If you’ve read our WordPress monitoring article, then you already know what goes into keeping a WordPress site up, running, and health.
But what if your site runs on WooCommerce? Maintaining and keeping your WooCommerce store healthy requires quite a few extra steps as WooCommerce adds quite a bit of extra functionality to your WordPress site.
From adding products to the cart, processing payments, and ensuring overall site functionality, there are many things to monitor for to keep your WooCommerce store operating smoothly.
Let’s dive in the most important ones!
Smooth Add to Cart Functionality
Technically there’s a step before this, but we’re going to assume that your products are, in fact, visible in your store. That is the bare minimum.
The next most important things is the “Add to Cart” functionality. It is the bread and butter of any WooCommerce store. We need to make sure it works perfectly across all product pages. You’ll want to start by checking its compatibility with your themes and plugins.
The AJAX functionality that takes care of the things that happen when you click on the “Add to Cart” button plays a big role in creating quick and seamless user experiences. So, monitoring the Add to Cart functionality works is something you’ll have to do every single time you update any plugin, theme, or WordPress itself. It’s that important.
Additionally, you can use tools like Google Analytics to monitor Add to Cart events closely. This helps us figure out where users might be dropping off during the purchasing process.
When you implement that in your analytics, remember to also look at cart persistence. Customers should see their items in the cart even if they navigate away or refresh the page. When their selections are saved, it significantly enhances their shopping experience and your revenue.
Optimizing the Checkout Process
The checkout process is where the magic of conversion happens, so it, just like the “Add to Cart” monitoring, requires your constant attention. Your Checkout process is basically determined by the checkout form and all its fields. You’ll need to inspect all form fields for input validation to prevent any submission errors. Basically at the same moments as mentioned above for the “Add to Cart” monitoring.
While you’re at it, make sure that shipping methods update dynamically based on a users’ address to guarantee accurate deliveries. In other words, check the form for all of its functionality. Coupons, the works.
Speed Matters
Speed matters here. Monitoring the load times for the checkout page is crucial to reducing cart abandonment rates. It is especially important to check this because the checkout page will always be uncached.
So, the only optimization there is perhaps some Core Web Vitals frontend optimization with some CDN integration for the assets on that page (or the entire site for that matter).
The rest of the performance optimization is done on server level (picking the right host with a ridiculous small TTFB) combined with building a smart, lean and mean website with performance in mind while building it.
Streamlining Payment Efficiency
Right after the Checkout page comes the payment gateway option. Whether that’s Credit Card, Paypal, Apple Pay, or some other intergration, that step needs to be a smooth and solid as possible. Robust testing ensures that all transactions are processed correctly, both in live environments and sandbox accounts.
As mentioned in our article about WordPress Monitoring, SSL Certificates need to be set up perfectly on your site in general. But particularly for your WooCommerce site. You don’t want any hiccups in the payment process. Especially not the preventable ones with Scanfully’s Certificate Monitoring.
Heavy Focus on Server Health
As mentioned above, from the moment someone adds something to their cart, your entire WordPress/WooCommerce site is uncached for your potential customers. This doesn’t mean you can’t optimize frontend output, but this does mean that you’re relying a lot more heavily on raw performance.
Raw on the site build site of things, but most notably your hardware, your server.
Enhancing Server and Database Optimization
Server and database performance directly affects your site’s speed and ability to handle traffic. Make sure your server is properly configured for WooCommerce, possibly by using a specialized Managed WordPress/WooCommerce Hosting provider.
Regularly optimizing your MySQL or MariaDB databases will help with rapid data retrieval. Consider using object caching solutions like Redis with Object Cache Pro to store complex queries and frequently accessed objects.
Implementing proper caching with for instance NitroPack or WP Rocket goes without saying.
Use Scanfully to monitor your site’s performance and health.
Backing Up & Disaster Recovery
Think of regular backups as an insurance policy for your site’s data. By setting up automatic backups, you can ensure quick recovery in case of any failures. Make sure to test the restoration process regularly to confirm everything can be recovered promptly.
A note on the frequency of backups. Now, with most WordPress sites, running a backup once or twice a day is more than enough. With WooCommerce sites, though, we recommend making at least hourly backups on the database side of things. Full backups are usually less of a concern, but if your content is highly fluctual during the day, then increasing the frequency for a full site backup is very much recommended.
It is, however, not just the fact that backups are created that requires monitoring, but being able to restore a site from any given backup is just as crucial. You wouldn’t be teh first person to think they’d have perfect backups only to discover not everything is included in the backups, or worse… a corrupted backup file.
SEO and Conversions
Technically this sections goes for any WordPress site that depends on its ranking in search engines for conversions and subsequent monitization, but it’s very important for stores. That, and the following two items are super easy to monitor for.
Boosting SEO and Schema Markup
To help customers find your products more easily, focus on SEO optimization. Use plugins like Yoast SEO or AIOSEO to optimize product pages and other content.
Implementing schema markup helps search engines understand your content better, improving visibility and attracting more clicks.
Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush are great examples of tools that help you monitor for these types of technical SEO items.
Tracking Customer Behavior and Sales
If everything in your store works, add to cart works, checkout works, and payment works, you still may have a lot of room for customer behaviour. Therefor, understanding customer behavior is crucial for improving your store.
Use tracking tools to gather data on how users interact with your site. Monitor metrics like bounce rates, conversion rates, and session durations to continually refine and optimize performance.
Generating sales and revenue reports gives a clear picture of your store’s performance, allowing you to adjust marketing strategies accordingly. Keeping a close watch on inventory levels prevents overselling, and setting up notifications for low stock further streamlines management.
Make sure you set up your analytics the very best way possible. Over optimizing conversion is close to impossible. The tool we highly recommend for this type of monitoring is Metorik. We wouldn’t run a WooCommerce store without it.
There you have it. Everything that goes into WooCommerce Health Monitoring. Integrating these strategies into your regular maintenance routine will keep your WooCommerce store healthy, functional, and ready to meet customer demands.
Continually refining and updating your practices ensures your store stays ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape, driving sales and fostering customer loyalty.
Be sure to also check out our article about WordPress monitoring.
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