Two different sites under the same domain. How’s that sound? It may sound like a dream come true if you want to use WordPress for your blog content but are restricted to another domain or enterprise website. The solution is easier than you might think: use a WordPress Reverse Proxy. Here we’ll explain the ins and outs of reverse proxies for WordPress — what they are, why they’re helpful, and how to set them up. What is a WordPress Reverse Proxy? While explaining how it works is a little more difficult, the essence of what a WordPress Reverse Proxy does is simple. It allows your WordPress site to be viewed through another domain, so that your visitors have no idea they’re on a different site or system. For example, let’s say you have a WordPress blog at MyAwesomeBlog.com. But you want to consolidate your blog with your main site, MegaSite.com. A WordPress Reverse Proxy will allow your blog to show up as something like MegaSite.com/Blog. This appeals mostly to enterprises, who have large and pre-existing sites already set up and don’t want to move everything to a separate WordPress site. There are other uses, though, such as sites locked into an external domain for one reason or another. Commonly, these are small and mid-sized retailers using a secondary eCommerce platform. Whatever the reason, if you have two separate sites, it pays to merge them together. Here’s why. The Advantages of a WordPress Reverse Proxy The main advantage of reverse proxies is unification. You no longer have to redirect visitors off-site or bounce them around between two sites. This disorganization can get confusing and takes away from a brand’s credibility and professionalism. Combining the two sites gives a “no hair out of place” impression, even if it’s just a illusion created by the proxy. The benefits of unifying your sites goes a lot deeper than superficiality. Merging your two sites has a great effect on SEO. This is less of an advantage and more about avoiding a disadvantage: if you have two separate sites, you’re dividing your SEO efforts by half. This is an inefficient use of your energy that can be rectified with a WordPress Reverse Proxy. Combining your sites allows their SEO values to work together. If your main site draws a natural amount of traffic already, your secondary site can benefit from this popularity. And if you’re using WordPress to house your blog, this SEO boon is especially helpful. As a collection of keywords and attractive lures for new traffic, your blog is one of your most powerful SEO tools — if it’s on a different site, that’s a complete waste of potential. And because blogs are so powerful, they should be hosted on WordPress, which is generally recognized as the best platform for blogging. Originating as a platform for bloggers, WordPress has since expanded its capabilities, but has retained the same user-friendly interface for authoring content without dumbing down its more advanced features. Specifically, the beauty of WordPress for blogging is its inherent inclination for SEO. The coding itself, streamlined without excessive HTML, is attuned to Google’s categorization. On top of that, there are additional SEO plugins — namely Yoast SEO — to take this advantage even further. With close to 45,000 plugins, WordPress also showcases a broad range of customization and supported features, including monetization options. And with numerous forums for guidance, you can always find help just around the corner. Add to that the reliable security and recognized trust, and you see why it’s so popular. So even if you’re tied into a separate domain, it still pays to launch an auxiliary WordPress site, even if only for blogging. And with a reverse proxy, you don’t have to sacrifice anything. To short-list the advantages of a WordPress Reverse Proxy… Branding SEO Professionalism Single-site simplicity Allows blog content on WordPress If this sounds like something that could benefit your site, let’s talk about how to set it up. How to Set It Up While many managed WordPress hosting services do not permit WordPress Reverse Proxies, we’re proud to say that Pagely is one of the few that does. As an available perk to our VPS plans and higher, our clients can enjoy the benefits of a reverse proxy for an additional subscription fee to cover ongoing debugging and extra support costs. All our clients have to do is submit a support ticket, and our team then handles the set up manually. For specific details, read this entry in our support section or receive a quote now. Takeaway WordPress is designed to support any genre of website from blogs to eCommerce stores (with the help of the WooCommerce plugin). Most of the time, you can build your entire site on WordPress, with its capacity to suit whatever your end goals may be. That said, there are some circumstances outside your control that require you to use a separate domain. As mentioned above, the most common are working with a large enterprise site or pre-established eCommerce stores in an umbrella platform. Even in these situations, you still don’t need to give up the SEO advantages and convenience or WordPress. A reverse proxy gives you the best of both worlds — the benefits of WordPress without disrupting the setup of your existing site. What are your thoughts on WordPress Reverse Proxies? Does it sound like something that your site could benefit from? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments now.
Convenient and easily customized, WooCommerce has become one of the mainstay contenders for eCommerce platforms. While you get what you put in with the design, you can still set up WooCommerce surprisingly easily, and in almost no time at all. We’ve already explained our reasons for supporting WooCommerce in our previous article Why Serious eCommerce Brands Prefer WooCommerce Over Shopify. If you’re convinced WooCommerce is right for you, this help guide will take you through the setup process step-by-step. Do you already have an eCommerce site set up on another platform and want to switch to WooCommerce? We’ll cover that at the end – but first, here are the quick steps to setting up WooCommerce from the ground up. 1. Host With a Trusted Provider As a WordPress hosting company ourselves, we’ve written at length on the topic of how and why to set up your site on WordPress. We won’t waste space repeating ourselves here, but you can read our free ebook The Art of the WordPress Startup for our reasons and advice. In 88 pages, this downloadable PDF collects 2o how-to sections on everything you need to know about starting a site on WordPress. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that can essentially turn any WordPress website into a profitable eCommerce site. The main advantage of WooCommerce is that you can use the full extent of WordPress’s customization options, including plugins and themes, and turn the whole site into an eCommerce business with a working cart. So, obviously, step 1 is to find a reliable and secure service to host your site. 2. Download, Install, and Activate the Plugin True, this second step is actually three smaller steps, but they’re all accomplished rather quickly and easily. Here’s what to do to set up WooCommerce: On your WordPress management site, go to “Plugins” on the vertical side menu and click “Add New.” Type “WooCommerce” into the search field in the upper-right corner. WooCommerce will be the first entry. Click “Install Now.” WooCommerce will download and install itself. When it’s complete, click “Activate.” Now, you will be taken to the WooCommerce Quick Setup Wizard. 3. Complete the Quick Setup Wizard While the wizard is optional, it is helpful – and relatively painless. The wizard consists of 5 pages: Page Setup Here you verify the creation of the pages necessary for an eCommerce site (checkout, cart, etc.), and have the opportunity to add new pages. You can always add pages later in the “Pages” section. Store Locale Here you customize the preferences that vary from country to country, such as currency and units of measurement. Shipping & Tax A quick page for enabling the shipping for physical goods and sales tax if necessary. Payments Here you enable the payment options, which should have already been decided earlier during the initial planning phases of the eCommerce site. One of the great things about WooCommerce is it offers several different payment gateways, including Stripe. Stripe is a WooCommerce extension plugin that allows credit card payments directly in your store. It’s free to use, but charges a transaction fee. You’ll also need a valid SSL certificate. Ready! (Diagnostic Data) Last, WooCommerce asks your permission to collect diagnostic data they use to improve their product. It’s up to you. 4. Manage Your Store That’s it! You’ve now successfully set up WooCommerce. What happens now depends on you, so you can dedicate however much or little time you want customizing your new eCommerce site. If you’re looking for additional guidance, we suggest the following next steps: Add and Manage Products One of the two new features of your WordPress admin site is the “Products” option in the vertical side menu. Here you can add new products and manage old ones. Everything you need to build product pages is here: titles, descriptions, images, shipping, stock status, back-ordering — you can even link products together for upselling, cross-selling, and grouping. Manage Orders and Shipping The second new addition to your WordPress menu is the “WooCommerce” option. Here, you can manage orders and shipping directly. In the “Order” subsection is a list of your orders and their shipping status, where you can organize them as needed. Add Coupons While completely optional, coupons can sometimes be a key component of your marketing strategy. WooCommerce allows you to add and manage your coupons in the “Coupons” subsection of the “WooCommerce” entry. Here you can create the coupon code, its effects (discount, free shipping, both…), expiration date, and restrictions like usage limit or being used with other coupons. For more on this topic, check out How To Create Coupon Codes With WooCommerce. Analytics With built-in tracking, WooCommerce provides an excellent source for performance analytics. Under the “Reports” subsection of the “WooCommerce” entry, you can find color-coded graphs and data over various periods of time. The “Customers” tab shows data on customer acquisition, and you can even check your current inventory in the “Stocks” tab. Switching Over a Pre-existing Store to WooCommerce If you already have a store set up exactly how you want it, you can still switch over to WooCommerce without building everything all over again. There are a few migration services that will handle the tricky technical concerns for you, though only for a price. Of these services, we recommend Cart2Cart. They work with a wide variety of platforms, including WooCommerce, and offer more features at a comparatively lower cost. To see what they can do, visit their site and input which platforms you want to migrate to and from, plus some other information like the number of products and orders. Right away, you’ll see what data exactly they can migrate and get an estimate. Takeaway To set up WooCommerce doesn’t take long at all. Once you’re made the decision to use it, within a few minutes you can be customizing your site on your brand new platform. Have any help questions we missed? Ask us in the comments section now.
Poor Thanksgiving. Such a kind-hearted holiday is losing its seat as Cyber Monday and Black Friday are taking all the fame out of “Thanksgiving Weekend.” When it comes to eCommerce, though, those top-tier shopping days are the reason for the season. Not only are they among the biggest shopping days of the year, but Forbes is predicting that Cyber Monday 2016 will be the largest online shopping day in history with $3.36 billion in sales, all online. The term “cyber monday” was first heard in 2005, when most people could only access to high-speed internet at work and so waited until after the weekend to do their online shopping. After ten years, though, Cyber Monday now rivals Black Friday, which sees a decline in brick-and-mortar store sales and an increase in online sales. Not that Black Friday is losing its clout. The Friday after Thanksgiving is actually the second-place holder as largest online shopping day, having brought in $2.74 billion in online sales last year, compared to Cyber Monday’s $3.07 billion. Thanksgiving day itself also sees a rise in online shopping, especially since more stores are now closing their physical doors in response to sentiments that the shopping is stealing the limelight of the holiday. Then there’s “Bounceback Tuesday,” the day following Cyber Monday, in which online retailers collectively saw 159% more sales than average shopping days. Put that all together and you have a major online shopping period of almost a week that could make or break your end-or-the-year predictions. All of which begs the question… is your eCommerce store ready? It’s not too late to implement some last-minute strategies for making the most out of the Nov. 24 – Nov. 29 online shopping frenzy. Here are our four best tips to keep you prepared for this eCommerce holiday. 1. Promote Holiday Deals in the Best Screen Space Part of the success of Cyber Monday is that customers worldwide know eCommerce stores are going to be offering deals. Let your customers know you’re participating by prominently advertising your deals. The more noticeable they are, the more important they’ll seem to shoppers. The most obvious and popular option is the homepage banner. This is traditionally where sites put their most important content, so announcing the details of your Cyber Monday deals here will both tell your shoppers what they need to know, and demonstrate that your company also considers these deals important. If you want to go even bigger, a modal or pop-up window will attract more attention, especially is they require clicking to deactivate. These stop the rest of the site so the customer knows the what and the when of your Thanksgiving weekend sales. Source: BC Fasteners If, however, you want something more subtle, try a notification bar — those isolated message bars at the top of the screen, above the header menu. While typically used for secondary offers like free shipping, these bars can still help get the word out about your sales, without commandeering too much of your shopper’s attention. 2. Stock Up Now How frustrating is it when, after a long session of comparison shopping, you find that the product you’ve finally settled on is “out of stock.” Never is this more of a danger than the Cyber Monday weekend, when both the demand and the stakes are highest. Even heavy-hitters like Target are not immune — on Cyber Monday last year, 13% of their product views showed an out-of-stock message. Luckily, you can avoid this disaster with a little foresight. Stock up your inventory ahead of time, and give yourself extra padding for best-sellers and whatever items you’re promoting with sales. 3. Optimize for Mobile It’s been more than two years since mobile browsing surpassed desktop browsing, but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of many popular site designs. A Think with Google study revealed just how much today’s eCommerce landscape revolves around mobile: 67% of people use multiple screens sequentially when online shopping. Chances are, most of your customers will use your mobile site at some point on Cyber Monday. So what happens if your mobile site is underwhelming? After a bad mobile experience, 40% of shoppers will go straight to your competitor’s site. That means companies with bad mobile sites will actually lose customers over Cyber Monday instead of gaining them. Mobile optimization is a heavy topic, so read our previous article How to Optimize Your Site for Mobile for a complete treatment. If your mobile site is desperate for a makeover and you need to fix it before Thanksgiving, our article about the WPtouch plugin can help in a pinch. 4. Tailor Your Content Strategy Last, modify your content strategy to reflect the season. Posting the right type of content at the right time can not only generate more traffic, but also introduce your brand to new customers by helping them in their time of need. Source: Ghyslain Considering that most people already have shopping on their minds, gifts guides are a smart choice in general. A lot of people across many different demographics have difficulty deciding which gifts to buy for their friends and family. A well-written gift guide answers their questions, establishes your brand as an expert on the topic, and lets you promote your products. For social media, don’t forget that product videos are one of the most effective eCommerce tools. Featuring them will boost sales not just for Cyber Monday, but the whole year round. Takeaway Cyber Monday may be the most important day in the eCommerce industry, but don’t let that scare you. Your site doesn’t need to be perfect to make a good impression; it just needs a little bit of planning and preparation. It’s not too late the put the finishing touches on your site — follow our tips here and by Thanksgiving weekend, you’ll be grateful. What do you think of these tips? Do you have your own Cyber Monday “traditions”? Share them in the comments now.
