Anyone new to e-commerce might think that getting paid online is easy. After all, watching any number of intro videos makes it seem that way. Unfortunately it's actually very complicated. There are hundreds of different vendors, complex fee structures, and an infinite number of ways to implement the solution.
I got an email the other day from my hosting company, WP Engine, about a potential security issue on my site. This one, unlike so many others that you read about actually made me feel safer.
I'm a big fan of podcasts. They're just so handy when it's late at night or early in the morning and I want to take the dog on a walk. Why not learn something while I do that? Just yesterday I heard a WooCommerce question on the WPCast.fm podcast and I thought I'd take a crack at answering it.
Hi guys, my name is Travis and I'm interested in finding out what you think about the reporting options with WooCommerce. I have several clients who are running WooCommerce and are having issues with the way the reports are laid out. There's a couple paid options and I wanted to know if you knew of anyone with in-depth reporting experience & WooCommerce.
The good news is that the reporting that comes bundled with WooCommerce is actually pretty solid. It has all of the basics that any store would need. If you need more there are some pretty awesome free plugins and even a couple premium ones to take care of those needs.
About four years ago I was really into this game called Warhammer 40k. You collect miniature soldiers which you build, paint, and eventually assemble on the battle field for a battle against a friend. There's a company in that space that creates incredible detailed and customized miniatures. They're very prestigious and also incredibly expensive. It's hard to explain to someone not in the hobby but basically this company, Forge World, they're not a Ford Focus; they're the Lamborghini.
The miniatures by themselves are already cost prohibitive not even including the fact that the store is based in the UK and it's a pretty penny to get something shipping from the UK to Wisconsin. So how did they do it? They had an excellent marketing plan combined with a good incentive (free shipping).
If you run an e-commerce store you're well aware that chargebacks on credit card transactions can be costly. You may also occasionally have upset customers if you charge a card right away and take a few days to ship the order. One of the strategies you can use to avoid these problems is to capture the payment when you ship the order instead of automatically capturing it during checkout.
In my new role as a WooCommerce Developer I've been spending a good chunk of time auditing 3rd party extensions. One of the surprising parts about the audit process is seeing where developers put their settings. Some developers put them under Settings, some put them under a custom menu item, and some just shimmy it in wherever they can.
If you're building a WooCommerce extension the easiest thing you can do to improve your UI is to put all WooCommerce settings where users can find them – on a new WooCommerce settings tab. Sounds pretty easy but you'd be surprised how many people don't do that.
I've been in Denver just over a week and in addition to apartment hunting, meeting new friends, and enjoying the 4th of July I was able able to launch my 8th add-on for Ninja Forms, White Label Forms.
22, 23, 25, 39, 40 – What!? Why are my order numbers out of order? If you've used WordPress before you might know that posts, pages, and media files have IDs that aren't necessarily in order. The first one might be 20 and the next might be 43. WooCommerce uses the same ID system to create the order number which is why they're out of order.
For your average marketing website this isn't a big deal since you rarely need that number. In the e-commerce world with accounting software, drop shippers, & reports it makes a lot more sense to have consecutive order numbers. The good news is that this is really easy to do with a plugin.
First it's important to know why all of these IDs are out of order in the first place. WordPress saves everything as a post. So pages are posts, media files are posts, products are posts, orders are posts, and posts are posts. This makes it really easy for developers to interact with the database since everything uses a similar format. All of these posts (media, pages, posts, etc) use the same database table and because of that they can't share the same ID. If you want to have a consecutive order number then you have to save a bit of extra data in the database.
The design pattern behind WooCommerce is to try to stay as lean as possible and give people the ability to extend or add onto the existing functionality. If you don't need sequential order numbers then there's no point in storing all of this extra information. WooCommerce leaves this up to store manager to decide if it's necessary.
Any plugin developer can add a bit of extra data to the orders to make sure they're in order. In fact there's already an excellent plugin, WooCommerce Sequential Order Numbers, by the SkyVerge team available for free on WordPress.org. They even have a premium version with a few extra features like the ability to add a prefix ex. MyStore so your order numbers would look like MyStore001, MyStore002, etc.
Happy sequential order numbers!
If you want to learn more about the commonly asked WooCommerce questions I suggest you take a look at my book. It isn't out yet but you can signup for the mailing list and get a discount when it comes out.
There's been a lot of big changes in my life recently. I announced a book, I changed roles within WooThemes, and I have one more big announcement. It's something that I've been meaning to do since university but it's always taken a back seat to other priorities. I spent nine years in Green Bay and I love it but it's time for a new setting. I'm moving to Denver Colorado; I should actually be arriving at my Airbnb just a few hours after this post is published.
Someone once asked me about the WordCamps and meetups that are going on around Wisconsin and I was only too eager to reply “It's crazy! There are so many going on” and then there was laughing. This person couldn't fathom any real IT talent outside of Silicon Valley and that's a shame. Both for that person and for the innovators here that are doing great work and not being recognized.
I'm probably not the best Wiconsinite since I don't love the Packers. But I do want to give WI the credit is deserves. We have a lot of innovators, and a lot of activity both in meetups and other events. Here's some of the amazing talent in Wisconsin. (Apologies in advance if I forgot you there are so many awesome people!)