it only for the important pages? How the SSL can affect your caching? How to make it work with your CDN service? What if you’re on a shared hosting? How does the SSL certificate affect your performance?
PCI Compliance – what is it and do you needs it for your online store? Basically, PCI compliance is a list of security checks that your site and host must pass. However, there are multiple certified companies doing those checks, different criteria that must be met, etc. On top of that, not every business actually needs to be PCI complient to run a successful online store.
Caching an ecommerce site – caching is probably the most powerful method to speed-up your site. However, ecommerce sites have specific issues with caching. How to make sure you protect your customers sensible information and keep your dynamic pages really dynamic.
Sending emails – having an email strategy is a must for most of the online business. Learn how to setup your email campaigns without harming the server your main site is hosted on.
Scaling eCommerce – how to handle the growth of your site, when do you need to migrate to a more powerful hosting solution, how to optimize your server to handle more traffic. Tips on migrating your online store without loosing orders, traffic and money.