Launching your first ecommerce store? This must be an exciting event and we don’t want you to risk it. That’s why we have created a simple checklist so that you do it right. 

This is your opportunity to differentiate from what other ecommerce stores are doing, get more visibility, and earn more exposure, conversions, and revenue.

And, to make that happen, you have to follow the checklist. Don’t worry, it is not a lengthy one and it reminds you of all the things that are necessary to launch your store.

Let’s get started.

Checklist for Creating a Conversion-Focused WooCommerce Store

Let’s go through the complete list one by one and discuss everything on our checklist in detail.

1.Move to Production Server

First and foremost, move your WooCommerce store to a production server if you still haven’t done so. Why is this necessary? Because most often people launch their store while it is on the testing server. What this does is that they start getting orders. And, when they receive more visitors on the site, the site simply collapses. This is a complete failure for them and obviously for the brand image of the store. To fix this, make sure that your website is already on the production server before you make it public.

A few things to check when moving website to production server include:

  • Making sure site has SSL
  • Making sure it has robots.txt file and Sitemap.xml available
  • Making sure that the store is working properly and there are no major bugs that can ruin user experience

2.Security Check & Backups

Next, do a complete security check of your WooCommerce store. When the website is live, it will be available to everyone and that means hackers will also be able to visit it easily. Hackers are always looking for loopholes, backdoors, and security weaknesses that they can exploit. If you want to keep your ecommerce store up and running, then make sure that it is properly secure.

You should also backup your data so that if any security issues occur on the store, the data remains safe.

3.Payment Integration & Testing

Similarly, another important factor to take care of when launching your ecommerce store is payment gateway integration. Is your store properly secure? Have you tested the payment gateway thoroughly for transactions?

While testing is important, another crucial feature for your ecommerce store is to check the payment transaction fees. This will help you calculate the overall margins you need to add for selling a product on your store profitably. You can use multiple payment methods for your ecommerce store including VISA and MasterCard payments. Also, you can add PayPal and Stripe for ecommerce stores.

4.Checkout Process

Find out how many steps a person needs to take to order a product from your ecommerce store. The checkout process needs to be simple. On an average, the checkout process takes nine-steps to complete.

Visitor > Product Page > Checkout Page > Order Payment Details > Shipping Details > Shipping Confirmation > Preview Order > Confirmation

Make sure that you have these steps properly added to the website. Each step should be duly checked for bugs so that your users don’t have any problem when working on the website.

That’s all you need to know about the checkout process. Now let’s move to the next item in our checklist.

>>> Is Your CheckOut Process Slow? We Can Help You Double Its Performance. Give Us a Call

5.Performance and Speed Optimization

You should also focus on performance and speed optimization of your website to make it convert visitors faster. 

Install Google search console on your website and make sure that all Core Web Vital features are met. If they are not being met, test your website with Google Pagespeed Insights tool and GTMetrix tool. These two tools are necessary for checking the overall performance of your website. 

A few things that can help you improve the performance of your website are:

  • Decreasing image size
  • Reducing the number of scripts on the site
  • Adding lazy loading to the website
  • Using default font sizes 
  • Adding CDN and an SSL certificate to the site

Once the speed of your website is properly optimized, it is ready for launch. Now let’s move to the next step.

6.Checking the Buyer Journey & UX

Everything people do on the internet is called a journey. They have an intent and they visit a website to fulfill that intent. This buyer journey translates into user experience on a website. 

It is now your duty to transform that user experience into a conversion. Whenever a person visits your website, make sure that they are following each step available on the website to the end. 

So, design a proper marketing funnel. This funnel will help people know what they need to do when they visit your website. 

User visits > Product Pages > Conversion or Checkout Page

User Visits > Service Page > Form or Contact Us Page

Make sure that the user experience of your website is phenomenal. You need to use A/B testing on your WordPress website just to check which page is working for you.

7.Broken Links, Server Errors

Another problem on the website is the number of broken links the website has. Make sure to carefully test the store/website for broken links because they can lead to higher bounce rate. A higher bounce rate would mean people are less likely to stay on your website and as a result your conversions will be lower. So, make sure that the broken links are minimum. 

If there are any server errors on the website, fix them as well. You can check the number of server errors your website has on Google search console.

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8. Taxes, Policies, Refund & Return Pages

Make sure that your WooCommerce store has the following pages before you launch the store.

  • Shipping policy
  • Refund Policy
  • Return Policy
  • Tax Calculations
  • Payment Gateway Calculations
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact Us Page

These pages will help you gain trust of the visitors when they start visiting your website. These pages will also help your visitors understand about the various policies on your store so that they can order the right items.

9.Inventory Check

Finally, keep a count of the total inventory you have available on the store and show that to the public. If your inventory is low, don’t launch the ecommerce store. Because when you launch the store, more people are likely to visit it. This would lead to more orders.

If the inventory is low, visitors coming to the website will not be able to buy the products and this will ruin their experience.

They can even leave a bad review about your product resulting in poor marketing. So, check the inventory properly before you decide to go online.

Conclusion:

That’s all you need to know about launching your WooCommerce store. The checklist we have created highlights everything from A to Z. Whether you are launching an ecommerce store, a SaaS product, or anything that users are going to interact with, this checklist will be of great help to you.

With that said, if you are looking to launch your WooCommerce store and need help from WordPress development experts, then our WordPress consultants can help you. From site customizations, plugin installation, to theme development, we do everything.

Contact Us today by filling out the form or through the Contact Us Page.

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