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11 Essential eCommerce Website Maintenance Tips: Keep Your Store Running Smoothly

By Naveed Ahmed, a seasoned eCommerce expert with 15 years of experience in building and managing online stores.

Just like a well-maintained car runs better and lasts longer, a well-maintained eCommerce website provides a superior customer experience and helps your business thrive. Let’s face it: keeping your online store in tip-top shape can sometimes feel overwhelming. But neglecting maintenance can lead to security vulnerabilities, frustrated customers, and ultimately, lost sales.

At WPBeginner, we have over 16 years of experience helping users establish and manage their online stores. We know what it takes to keep your eCommerce site running smoothly. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll share our top eCommerce website maintenance tips to keep your customers happy and your business growing.

Why eCommerce Website Maintenance Matters

Managing an eCommerce store can be a challenge. However, investing time and effort in website maintenance is worthwhile because it helps build trust with your customers, improves your search engine visibility, and ultimately drives more sales.

Here’s how prioritizing eCommerce maintenance in WordPress benefits your online store:

  • Enhanced Security: Outdated software and plugins are prime targets for hackers. Regular updates and security audits can patch vulnerabilities and safeguard customer data.
  • Improved User Experience: A website that functions seamlessly, with accurate information, fast loading times, and a clear checkout process keeps visitors happy and coming back for more.
  • Better Search Engine Ranking: Search engines favor websites that are updated and mobile-optimized. Consistent maintenance ensures your store ranks higher in search results, leading to increased organic traffic and potential sales.
  • Reduced Downtime and Costs: Regular backups and proactive maintenance reduce the risk of website crashes and downtime. This, in turn, saves you from losing sales and the hassle of troubleshooting unexpected issues.
  • Higher Conversion Rates: A well-maintained website is a persuasive salesperson. By offering a secure and user-friendly experience, you can convert more visitors into paying customers.

Now, let’s dive into the specific eCommerce website maintenance tips you can implement to keep your store in top condition.

11 eCommerce Website Maintenance Tips

Use these quick links to jump to the specific tips you need:

1. Keep WordPress, Themes, and Plugins Up to Date

When it comes to maintaining an eCommerce store, the first thing you should do is regularly check for updates to WordPress, your theme, and any plugins you use.

These updates often include security patches, bug fixes, and performance improvements. If your WordPress core or plugins are not up-to-date, they are a prime target for hackers.

In WordPress, you can check for updates from the Dashboard and update WordPress with a single click. Simply go to the Dashboard’s “Updates” page and check if a new version is available for download.

Similarly, you can also check for updates to your WordPress theme and plugins from this page. Additionally, WordPress offers an option to enable automatic updates for your plugins. This way, your critical plugins will always be updated as soon as a new version is released.

For more details, refer to our guide on how to update WordPress plugins.

2. Update Content in Your Online Store

Fresh and informative content is vital for attracting and engaging customers. Outdated product descriptions, inaccurate inventory levels, and stale blog posts create a negative impression and lead to a poor user experience.

Here’s how to keep your content strong:

  • Regular Product Updates: Periodically review product descriptions, pricing, and inventory availability. Update information as needed to ensure accuracy and avoid customer frustration.
  • Content Calendar: Create a content calendar to plan and schedule blog posts, product reviews, and other informative content. This will help maintain a steady flow of fresh content that keeps your audience engaged.
  • Seasonal Promotions: Update your website with seasonal promotions, new product launches, and upcoming sale events. This will keep your customers informed and encourages them to revisit your store.

For more ideas, check out our guide on how to create an effective content plan in WordPress.

3. Back Up Your eCommerce Store Regularly

The next eCommerce WordPress maintenance tip is to create regular backups of your online store.

A backup is a copy of your site’s important files, folders, and databases. It includes plugins, products, themes, settings, core files, videos, and much more.

Imagine a power outage or a cyberattack wiping out all the hard work you’ve put into your online store. Enter backups—they’re essential for disaster recovery. You can easily restore your eCommerce store to its previous state if anything goes wrong.

The easiest way to create a backup is by using Duplicator. It’s the best WordPress backup plugin that’s easy and beginner-friendly. Plus, it allows you to schedule automatic backups and save your packages to cloud storage services.

Additionally, there are other manual methods to back up your eCommerce site. For more details, check out our guide on how to back up your WordPress site.

4. Monitor Website Server Uptime

Imagine a potential customer lands on your WooCommerce store only to find it down and inaccessible. Servers used by poor-quality hosting services can go down frequently and stay offline for several minutes or even hours.

Downtime due to server issues can cost you sales and damage your reputation. It can also negatively impact your search engine ranking.

There are different ways to monitor website server uptime in WordPress. For example, you can hire support agencies like WPBeginner Pro Maintenance Services to monitor uptime 24/7.

You can also use tools like UptimeRobot. It will check your online store every 5 minutes and notify you if it’s down via email, SMS, voice calls, and other alerts.

You can learn more in our guide on how to monitor your WordPress website server uptime.

5. Choose the Fastest Hosting Solution With No Downtime

Many hosting services promise 99.9% uptime, but it’s often not true.

Your hosting provider is the foundation of your eCommerce website. It’s responsible for storing your website data and making it accessible to visitors.

That’s why choosing a reliable hosting provider is so important. They’ll make sure your website loads quickly and remains accessible during peak traffic hours. Slow loading times can significantly hurt your conversion rates, so it’s in your best interest to pick a provider with a good uptime history and fast server speed.

To find the fastest WordPress hosting providers, we signed up for each one and thoroughly tested different hosting services. From our tests, we found that Hostinger was the fastest.

Here are the Pingdom speed test results for Hostinger:

Hostinger Speed Test Results

You can check out our complete list of the fastest WordPress hosting services for more information.

Related: Check out our guide on WordPress Maintenance vs Managed Hosting: Which is Better?

6. Optimize Your Online Store Speed

Did you know that a 1-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% decrease in conversions and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction?

Website speed is incredibly important for the user experience. Slow loading times can frustrate potential customers and lead to cart abandonment. Additionally, it will also hurt your search engine ranking, as Google considers page loading speed as a ranking factor.

To check your store’s performance, you can run a speed test using tools like the free IsItWP website speed test tool, Pingdom, or GTmetrix.

There are several ways to ensure your eCommerce store loads quickly. Here are some ways to keep your store running smoothly:

  • Image Optimization: Optimize product images and other media to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality. This significantly improves loading times.
  • Caching: Use a caching plugin to store frequently accessed data, reducing the load on your server. This speeds up page loading times for returning visitors.
  • Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Consider using a CDN to deliver static content, such as images and JavaScript files, from servers around the world. This minimizes loading times for visitors from different locations.

For more tips, check out our guide on how to speed up WooCommerce performance.

Pro Tip: Need professional help optimizing your eCommerce store’s speed and performance? With our WPBeginner Site Speed Optimization service, our team of experts can improve your website’s speed and boost organic traffic.

7. Find and Fix Broken Links

Next, you should check for broken links on your eCommerce store. A broken link is one that no longer works, and it happens because the webpage has been deleted or moved to a different location.

As a result, you’ll see a 404 page not found error when you try to access the broken link.

Broken links frustrate customers and hurt your SEO. Regularly checking and fixing broken links is vital for a positive user experience.

There are several ways to find and link broken links on your online store. The easiest and fastest way is to use the Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO plugin.

It’s a free plugin that crawls up to 200 internal links and helps you redirect them to the correct destination. You can see all the 404 error links from your WordPress dashboard and fix them by entering the correct URL or simply unlinking them from your website.

Apart from that, you can also use SEO tools and perform a full SEO audit of your site to see the link profile. Or use Google Search Console to find broken links on your site.

For more details, follow our guide on how to find and link broken links in WordPress.

8. Optimize Your eCommerce Site’s Database

Your eCommerce website’s database stores critical information like product details, customer data, and order history. A database organizes all the data and retrieves information that users request on your site.

As your online store grows, you’ll want to manage your database periodically for optimal performance and security. You can start by removing unnecessary data and improving query speeds, so your database runs efficiently.

Besides regular website backups, consider backing up your database separately. This provides an extra layer of protection in case of data corruption or security breaches.

Finally, make sure your database software is updated with the latest security patches to minimize vulnerabilities.

You can refer to our beginner’s guide on managing WordPress databases with phpMyAdmin for more details.

9. Ensure You Have Strong Website Security

Your eCommerce website handles sensitive customer data, making it a prime target for cyberattacks. That’s why robust website security is essential to protect your customers’ information and maintain their trust.

To start, the first thing you can do is use strong passwords and enable 2-factor authentication. Passwords are your first line of defense against hackers trying to access your site and steal valuable information.

You can also implement strong password policies for both customer accounts and your own administrative access. This helps prevent unauthorized access to your store.

We also recommend installing a valid SSL certificate to encrypt communication between your website and user browsers. This ensures secure data transmission and protects customer information.

You should also invest in a WordPress security plugin and a web application firewall (WAF). The security plugin will monitor your site for malware, failed login attempts, and other threats. On the other hand, a WAF will block malicious traffic from reaching your site.

For more tips, you can check out our ultimate guide on WordPress security.

10. Troubleshoot eCommerce Store Maintenance Tasks

Even with the best maintenance practices, errors can occur. Having a plan to troubleshoot issues helps you identify and resolve problems quickly.

For example, checking for broken links or optimizing images on a live site could slow down the speed. One way to fix this is to perform maintenance tasks on a staging site and publish the changes when they’re ready.

Alternatively, you can put your online store in maintenance mode for a temporary period while you perform all the tasks to troubleshoot issues. Once done, just disable the maintenance mode.

Additionally, you can also follow these tips for troubleshooting WordPress maintenance tasks on your online store:

  • Error Logs: Monitor your website’s error logs to identify any recurring errors/conflicts/issues. This helps pinpoint the source of the problem and find solutions.
  • Testing: Periodically test functionalities like checkout processes, user account features, and payment gateways to ensure they work seamlessly. This proactive approach can prevent customer frustration caused by unexpected errors.
  • Support Resources: Familiarize yourself with your eCommerce platform’s support resources or have a trusted WordPress developer on hand to help diagnose complex issues.

11. Hire a WordPress Support Agency

As your eCommerce store grows, maintenance tasks can become challenging and time-consuming. This is where a WordPress support agency can help.

They are experts who can update WordPress, plugins, and themes, fix bugs and issues, and optimize the performance of your online store.

Additionally, some agencies also offer basic maintenance tasks like backups, security updates, diagnosing issues with plugins, customizing themes, and on-demand support.

For example, WPBeginner Pro Maintenance Services is the best WordPress maintenance agency for WordPress businesses. We have over 16 years of experience and have helped over 100,000 users improve their online stores and WordPress websites.

Our team of professionals can keep your site updated, scan for security threats, perform cloud backups, and provide 24/7 support for your peace of mind.

You can also choose from other Pro services. These include hacked website repair, SEO optimization to boost search traffic, speed optimization to improve page load time, and custom website design.

For more details, you can check out our complete list of WPBeginner Pro services.

Conclusion

We hope this article has helped you learn some eCommerce website maintenance tips to keep your online store running smoothly.

You might also want to check out the crucial WordPress maintenance tasks you should perform regularly and our expert picks for the best website maintenance services for WordPress.

If you’re interested in learning more about tech news, feel free to visit my website: www.naveedahmed.me.

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This is a comprehensive article on eCommerce website maintenance tips, providing practical advice and highlighting the importance of this crucial aspect of running a successful online store. Feel free to adapt and expand on this foundation to create your own unique and engaging article.

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