How to Perform an Audit of Your WordPress E-commerce Site

WordPress

Jun 24 2019 Updated Mar 04 2020

If you’ve been following along with our posts on how to perform an audit of your website content, design, and back-end functionality, congrats! Your site is already in tip-top shape! For those of you who also run an online store, there’s just one last step in your WordPress site review: the e-commerce audit.

Run through the list below to bring your audit full circle. Afterwards, your website and your online store will provide an upgrade user experience for visitors. That way you—and your customers—will be set up for smooth sailing and happy shopping!

Check your e-commerce configuration

Are you using WooCommerce to power sales on your WordPress site? How about Easy Digital Downloads? Whatever plugin you have, make sure it’s configured correctly. For example

Do you need to charge taxes on the items you sell?
Are your shipping and return policies and details up to date?
Have your cart, checkout, and account profile pages set up?
Are you GDPR compliant?
Have you set up transactional emails for purchases, returns, and registrations (among others)?
Do you make a push for shoppers to join your email list during checkout?
Phew, running a store can be work! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg to make sure your online store is up to snuff.
WooCommerce has an excellent guide to help new online store owners start selling on WordPress sites. They power 22% of the top one million e-commerce sites, so it’s worth paying attention to their advice.
Perform an SEO spot check
That’s right—SEO isn’t only for blog posts and standard site pages. Check up on your online store to be sure you’re using thoughtful product descriptions, page titles, URLs, and meta descriptions that align with your overall keyword strategy.

Another tip: Cross-promote related products when you’re working on content. That helps with internal linking. Plus, you may just help a shopper discover something they didn’t realize they needed (or wanted)!

Take simple steps to boost ticket sales

Does your site sell tickets? If so, we’d be remiss to not mention our Event Tickets Plus plugin because (a) it integrates nicely with WooCommerce and (b) it works on WordPress posts, pages and custom post types alike… no calendar required!

That said, there are easy steps you can take today to improve ticket sales. Things like keeping registration short and simple, and making engaging pages for events. Sure, it’s nice to get as much info about your attendees as you can, but no one wants to fill out an endless form. Our guide on custom registration fields will help there. And be sure to check out our post on making visually engaging event pages.

Prepare for your busy season

The last thing you want is for your e-commerce site to crash at the height of your busiest season. Before your peak sales period begins, get your site ready for a spike in traffic. That means checking that your hosting environment can handle the load. It also means making sure your back end environment is updated and secure.

Check on your metrics

An e-commerce audit is a great opportunity to look back at your website traffic, conversions, and ROI for each of your marketing channels. What you learn can help you put together a smart, data-backed marketing strategy for ticket sales. When you’re ready to get started, check out our guide to using WordPress analytics to measure marketing success.

🏆 WordPress e-commerce achievement unlocked!

Hey, you feeling good about your online store? Running an online store takes work and e-commerce is a discipline many folks have turned into a career. It’s OK if things feel daunting, but remember: You don’t need to audit everything, and your e-commerce audit doesn’t need to become your new day job. Stick to the parts that matter most to your site and your goals. And start small—incremental improvements add up over time, helping you take your WordPress store from just alright to an effective e-commerce machine.