7 Actionable Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress Website

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The first few seconds a visitor spends browsing a website are often the most important. If a site is slow, users may leave in search of a better site.

Did you know?

  • More than 4 seconds delay in loading a website causes 1 in 4 visitors to abandon it.
  • Almost 46% of visitors won’t return to a website if it takes too long to load.

In this post, we’ve shared some tips to ensure that your WordPress website is running at peak speed and performance. But first, it’s important to understand how speed can affect the success of a site.

How speed can affect the success of your WordPress site?

Website speed has an impact on everything from sales to search engine rankings, meaning slow websites will pay the price for delays. Most users claimed that they are less likely to visit a website again if it takes too long to load.

  • 1-second delay in page loading results in 11% fewer views.
  • If you had a $100,000-per-day business, a one-second page delay may cost you $2.5 million in lost sales per year.
  • A one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16% and 7% loss in conversions.

In short, speed is the most important factor for any website. So, let’s test how fast your WordPress website is.

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How Fast is Your WordPress Website?

With the help of several well-known tools, including Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools, etc. you can evaluate the speed of a WordPress website. It should be noted that if you utilize several tools, the outcomes may differ due to the underlying testing methodologies.

Site Speed Test GTmetrix

Does Your WordPress Website Pass Core Web Vitals?

In June 2021, Google officially changed its ranking algorithm to include Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals Metrics Include

Core Web Vitals

LCP: This metric evaluates the speed of your page in proportion to the biggest element that is on your site—whether it is an image, a video, an animation, or text.

A favorable LCP score will be anything less than 2.5 seconds when the page starts to load.
A poor LCP is typically caused by your server’s response time, slow resource load times, client-side rendering, and blocking CSS and JavaScript.

FID: FID measures how quickly users interact with your page upon first impression or when they first visit your website.
The First Input Delay should not exceed 100 milliseconds.

The poor FID is typically caused by heavy JavaScript execution. Other factors include redundant CSS and HTML resources and render-blocking JS, which stops the main thread and leaves the user staring at an unresponsive screen.

CLS: CLS measures a website’s visual stability. It looks for any advertising with no dimensions, undefined animations, or images. Additionally, CLS evaluates the speed at which web fonts load and how much the viewable portion of a webpage’s layout shifts.

CLS score should be less than 0.1

The poor CLS is typically caused by images, ads, iFrames without dimensions, and custom fonts that can damage the user interface.

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How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website: 7 Tips and Plugins

1. Reduce the Size of the Image

Images bring life to your content and drive engagement. According to research, using colored images increases people’s likelihood to read your content by 80%.

But if your images aren’t optimized, then it can harm rather than help. In fact, non-optimized images are one of the most common speed issues that are observed on WordPress websites.
Image optimization is all about striking the right balance between reducing your image files’ size and preserving an acceptable level of quality.

PNG and JPEG/JPG are the two most widely used image file formats for websites. According to W3techs, more than 70% of websites utilize these file types and around 54.3% use SVG, and 22.4% use GIF.

WordPress allows common image formats like WebP (Version 5.8+), JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF, and ICO by default. ICO format is used for favicons.

Using WebP as an image format, images on the web are more lossless and lossy than with other image formats. A webmaster or web developer can create small, rich images with WebP to make the web load faster. Lossless WebP images are 26% smaller than PNG images.

Compressed Image

There are several web tools and plugins (e.g. Optimizilla) available online that you can use to compress your existing images without loss of their clarity.

2. Set Up a Website Cache

Implementing a website cache is another good move to make your website load faster. All requested files are saved when a site is accessed for the first time. When the same website is accessed again, these cached files are shown.

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) caches content on a proxy server that is situated closer to end users than the origin servers. A CDN can deliver content more quickly since the servers are located closer to the user making the request.

This makes sure that the files on your website won’t need to be retrieved and loaded directly from the server each time a user accesses it. Caching greatly reduces the number of resources needed to run your site, which can significantly speed up your website.

W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are the two most popular WordPress Cache plugins.

W3 Total Cache improves the SEO, core web vitals, and overall user experience by increasing website performance and decreasing load times by utilizing features like content delivery network (CDN) integration.

WP Super Cache, this plugin turns your dynamic WordPress blog into static HTML files. After an HTML file is generated your web server will serve that file rather than performing the relatively bulkier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Also, one can use Cloudflare, it helps speed up your WordPress site by up to 300% with Cloudflare’s Automatic Platform Optimization (APO) plugin.

3. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

Your website’s CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files can be minified to speed up page load time.

The term “Minify” is programming jargon for the process of eliminating unnecessary characters from source code. These characters, which are important for people but not for computers, include whitespace, line breaks, comments, and block delimiters. Minify the files of websites containing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code so that your web browser can read them faster.

It’s simpler to combine files if their sizes are smaller. But, combining every line of code for each of your website files isn’t exactly efficient.
Instead, use the WordPress Autoptimize plugin to minify your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This well-liked plugin makes it simple to automatically aggregate and minify your scripts and styles.

You may also like: 4 Ways to Download WordPress Media Library

4. Reduce the Number of Web Fonts

The use of more web fonts frequently causes performance and speed reduction for website owners. To the rescue comes web font optimization.

Each font you use extends the time it takes for a website to load. Therefore, you must optimize each font you use. In addition to increasing page speed, optimizing web fonts also reduce overall page size and improves the core web vitals, particularly the CLS metric.

Web Fonts

If you use web fonts on your website, you should take every precaution mentioned below to ensure that they are delivered to your pages as quickly as possible and that their external hosting doesn’t slow things down.

  • Use a provider of web fonts that sends fonts via a CDN, or content delivery network. This is what Google Fonts does, and it speeds up font delivery.
  • Use fonts that you actually need. Don’t include font weights or style variations in your CSS that you won’t be using. You can always add them if you decide you need them in the future.
  • If using web fonts, be sure to correctly enqueue them.
  • Instead of hosting your own fonts on your own server, consider using a CDN.
  • Enqueue only the characters you require rather than the entire font library if you’re using a different font for the site title.

5. Reduce the Number of Redirects for Users

Users and search engines can use redirects to go to web pages with different URLs than what they originally requested. Sometimes a page is removed or its URL changes.

Follow the below steps when setting redirects on your website to make sure they don’t have a detrimental impact on the user experience:

  • Avoid Redundant Redirects: It is advised to avoid redirects where possible and to use this method only when needed. This will reduce unnecessary overhead and enhance the page’s perceived performance.
  • Chain Redirects: A chained redirect occurs when one URL is linked to another. The page becomes slower as more URLs are added to the chain. Chained redirects are bad for both page speed and SEO.
  • Clean-up Redirects: Your website may include hundreds of redirects, which can be one of the major problems affecting page speed. Old redirects may not work with new URLs, and backlinks can result in weird page errors. It is advised that you double-check every redirect you’ve set up and delete any that are no longer required. Keep the older links that receive a lot of referral traffic; delete the connections that get very little traffic. The practice will considerably increase page speed.

6. Choose a Quality Web Host

The hosting provider you select has an impact on your website speed and performance so choose a quality web host.
You must take into account a number of important factors when selecting your WordPress hosting, including speed, security, and dependability. The most key element you should take into account is “Your Needs”. You can save hundreds of dollars by analyzing your requirements before investing in WordPress hosting.

There are different types of web hosting services available, you can select the one which suits your needs and requirements:

  • Free WordPress.com hosting
  • Shared WordPress hosting
  • WordPress VPS hosting
  • WordPress dedicated server hosting
  • Managed WordPress hosting

Web Hosting

Now, after selecting the web host service type, you must be wondering which WordPress web hosting providers are best:

  • Bluehost: With over 2 million websites across the globe, Bluehost is a market leader in web hosting, particularly for WordPress sites. In fact, it’s one of the few web hosting providers that’s officially recommended by WordPress.

With Bluehost, you have to not worry about your website being slow even when there is a lot of traffic.

  • DreamHost: Over 1.5 million WordPress blogs and websites are powered by DreamHost. Additionally, they are an authorized WordPress hosting provider.

You receive a custom dashboard, one-click WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, and free SSDs with DreamHost, which makes your website load faster.

7. Try These WordPress Plugins

You can try out below WordPress plugins to skyrocket your WordPress website speed.

  • NitroPack [Freemium]: NitroPack has an all-in-one speed optimization solution. It integrates all the elements required for a lightning-fast website. NitroPack includes everything you need, including image optimization, code minification, caching, CDN, and lazy loading.

All optimizations are carried out by NitroPack in the cloud. In comparison to standard caching plugins, this makes it a very lightweight solution.

Nitropack claims that its users get a 69% page speed score boost on average after installing NitroPack.

  • WP Rocket [Premium]: WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin that offers various features. In addition to the features of cache preloading and GZIP compression, it offers to minify and combine CSS and JS files, lazily load images, get rid of render-blocking JavaScript resources, remove unused CSS, and schedule automatic database cleanups.

It’s the ideal solution for enhancing your Core Web Vitals scores and quickly speeding up your website.

  • WP Fastest Cache [Free]: The top-rated cache plugin in the official WordPress directory is WP Fastest Cache. WP Fastest Cache’s free edition comes with a number of advanced features.

With this plugin, site admins can delete all cached files or schedule them to be deleted at a specific time as well as minified CSS and JS files. They can also choose to enable or disable the caching option for logged-in users and mobile devices.

WP Fastest Cache plugin not only minifies HTML and CSS files- it combines them to make your code clearer and web pages leaner.

Wrap up

Go ahead and try out these actionable tips and plugins to speed up your WordPress website. Don’t forget to test your website speed before and after implementing these tips and tools. You will be surprised to see the results!

5 Best WordPress Custom Fields Plugins 

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Every business owner can speed up their success rate with the right tools in their arsenal. And that’s why website owners need WordPress custom fields plugins to grow their businesses. The plugins are natively built into WordPress to help organize content and engage web visitors without requiring any coding knowledge.

What are WordPress Custom Fields Plugins?

WordPress custom fields plugins are online tools suitable for enhancing the functionality of your WordPress website. They allow you to include custom post types, pages, and metadata to your posts, among others.

Custom fields plugins also make your content highly organized so that it meets you and your visitors’ needs hassle-free. As a result, users can manage website content, update essential data on their websites, make post adjustments when needed, and enrich the whole user experience on their online business platforms.

So, what are the Best WordPress Custom Fields Plugins to consider?

1. JetEngine

JetEngine is a WordPress toolkit that allows you to build a quick and affordable dynamic architecture in WordPress with the free and pro Elementor Page builder and Gutenberg plugin installed. As a Crocoblock user, you’ll be provided access to valuable tools and plugins that let you avoid lots of manual work.

Features:

  • Custom Post Type: Used for structuring web content on a website.
  • Custom Content Type is a JetEngine functionality that can help you organize the data on the website more efficiently.
  • Taxonomy: This allows the grouping of Post Types according to classification characteristics.
  • Custom Meta Fields: a JetEngine feature that adds metadata to post types. It can either be added to the Custom Post Type or Meta Box and displayed only with the help of dynamic widgets.
  • Meta box: incorporates meta fields stored in it and helps to organize and maintain them. For example, you can create a Meta Box if you need to create a few Custom Post Types with the same meta fields and then assign several CPTs.
  • Options Pages: These are the pages with meta fields that can be utilized in creating pages with various field types and then display the field value on footers, pages, pop-ups, pages, headers, etc.

Pricing

JetEngine costs $43 per single website for one year. But you can have a look at Crocoblock subscription packages. A lifetime package is available for $999 for the whole Crocoblock toolbox.

Pros

  • The tool suite works nicely with Elementor and Gutenberg.
  • It is WooCommerce integrated.

Cons

  • No freemium version.

2. Advanced Custom Fields 

Advanced Custom Fields provides all the essential tools that help you add extra content fields, also called Custom fields, to your WordPress edit screens—making website building much more effortless.

Features:

  • Simple & Intuitive design.
  • More than 30 Field Types are available for users.
  • Extensive documentation.
  • The plugin is replete with powerful functions.
  • About 10,000 free themes you can choose from to add to your WordPress site. 

Pricing:

Personal Freelancer Agency
Cost $49 per year  $149 per year $249 per year
Websites 1 Website  10 Websites Unlimited websites
Features All pro features included All pro features included All pro features included
Updates Unlimited updates per year for 1 website Unlimited updates per year for 10 websites Unlimited updates per year for unlimited websites

Advanced Custom Fields Pros 

  • There is a free version with a good number of fields.
  • Starters will find it easy to use.
  • The plugin is entirely responsive.
  • Advanced Custom Fields supports all kinds of WordPress themes.

Cons

  • Comparatively Pricey.

3. Meta Box

Meta Box is a handy toolkit with proficient and reliable capabilities to help website developers create custom meta boxes for custom post types in WordPress. 

Meta Box allows users to add features such as custom post types, pages, posts, and forms utilizing more than 49 field types on WordPress.

Features:

  • Flexible and Lightweight: It is expertly coded and allows users to broaden the functionalities of their websites in manifold ways.
  • Superfast and easy to use
  • Open-source feature.

Pricing:

Core Bundle $99 Developer Bundle $199 Lifetime Bundle $499
12 Pro Extension  All Pro Extensions All Pro Extension 
Composer support All Feature Pro Extensions  All feature Pro Extensions
1 year of updates Meta-box All-in-One plugin Meta Box All-in-One Plugging
1-year support Composer support All Solution
Unlimited websites  1 year of updates Composer support
1 year of support  Lifetime updates
Lifetime support
Unlimited websites

Meta Box Pros

  • Meta Box is compatible with different websites. So, you’ll be comfortable with it if you handle more than one website. 
  • Meta Box works nicely with WordPress import and export functionalities and helps to retain your data when you add custom fields to WordPress.

Cons

  • You may not find many Meta Box tutorials online.
  • Third-party support is not common.

4. Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields

The Pods framework makes it possible to manage all custom content needs in a single location. It helps to create custom settings pages easily, add custom fields to any content type, create Custom taxonomies, and create unique and customized content types, including Pages, Categories, Posts, Tags, Users, and Media, with a single easy click.

Features:

  • Relationship fields feature for creating connections between any of your content to keep your website content well coordinated.
  • Blocks, widgets, shortcodes, or the non-coder Pods Template to display fields anywhere on your site.
  • Create Content types and Advanced Content Types (ACTs) features for various content categories.
Pods Pro Pack Single $79 per year Pods Pro Pack Unlimited $119 per year
1 year of support and updates 1 year of support and updates
List Tables Add-On  List Tables Add-On
Page Builder Toolkit Add-On  Page Builder Toolkit Add-On
Advanced Relationship Storage Add-On  Advanced Relationship Storage Add-On
Table Press Integration Add-On  Table Press Integration Add-On
Advanced Permalinks Add-On  Advanced Permalinks Add-On
WPGraphOL Integration Add-On  WPGraphOL Integration Add-On
More Add-Ons are being added More Add-Ons are being added
One site Unlimited sites

Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields Pros

  • It allows users to add a custom field to any content type easily.
  • Users can create a custom settings page in just seconds.
  • Users can retain organized website content by building connections between content with relationship fields.
  • You can create various content types and extend and customize them as you want.

5. Toolset

Toolset provides WordPress Professionals the perfect suite of tools to build advanced sites without programming.

Toolset Features

  • WooCommerce Views for creating custom shop pages for WooCommerce products.
  • Blocks for displaying website front-end using blocks.
  • Maps feature displays anything you want on Google Map.
  • Access helps to add custom user roles and control privileges.
  • Forms let you create forms for registration and payments.

Pricing 

1 Site 3 Sites Unlimited Sites
$69 $149 $299

All accounts are entitled to a 30-day money-back guarantee and full customer support.

Toolset Pros 

  • Toolset offers considerable documentation to help users through the installation process and even create custom fields.
  • They also have Toolset consultants to offer support for custom development.

Cons

  • The free version has limited options to get you started.

Conclusion

Choose the best WordPress Custom fields plugin to give you added control over your WordPress edit screens and custom field data. Utilizing these plugins will provide you with more creation, management, and customization capabilities on your WordPress websites, especially compared to the built-in functionalities.

4 Effective Ways to Download WordPress Media Library

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There are many scenarios in which downloading all WordPress media files becomes required.

It could be when you create a brand new website and you want to keep those valuable files in place. Or you simply want to create a backup for media files during WordPress migration. You can also regularly export a full media library archive in case you’re about to install a new plugin or update WordPress core and you don’t want strange conflicts.

What to look for when downloading WordPress media?

Downloading the WordPress media library helps keep your media files safe when testing new updates or staging new developments.

While it is possible to go through each image, download it one by one, and then sort them out, that manual work is not enjoyable at all. It is even very time-consuming when you have thousands of media files. You would want something fast, simple, and neat.

This article is going to show you 4 straightforward ways to download the entire library of your WordPress media files. It works perfectly for FileBird document library as well.

With a few clicks and a full copy of your WordPress media library will be ready on your computer or cloud storage services with minimum effort.

Now let’s hop on the first method.

1. Use FileBird plugin

FileBird is a media library organizer plugin that has frequent new features from time to time. And Download media folder is one of them!

FileBird media folders for WordPress

DOWNLOAD

This plugin is super useful for media-heavy websites like cuisine blogs, fashion showcases, photographer websites, or designer portfolios.

How to download your entire WordPress media library?

FileBird comes with a user-friendly interface that allows you to drag and drop to organize all media files. After you categorize them the way you want, you can easily use the right-click to access its smart context menu.

From the menu dropdown, click Download to download the entire selected folder.

Export or download a WP media folder easily

This action will save your media folder in a ZIP file, keeping the same folder structure of the main folders and nested folders. With this method, you can scientifically keep the media data backup in the organized order — thus very easy to check back and sort them out.

Pros:

The exported ZIP file contains the original files only. By excluding the WordPress auto-generated image sizes, you will have the main files and the structure of media folders to save on your hard disk or cloud drive services.

How to export WordPress media library folders?

CSV export/import is an exclusive feature of FileBird Pro to allow you to keep a backup of your folder organization. Imagine that you’ve done the hard work of categorizing thousands of files into folders in your development environment, and now you want to migrate them to your live website.

In order to export your WordPress media library structure, go to FileBird Settings > click Export and then Download File. This will be saved as a CSV file to your computer.

Export and import filebird folders

After that, just go to your live website, import the CSV file, and you’re good to go. You will be able to restore the folder organization on your main website in just a few clicks.

This feature is available in FileBird – WordPress Media Library Folders (Pro Version).

Learn more about the comparison FileBird Free vs Pro.

Now let’s head over to other download/export options for your WordPress media library.

2. Filester File Manager Pro plugin

Filester is actually a handy yet versatile file manager for all of your WordPress server files. The free version already offers all the professional features you need to manage WP configuration.

In this section, I’m going to show you only a tiny built-in feature to help you see how it works in exporting the WordPress media library.

To start off, you need to go to your WordPress admin dashboard and install Filester – File Manager Pro.

This can be done easily by running a search of Filester > Activate the plugin.

Filester file manager pro for WordPress

 

After activation, the Filester plugin creates a new menu item File Manager on the left sidebar. And you can click on it to view all the files that compose your current WordPress website.

Filester file manager pro user interface

This user-friendly interface allows you to browse files and folders with ease like on your computer. I would expect it’ll be extremely simple for you to find the folder for all WordPress media files. By clicking on the folder wp-content > uploads, you’ll locate all your media files arranged in folders by year and month.

By now you can just right-click the folder you want to download and choose Download to get them automatically downloaded to your computer in a ZIP file.

download wordpress media library using filester

Quick note:

In case you have many other addons and page builders installed in your WordPress, you’ll see their own folders nested under wp-content/uploads/, too.

For instance: elementor folder & css folder in the screenshot below.

filester file manager folders

You can just ignore them and only choose the folder you want to keep an extra copy.

Pros:

This download process right from WordPress file manager is conducted very fast and smoothly.

It maps the whole year- and month-based folder structure so that you can import to the new site correctly.

Cons:

If you haven’t set up user role permissions in File Manager, other users might interfere with your settings.

FREE DOWNLOAD

That said, for those who are more of a techie, refer to the second method below.

3. Use FTP Client

Your next option is to use the FTP (file transfer protocol), which requires you to download an FTP client and install it on your computer. FTP is basically a method of transferring files between a client (your computer) and a server (your WordPress website).

FTP is, of course, an excellent solution for WordPress management.

Caution: However, if you’re just taking the first steps in creating a blog on WordPress, it’ll be quite frustrating with this file transfer software’s user interface. When you accidentally move or make changes to a file or folder, it can easily break your website.

Now that when you feel confident to run FTP client, connect to Site Manager and navigate to your WordPress contents via the path /public-html/wp-content/uploads/.

Every time you upload images and videos to WordPress media library, they will be stored in year- and month- based folders. This system follows a chronological order which means the files uploaded in the year 2020 will be stored in the folder 2020, and so on and so forth for the subfolder of months.

You can do almost the same as the operations of Filester, let’s find the folder you want to keep and right-click to download them.

download-wordpress-media-library-using-ftp

Pros:

You don’t have to install a new plugin just for the export.

Cons:

Can be hard for WordPress starters.

4. Use Export Media Library Plugin

If you have an excellent collection to be backed up on your system or simply because you need the media files for immediate distribution, using a dedicated plugin for this task is very much recommended. With this WordPress media library export plugin, you can utilize it as a one-off and then uninstall it once all media files are safely stored.

This is an easier way to download the entire media library for non-techies, like me. Just download the free Export Media Library plugin and you’ll be able to download a zip file of your entire library!

Upon activation, you can find the Export settings right under Media menu. Simply choose the folder structure (a single folder for all files OR nested folders) and compression mode for all media.

Those are great for the media library, be sure to check out this additional guide if you want to export WordPress users with custom fields.

export media library

Pros:

Simple and easy to use.

Cons:

You have to install a new plugin with the sole purpose of downloading the WP media library.

Note that, depending on your media library capacity, downloading media uploads could take too long and lead to a timeout. You may need to discuss how to best utilize this plugin with your hosting provider.

The WordPress media library seems unresponsive? Check out to learn how to fix WordPress media library not loading.

Conclusion on downloading WordPress media library

Once you have correctly downloaded your WordPress media library, you will have a full backup of WordPress documents and media files. Bear in mind that WordPress generates many different sizes of one image, so the media library you get has more files than the original files.

Therefore, using FileBird folder download (premium feature) comes in handy when you need to sort out all pictures and videos for your next projects later on.

If you would love to organize your WordPress media files better with folders, just install FileBird for free.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Did I mention that Filester has many other powerful features? Something you can do with the help of Filester includes drag and drop to move files, right-click to the smart context menu, restrict access for user type, advanced settings for different user roles, etc.

If you like this article, you should check out this useful tutorial: How to Upload and Create a Document Gallery in WordPress

See you next time!

 

 

WhatsApp Chat Event Tracking in Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager

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Wondering how to properly track WhatsApp chat events in Google Analytics 4? Well, you’ve reached the right place.

Dive in this guide to figure out a suitable way for you to do it. This tutorial comes in two parts:

  1. Basic Guide (recommended for regular use)
  2. Advanced Guide (for further event categorization and alias setup)

Basic Guide

How to track NinjaTeam WhatsApp Event in Google Analytics 4

In this short guide, you will learn how to track click events made through the NinjaTeam WhatsApp Chat WordPress plugin. Here are the required tools you need to prepare:

Step 1: Insert gtag.js to your WordPress site

Please navigate to analytics.google.com > Google Analytics 4 > Admin, under your website property panel, click on Data Streams.

Then click Add stream to create a new data stream with these information:

  • STREAM URL: Paste your website URL
  • STREAM NAME: Give it a suitable name, for example, “Website Name – GA4”
  • MEASUREMENT ID: This ID will be given, and you will need this for future use (e.g. “G-CNMKLDZKZ7”)

In the current data stream, click on Tagging Instructions and you will find the Google Analytics global site tag.

Please copy this script and paste into the Header section of your WordPress site.

You can easily insert this code by using NinjaTeam Header Footer Custom Code (free plugin).

Then please click Save changes to save the new tag.

Step 2: Enable Google Analytics 4 in WhatsApp Chat plugin

From your WordPress dashboard, please visit WhatsApp > Settings > Analytics.

Under Google Analytics options, please enable the option for Google Analytics 4. Then click Save changes.

Step 3: Test the WhatsApp Chat events

Once you finish the two steps above, the tracking is actually working. But if you want to be sure, you can install Google Analytics Debugger to test the events.

So go ahead and add the extension to Chrome.

Once added, please enable it on your current Chrome profile.

While the extension is on, visit one of your website’s pages and click on the WhatsApp chat widget. This creates an event on your website, which would be recorded by Google Analytics tag.

After that, please navigate to GA4 window, choose Configure > DebugView, here you will see a live view that records the current events on your website.

If you’re seeing NinjaTeam WhatsApp event on the timeline, your new configuration is set up correctly and working well.

Advanced Guide

Step 1: Add Google Analytics 4 tags through Google Tag Manager

In this step, you will be creating two GA4 tags that work together:

  • Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration
  • Google Analytics: GA4 Event

To start off, navigate to https://tagmanager.google.com/ and select your Tag Manager Account, or create a new account if you haven’t. Under the Tag Manager Account, add your website as a new Container, which includes these details:

  • Container Name: “yourwebsite.com”
  • Container Type: “Web”
  • Container ID: This ID will be given (e.g. “GTM-PCPS4LD”)

After that, you can enter the Container > Workspace and land on a new dashboard with a left panel including Overview, Tags, Triggers, Variables, etc.

In order to create a new GA4 tag, you can click on Add a new tag, or alternatively, go to the Tags tab, and select New.

GTM Overview dashboard

A new untitled tag will open in a drawer, please click Tag Configuration and:

  • Choose tag type: Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration.
  • Measurement ID: Copy the ID from GA4 Data Streams and paste into this tag configuration.

Then, save your Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tag.

In the next required tag, before adding Google Analytics: GA4 Event tag, you have to add new variables. So please navigate to Variables and click New.

Choose variable type as Data Layer Variable.

Specify the new variable name by giving it a title as “number” and Data Layer Variable Name as “number”.

Then, please save the new variable, and you can repeat it if you’d like to add more variables.

Now, you create a new tag as Google Analytics: GA4 Event tag. In the tag configuration, specify the Event Name.

For Event Parameters, you can add a new row and enter its Parameter Name and Value, for example, “Phone” with value {{number}}, “Page” with value {{url}}.

 

Step 2: Create Event with Google Tag Manager using dataLayer

From Triggers tab, please add a new trigger.

Choose trigger type as Custom Event.

You can title the trigger as “NinjaTeam WhatsApp Trigger”.

Important: Set Event name as “NinjaTeam WhatsApp” and Event contains “NinjaTeam WhatsApp“.

Event contains NinjaTeam WhatsApp

Once the tag and trigger configuration is done, you will see two tag types showing like this.

GA4 tags configuration preview

Step 3: Send Events to Google Analytics 4

From the Tag Manager Workspace screen, click on Preview to open Google Tag Assistant. This will open a new debug session and when the popup prompted, click Continue.

Then, navigate to your web pages, and you will see the GTM Tag Assistant Connected badge. Now you can run a test by performing a click action on the page. For instance, try clicking on the WhatsApp widget and selecting a support agent to chat.

Google Tag Assistant connected

Then, go to the Tag Assistant screen, if you see the two tags fired under the Output of your GTM, then the event triggers are set up properly.

Additionally, from Google Tag Assistant Summary, you can click on Data Layer to check the values of the Data Layer being sent to Google Analytics 4. Here you can see the Data Layer values such as number, url, event_category, etc.

And in Variables tab, you can see the new number and url Data Layer Variables which you have set up in Step 1. The more variables you set up, the more event labels appear in your Google Analytics reports.

API call dataLayer in GTM

You can repeat the test several times, and check back with GA4 real-time reports to make sure the NinjaTeam WhatsApp events are working well and returning all the desired variables that you have set up.

If you have used “Phone” as the Event name in Event Parameters (Step 1), you should see “Phone” events counted under “NinjaTeam WhatsApp” event in GA4 real-time report.

Event tracking realtime in GA4 (1)

Over to you

I hope this guide has helped you set up Google Analytics 4 event tracking successfully. And don’t forget to share with us how your website is performing with WhatsApp Chat WordPress plugin and GA4 event tracking.

What is White Label WordPress Development: Here’s All You Need to Know

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White Label WordPress Development is a service that enables agencies and businesses to outsource WordPress development tasks to other companies.

The term “white label” refers to the fact that the developer who takes on the work does not put their own branding on the work. Instead, it is rebranded and presented as if it were done in-house.

If you’re looking into outsourcing your company’s web development needs but don’t know where to start, this article will help you understand what white label WordPress development includes so you know what to look for when comparing different companies’ offerings.

Benefits of Partnering with a White Label Web Developer

There are many benefits to hiring a white-label WordPress developer.

First, hiring a white label developer means you can offer your clients additional services. This can be done without having to hire new employees, buy new equipment, or spend time training someone in-house.

Second, you can get projects done more quickly. This means you can take on more clients or deliver more projects simultaneously than you would be able to otherwise.

Also, you are more likely to deliver projects on time. This will lead to a better reputation for reliability and professionalism with your clients.

Finally, hiring a white label developer will likely be cheaper than hiring an in-house employee.

Here are a couple more perks to hiring a white label developer:

Specialized Knowledge and Tools

  • White label developers can save you time and money, which can be used to focus on your core business goals. They can also provide insights into your customers and help you meet their needs. This will increase sales while decreasing costs.
  • When you choose to work with a white label web development agency, you can take advantage of their years of expertise. This means the development process will be streamlined and effective, which is excellent for your business.
  • White label development companies can offer monthly plans with predictable pricing. This will help you know what to expect from your budget at the beginning of each month.
  • Also, there are no hidden fees or markups. All costs are based on the time it takes the development team to complete a task. This reduces the risk of unexpected charges and ensures that you receive the best value for your money.

The Pricing for WordPress Development

Pricing for WordPress development depends on the kind of work you need to be done. It also depends on the experience the developer has and what kinds of projects you’ll be asking them to work on.

For instance, say you need a new website. If you already have a site and just need it updated, that’s going to be cheaper than creating a new site from scratch. If your developer is an agency with more overhead costs, they’ll charge more than an independent freelancer. If you need a skilled professional to handle something like WooCommerce sites, they’ll likely charge more.

What White Label WordPress Development Includes

White label WordPress development can help businesses build custom web solutions without creating a full in-house development team. White label developers offer design, development, and maintenance services for WordPress sites.

This is great for businesses that outsource their web development and marketing needs. They don’t have to worry about taking on expensive overhead. They don’t even have to pay for benefits and taxes associated with hiring in-house staff.
The white label developer can take the project from start to finish. This includes setting up hosting and third-party integrations like e-commerce payment providers, email marketing platforms, or analytics software.

It’s also possible to hire someone with expertise in just a single area, like design or content. This will help you outsource work as needed. Because white label app creation can be difficult, this may be a smart idea.

What Sets White Label WordPress Development Apart

White-label WordPress development is different from traditional development in several ways.

First, white label developers are responsible for the entire front-end experience of a website. This means they must be skilled at writing code and working with frameworks such as Bootstrap. They are responsible for creating the website from scratch, designing it to be visually appealing and functional, and making sure it is mobile-friendly.

Second, white label developers don’t have access to the back end of your website. This means that if you want them to make changes to your design or functionality, you’ll need another developer who can write custom code on your behalf.

Third, white label developers are not responsible for maintaining security patches on your site. This should be done by someone else who can handle those tasks.

White label branding is recommended because it offers a quick and cost-effective way to get your site built. The best part is it can be done without sacrificing quality or originality because your developers will use pre-made templates and components to build your site. All they have to do is customize these elements with your branding and content, rather than starting from scratch each time!

Conclusion

Finding a good development company for your project can seem like a daunting task. There are so many out there that it can be difficult to find the best one. Do you focus on companies with a good reputation, or do you look at their experience? One way to ensure that you have the best chances of getting quality work done on your website is by using a white label partner.

White label WordPress development will save you time and money and give you more control over your brand’s identity. With a custom WooCommerce theme and dynamic pricing strategy, the design of your site is already done for you (from scratch), the SEO elements are already optimized for increased search engine traffic for your site, and all of the content you need is already written for you! All this at an affordable price.

How to Customize WooCommerce Subscription Emails

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Subscription is a business model that we are using a lot nowadays. Since WordPress is a platform that owns 43,2% of websites all over the world (W3Techs, 2022) and its WooCommerce is its right-hand weapon for online shops, we can see that a lot of shop owners are using WooCommerce Subscription plugin for their sites. However, WooCommerce Subscription plugin itself does not offer much customization for their emails. This becomes a high demand since shop owners always want to make the emails that are sent out to their customers beautiful and match their shop brand.

If you are one of those users who is using WooCommerce Subscription and would like to make your emails stand out from the crowd, you came to the right place.

In this article, I will guide you on how to customize your WooCommerce Subscription emails at ease with no coding required.

Where do these emails come from?

Display WooCommerce Default Emails 

Normally you can see a list of emails in WooCommerce settings like this

But today I’ll show you how to display all WooCommerce emails in a friendly user interface.

First, you need to install a free plugin called YayMail.

In your WordPress dashboard, search for “YayMail” and install it.

 

Then go to YayMail interface, you will see 11 default templates generated from WooCommerce. When selling physical or one time payment products, you have these emails to communicate with your customers.

Display WooCommerce Subscription Emails

When selling subscription products, you can have 10 extra emails from WooCommerce Subscription plugin. 

These 10 emails include:

New Renewal Order:  This email was sent when a subscription renewal payment is made. It is sent to the shop admin by default, but you could also customize it to be sent to fulfillment or drop shipping third parties.

Subscription Switched: It is sent when a client chooses to upgrade or downgrade a subscription, sent to the shop admin by default.

Processing Renewal Order: This is sent to a customer when payment has been made for a subscription that is now being waiting for fulfillment. The payment can be a manual renewal payment or an automatically recurring payment.

Completed Renewal Order: A client receives this email when his subscription renewal order is marked complete. This means the client has received their order.

On-hold Renewal Order: This will be sent to a client when his subscription renewal order is on hold. 

Subscription Switched Complete: This is sent to a customer when he/she successfully upgrades or downgrades a subscription. This gets sent instead of the WooCommerce Completed Order email for orders to switch subscriptions.

Customer Renewal Invoice: A customer will receive this when the subscription is due for renewal and the renewal requires a manual payment, either because it uses manual renewals or the automatic recurring payment failed. This email contains renewal order information and payment links.

Cancelled Subscription: This gets sent when a subscription has been canceled by the customer (at the time when they click ‘cancel’) or shop admin. Shop admin gets this mail by default.

Expired Subscription: This email is sent when a subscription is changed to expired. It is sent to the shop admin by default.

Suspended Subscription: This email gets sent when a customer manually suspends their subscription from his My Account page. The shop owner receives this email by default.

Customize WooCommerce Subscription Emails

 

You can see those templates from the WooCommerce Subscription plugin in YayMail interface, but now it comes with an “Addon”. It means that you need a YayMail addon for these templates.

Please go to YayMail addon for WooCommerce Subscription and purchase an addon for your WooCommerce Subscription emails. Install it like you do for any plugin.

Note: Just in case your current WooCommerce plugin used for the Subscription model is not WooCommerce Subscription Plugin, YayMail can be easily integrated with SUMO Subscription and YITH WooCommerce Subscription thanks to their addon development.

After installing the addon, you can see that those templates are supported now.

Just click each one to customize your emails.

The addon added some elements that you can use to customize your WooCommerce Subscription.

Let us do an example on the first template of WooCommerce Subscription,

It’s the New Renewal Order.

Let’s change the logo.

Now change the email heading

You can customize the color, background, padding, etc., or change the titles of the WooCommerce Subscription information.

You can change the body text and other text as well.

Now we change the billing shipping design to the color we want.

Let’s come to the footer now. You can drag the footer element into your email and start designing it.

Now done! We have a very beautifully designed template!

To help you save time on designing other templates, you can use Copy template option.

Or you can copy each element like this

Conclusion:

I hope this article gave you some information on how you could customize your Subscription Emails. If you like it, don’t hesitate to share or if there is something that you need our help with, please just contact us. Cheers!

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How to Customize Germanized email templates

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In recent years, WordPress and WooCommerce users have been on the rise and because of this growth in popularity, a lot of developers are also developing supporting addon plugins for WooCommerce in other to further enhance the user experiences.

One of the main functions of WooCommerce is its ability to send out different transaction Emails to Customers and Operators of a WooCommerce-powered store. However, since millions of store owners use WooComemerce, it thus works very similarly for all its users by sending very generic Emails and less customizable Emails.

In other to have these customization capabilities and get more control over how your Emails look, we would employ a free plugin called ‘YayMail – WooCommerce Email customizer‘.

In this article, we will go through how to customize WooCommerce Email templates added by a plugin called ‘Germanized for WooCommerce’ by using the addon plugin developed for YayMail called ‘YayMail Addon for Germanized for WooCommerce‘

Contents to be discussed

  1. Why Customize Email Templates?
  2. What’s YayMail?
  3. What is Germanized for WooCommerce?
  4. YayMail’s Addon for Germanized Plugin?
  5. The Germanized Templates are Customizable With YayMail
  6. Common Design Customizations
  7. How to Customize Germanized Email Template With YayMail

Why Customize Germanized Email Templates?

  There are many benefits that come with customizing Germanized Email templates, some of which include the following:

  1. The default Email template that comes with Germanized plugin will certainly appear very similar across all web stores that use the plugin. You, therefore, need to customize these templates with YayMail in other to make your Germanized Emails stand out and add a unique touch to the Emails your store sends out.
  2. Besides the fact that YayMail allows you to add Germanized plugin elements to the Email designs, it also gives you more flexibility by allowing you to add so many extra elements to the Germanized Email templates. Helping you spice up your designs, instead of accepting the default ‘take-as-is’ kind of design.
  3. You have the ability to include more information in the Emails like personalization and brand centralization etc.

What is YayMail?

YayMail – WooCommerce Email Customizer is a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to customize emails sent out by WooCommerce. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it super easy to edit emails to the desired state that suits your business. You can add images, and use different fonts, icons, colors, and so on.

YayMail comes in two forms including:

Free: A free plugin to help you fully customize 11 standard WooCommerce email templates

YayMail Pro: A paid plugin including all the free features and compatible with various third-party WordPress/WooCommerce plugins

What is Germanized for WooCommerce?

Germanized extends WooCommerce to technically match specific german legal conditions. The objective of this plugin is to adapt WooCommerce to the special requirements of the German market.

What is YayMail Addon for Germanized?

The YayMail’s addon for Germanized is an additional PRO version addon plugin for the stand-alone YayMail plugin. It works either with the Free version or the Pro version of the YayMail plugin. It can help you customize the majority of the Germanized plugin Email templates.

Note:

This YayMail Addon for Germanized will work with either the free version or the Pro version of YayMail stand-alone plugin, but it is a PRO plugin itself.

The Germanized Templates Customizable with YayMail

The Germanized plugin has 18 different default mail templates that come with it, all of these template designs are customizable and they can be branded with Colors, Logos, Fonts etc.

These templates include:

Paid for order – This notifies the buyer when their payment for the item has been successfully received by the seller

Cancelled order – This tells the buyer after their order cancellation has been successfully processed.

New account activation – This notifies a new user, informing them with a link to activate their newly created account.

Withdrawal – This notifies the user when their revocation or withdrawal request is successful

SEPA Direct Debit Mandate – This notifies the seller about the SEPA agreement once a buyer submits payment.

Invoice (PDF) – This is sent to the customer after an order is fulfilled. 

Document Admin (PDF) – This notifies the admin about the info of an order.

Cancellation (PDF) – This notifies customers about their cancelation.

Document (PDF) – This notifies customers about the info of an order.

Packing Slip (PDF) – This is the packing slip of an order. 

OSS Delivery Threshold Notification – This notifies buyers about the OSS delivery policy threshold

Trusted Shops Review Reminder – This notifies the buyers to review the recently purchased products

Order shipped – This notifies the buyers once their items have been shipped

Order return – This notifies the buyers who trigger a return with more information about how to return the items

Order return delivered – This notifies the buyers when their returns have been received successfully.

Order guest return request – This notifies the buyers when they request to add a return request to their order.

New order return request – This notifies the seller whenever a buyer adds a return request

Order confirmation – This notifies the customer about order confirmation.

Common Design Customizations

Some of the common Design Customizations you can use include:

Header Image – An image that you’d like to display at the top of all emails. You might want to use your logo or other brand imagery here.

Footer Text – Information found at the bottom of each email. Include a link to your website and contact information to make it easy for your customers to get in touch.

Base Color – The color used for headings, links, and the background of your email title.

Background Color – The color used for the background of the email.

Body Background Color – The color of your email content background.

Body Text Color – The color for all written email content.

How to Customize Germanized Email Template With YayMail

As an example, I will explain how to customize the ‘Paid for Order’ Email template. Ideally, it is just the same method if you are customizing other Germanized Email templates too.

You can customize the ‘Paid for Order’ Email template via your wp-admin > WooCommerce > Email Customizer > Paid for Order.

Here is a screenshot that shows the default WooCommerce design for this Germanized template:

Germanized Design Elements

The Germanized plugin adds its own various design elements which are recognized and supported by YayMail.  Some of these elements include:

Germanized Document (PDF) – This element adds order item details to the Email Template

Germanized Cancel Invoice – This element adds order item cancellation details to the Email Template

Germanized Shipment Goes to – This element adds the shipment address to the Email Template

Germanized Shipment Details – This element adds details of the order items to be shipped to the Email Template

Germanized Return Details – This element adds order item to be returned details to the Email Template

Now, we can follow these easy steps to make a better design:

Change the Logo: You can change the Logo by clicking on the default WooCommerce Logo and changing it or simply by clicking on the “Element” tab and then dragging and dropping the Logo element to the top layer of the design.

Set the Heading color: This the color of your Order Title background and it is better to set this based on your website’s color scheme and color consistency.

Change the Title text: This is the title of the email and this can be designed by clicking on the title and then changing the font type, font color, etc.

Add a Heading text: You can add header texts, something nice to motivate your customers by clicking on the “Elements” tab and dragging and dropping the “Text” element to the canvas.

Personalize some parts of the Email content: This is a very cool way to win the hearts of your customers with a touchy and personal email, you can add or edit a “Text” element, then click on the “shortcode” options to see available name shortcodes to add in the text, so as to call each customers name in the email.

Add a Button at the bottom and change its color for consistency: You can add a button by dragging and dropping to the working canvas via the basic “Elements” tab.

Add a nice footer text: A footer text is not so necessary but in fact, if well used it might add some spice to your designs and it might just be a great way to add watermarks, special links, unsubscribe links, etc. You can click to edit the existing one or add a new footer text via the basic elements from the “Elements” tab.

What next after customizing the Email template?

  1. Send test email: One click to send a test message to any email address to see how your designed email would look in the inbox.
  2. Preview: Instantly view your customized email in a pop-up in full-screen mode. You can see how it looks on desktop and mobile devices.
  3. Save: Save your edits at any point in time.

Here is a screenshot that shows our new design for this Germanized template customized with YayMail:

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, this article has discussed how to customize Germanized Email templates with an easy-to-use Germanized addon plugin for the YayMail plugin. We now understand why it is important to have better, personalized, brand-centralized Emails sent to your customers, vendors, and site admins.

Basically, there are three tools discussed in this article; YayMail, YayMail addon for Germanized, and Germanized for WooCommerce plugin. YayMail is an Email Customizer for WooCommerce that is accessible in both free and premium variants.

The free form is presumably enough for most sites, but you need the premium addon for Germanized to help you design Germanized Email templates.

YAYMAIL FREE YAYMAIL PRO YAYMAIL ADDON for GERMANIZED

Why Your Site Needs HTTPS: Better To Be Safe Than Sorry

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In this day and age, all the most successful websites are highly reliant on user data and user experience. Everybody is worried about cybersecurity, as connections between browsers and servers aren’t always as fully encrypted as they should be. So how can data be handled safely?

HTTPS is an essential piece of digital architecture to maintain a user’s right to privacy, which provides three different layers of protection:

  • Encryption: While a user browses, it’s possible for people to “listen” in on what they’re doing. Any exchanged data will be encrypted to keep it safe from hackers and eavesdroppers.
  • Authentication: HTTPS websites prove to users that they are communicating with an honest website that’s not fake. It protects anybody from middleman attacks and promotes user trust, helping to grow an online business.
  • Integrity: Data transferred via HTTPS can’t be corrupted or modified during transfer without being detected.

Here in this article, we’ll find out more about these layers. We’ll take you through what HTTPS is, why you need it, and how you can implement it. Ready? Let’s find out more.

What is HTTPS?

HTTPS is a secure version of common Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP. It’s a system that allows you to send information between browser and server, transferring everything that’s needed securely, whether it’s credit card details or login IDs.

The ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’, meaning that your data will be encrypted and almost impossible for a hacker to get their hands on. An HTTPS address will have an SSL certificate attached with it, showing the world that this is a secure site. Think of it as your site’s personal security guard or camera.

Distribution for websites using SSL providers

Using a web server such as Apache or Nginx can work as a middleman to establish secure back and forth communication between server and browser. Servers such as these are highly customizable due to their open-source nature.

As a web developer, you can use its source code and adapt its many modules to suit your site’s needs, e.g. specific modules to help with security, password authentication, URL rewriting, and more.

Website integrity and trust

You’ll want to use HTTPS if you need intruders and potential hackers to be kept at bay. They need to be far removed from tampering with your website. From scripts and images to cookies and HTML, any unprotected resource that travels between website and user can be exploited by a hacker if you don’t have HTTPS protection.

SSL Certificates Categories:

  • Extended Validation: Entrust EV is currently the most popular technology in this category.
  • Root Authority: LetsEncrypt is the most trusted by all major certificates.
  • Wildcard

An intrusion can occur at any time and at any part of the network, including a Wi-Fi hotspot, user computer, or mobile phone to name a few. When you have an SSL certificate and HTTPS website protection, the browser will display a green lock right by its URL bar. This increases the audience’s trust in you – people only visit secure websites that they can feel safe at.

A lot of WordPress hosting services will offer their SSL certificates for a nominal fee, allowing successful website https configuration and your site’s HTTPS status to be shared for the World Wide Web. More expensive certificates are also available that can be registered to specific web properties. Different services offer different types of certificates for different prices.

Flexible SSL vs Full SSL

As an example, with a content delivery network such as Cloudflare, your site can gain HTTPS status for free if you use a multi-domain SSL certificate. Services such as Cloudflare are useful for developers who don’t want to keep up to date with SSL certificate expiration or run into problems configuring their SSL, as all of this can be managed with a click of a button.

User privacy and security

One of the most common misconceptions about people who create websites is that HTTPS is only needed to handle sensitive data and communication, but this is not the right way to look at the whole picture. Any unprotected HTTP request can reveal a lot of info about the user identity.

Hackers can aggregate data about your site’s users and make inferences about their intentions and behaviours, working to de-anonymize user identity. If a user visits an unprotected fake website, for instance posing as a real medical site, they could disclose an array of personal health information to their employers.
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Search Engine Optimization

Whether you’re running an artisanal bakery or casino lastschrift with WordPress, it’s of utmost priority for your website to pop up on either the first or second pages of Google search results. People need to find what they’re looking for, and they cling to these pages for guidance.

One of the most common methods to improve your ranking is to analyze keywords and see what people are searching for, using online tools such as Google Analytics. You can add the most popular and trending keywords to your images, titles, paragraphs, and much more.

But how does HTTPS affect Search Engine Optimization and boosts your website’s ranking? We can look at the most popular search engine Google for an answer. This company wanted a way that secure sites could be more easily found, so the search engine goes through and looks at HTTPS. It’s now one of the most important factors that will lead users to sites through a Google search, so if your website is protected by HTTPS, it’ll be visible on most search engines, and most likely, high up in the pecking order, too. If your website is similar to a competitor’s in almost every way, but they don’t have HTTPS and you do, you’ll have an obvious advantage.

So what about mobile devices? Google is indexing mobile devices, making their algorithms turn towards the mobile versions of sites and giving these a greater weight in SEO rankings. For mobile sites to be indexable, Google recommends migrating toward secure sites that implement HTTPS.

PCI compliance

If you’re in charge of eCommerce websites, HTTPS is vital if you want your site to be compliant with Payments Card Industry standards. The PCI is a set of operational and technical requirements mandated by credit card companies and banks to ensure that card transactions can be processed securely across the internet. The main set of rules known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards was established to keep credit card user data safe.

Requirement 4 of these standards recommends that all the best website builders need to use strong cryptography and security measures so that transmitted data is never intercepted or compromised – this is where HTTPS configuration comes into play. The requirement forbids card payments from taking place anywhere other than on HTTPS sites with SSL certificates.

When you’re looking at getting an effective SSL certificate for your site, you should look for the following:

  • TLS versions higher than 1.1
  • Cyphers of at least 128 bits in size
  • DH parameters of at least 2048 bits
  • Strong cypher suites
  • Strong private keys
  • No export suites
  • No anonymous key exchanges
  • No insecure compression or renegotiation
  • A trusted company from a trusted Certificate Authority

To configure your SSL certificate and use HTTPS, there’s no hocus pocus to it, you’ll simply want to follow these steps:

  • Create private and public key pairs.
  • Prepare a CSR (Certificate Signing Request), including any information you have about the organization and the public key.
  • Based on your CSR, request an HTTPS certificate from an appropriate certification authority.
  • Install your signed-and-certified HTTPS certificate on your web server.

Your website will be better off with HTTPS

Along with an increase in internet traffic comes ever more increasing complexity – hackers, SEO, data, and much more. The internet is full of surprises, but we hope that you’ve taken our thoughts on board and will incorporate HTTPS into your site. By encrypting your traffic to WordPress site with SSL certificates, nobody will be able to snoop on user data, and the green lock icon in their browser bar will be seen as a symbol of trust.

In combination with this, everybody will be able to find your trustworthy site, as search engines such as Google will give priority to HTTPS sites. These are all great reasons to get familiar with HTTPS and incorporate it into your site today. Here at Ninja Team HQ, we recommend using Cloudflare SSL to get your WordPress sites to work with TSL vulnerabilities at scale.

When you’re choosing a website builder, what do you look for? Tell us your thoughts on website builders or anything on HTTPS in the comments section below.

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Guest Author

Thomas Glare is a passionate freelance content writer, always striving to inspire others and bring insight into the endless possibilities of the modern times we are currently living. He continues to improve his knowledge and is the co-designer of a Book of ra deluxe, one of the most popular games from Novomatics.

How to Improve Local SEO for Your WordPress Website

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Local search engine optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing your business website for local searches. In other words, you are trying to rank for the searches around your locality, town, or city. Most people who look for products and services online often search for businesses that are within their locality. So customers are more likely to do business with stores or brands that show up first on search engines.

That said, local SEO is unique in that search engines like Google use different sets of ranking factors to display search results. That’s why if you randomly type keywords such as “coffee shop” or “grocery store,” Google will display or suggest businesses within your area.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the local SEO ranking factors to guide you as you optimize your WordPress website and Google my business reviews.

Local SEO Ranking Factors

Local SEO uses geo qualifiers to better match users to their location-sensitive queries, such as ‘near me’ or ‘nearby’.

surrounding Google my business profiles for Local SEO WordPress

surrounding Google my business profiles for Local SEO WordPress

Local SEO has grown considerably over the last few years, and it covers everything from keyword research, Map Pack ranking, and local organic ranking, to off-page SEO. Here, you can still go into the finer details to optimize for local voice searchers while maximizing Google and Yelp suggestions. All these aspects matter, but you always want first to pay attention to the major ranking factors. Here are some of them:

Google My Business Profile

Google My Business (GMB) is the holy grail of local SEO of WordPress website. Here, consistency is key, so you always want to match all the details on your GMB profile with those on your business website. Similarly, all the business details across the web, whether on social media or other websites, should match. These include your business name, physical address, phone number, opening and closing hours, directions, etc.

Google result page review section for Local SEO WordPress

Google result page review section for Local SEO WordPress

That said, consistency narrows down to the finer details; for example, if you list your address using “Avenue” or “street,” always stick to this formatting. Avoid mixing it up with abbreviations like “Ave.,” or “St.” This confuses the Google algorithm and may have a negative impact when ranking your GMB profile.

Last but not least is to fill in every data you can until your profile is 100% complete. How you fill in the profile also matters. You want to strategically use keywords in sections such as category, services, and business description. Also, keep every crucial piece of data updated and always be honest. Do not list products or services you don’t offer and be keen to update if closed during holidays or special events to avoid misleading customers.

Online Reviews

According to a recent study by Moz, Google reviews were the second most important ranking factor impacting local search results, i.e., just after GMB elements. However, bad reviews were shown to hurt local SEO of your WordPress website, while genuine and positive reviews were linked to higher rankings.

locations near me search box for Local SEO WordPress

locations near me search box for Local SEO WordPress

Another important takeaway is that a business owner’s response to the reviews can help build trust with consumers. So, responding to negative and positive reviews and engaging customers is key to ranking for local searches. That also means knowing how to ask for reviews without being a turn-off is quite crucial in today’s business landscape.

The key to success is to first work on your customer experience, partly by polishing your offerings and learning how to connect emphatically with distressed customers. Knowing when and how to ask for feedback will also boost your odds of getting quality reviews.

Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) Citations

Google and other search engines use NAP citations to confirm that your business information is correct. When these citations appear in various places across the internet; Google will confirm and verify your business info. So, having consistent NAPs on several reputed websites will make your WordPress website more trustworthy and visible to prospects and customers.

Other Local SEO Factors to Consider

Besides focusing on GMB profiles, online reviews, and NAP citations, you also want to focus on local keyword research, content strategy, and link building. Typically, all the other aspects of SEO will apply, and you may need to break them down into on-page and off-page SEO.

Using relevant images and videos and creating valuable content for local users is a great way to attract their attention. You will also have to prioritize site experience by working on-site speed and navigation. Additionally, optimize your site for mobile to boost conversion and retention.

And regardless of the business type, you can choose to go creative by leveraging the power of local SEO WP plugins. Some of these plugins will help you implement schema and structured data on your WordPress site.

Final Thoughts

In today’s digital world, businesses need to evolve and keep up to pace with current market trends. The high level of competition has seen several businesses look for ways to safeguard their competitive advantage. For many, enhancing their Local SEO strategies has helped drive traffic in their region, boosting conversion and revenue.

So to succeed in local SEO, you want to mix and match the strategies we’ve highlighted above until you find what works best for your WordPress Website. But first, work on your GMB profile, manage your online reviews, and ensure consistency with your NAP citations.

Read more:

How to Customize Dokan Emails

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As an experienced WordPress and WooCommerce user, I have come to realize the importance of having nice and much better Emails sent out to WooCommerce store clients. Since the basic WooCommerce Email does not allow for much customization that would help serve store customers in the best possible way.

Thus, it is necessary to introduce another plugin that would help you have this WooCommerce Email customization capability. The tool to be employed must be able to help you customize the generic WooCommerce Emails and also should be compatible with many other WooCommerce addon plugins since there are other addons that also add some extra Email templates to the regular WooCommerce templates.

Therefore, in this article, I’ll take you through the basic things you need to know about customizing extra Email templates added to WooCommerce by a specific WooCommerce addon plugin called ‘Dokan’ using a specific WooCommerce Email customizer called ‘YayMail‘.

Contents to be discussed

  1. Why Customize Email Templates?
  2. What’s YayMail?
  3. What is Dokan Multi Vendor?
  4. YayMail’s Addon for Dokan?
  5. The Dokan Templates Customizable With YayMail
  6. Common Design Customizations
  7. How to Customize Dokan Email Template With YayMail

Why Customize Dokan Email Templates?

For many beneficial reasons, you can customize your Dokan Email templates, some of these include the following:

  1. The generic Email template that comes with Dokan will certainly appear very similar across all web stores that use Dokan. To make your Dokan Emails stand out, customize these generic Dokan email templates. It will help you add some unique touches of customization to them by editing with YayMail.
  2. YayMail gives you more flexibility by allowing you to add so many extra elements to the Dokan Email templates. Helping you spice up your designs, instead of accepting the generic ‘take-as-is’ kind of design.
  3. You have the ability to include more information in the Emails like personalization and brand centralization.

What is YayMail?

YayMail – WooCommerce Email Customizer is a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to customize emails sent out by WooCommerce. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it super easy to edit emails to the desired state that suits your business. You can add images, and use different fonts, icons, colors, and so on.

YayMail comes in two forms including:

Free: A free plugin to help you fully customize 11 standard WC email templates

YayMail Pro: A paid plugin including all the free features, AND compatible with various third-party WordPress/WooCommerce plugins

What is Dokan Multi Vendor?

Dokan – WooCommerce Multi Vendor Marketplace extension allows you to create an online marketplace with multiple sellers. You will be able to earn via various types of products: physical, downloadable, bookable, auction products and so on.

What is YayMail’s Addon for Dokan

The YayMail’s addon for Dokan is an additional PRO version addon plugin for the stand-alone YayMail plugin. It works either with the free version or the PRO version of the YayMail plugin. It can help you customize the majority of the Dokan Multi Vendor plugin Email templates.

Note:

This YayMail Addon for Dokan will work with either the free version or the PRO version of YayMail stand-alone plugin, but it is a PRO plugin itself.

The Dokan Templates Customizable with YayMail

The Dokan Multi Vendor plugin has different default mail templates that come with it, all of these template designs are customizable and they can be branded with Colors, Logos, Fonts, etc.

These templates include:

Dokan New Product – This notifies the admin when the seller added a new product of status published.

New Pending Product – Email notifies the admin when the seller adds a new product of status pending

Dokan Pending Product Published – Notifies sellers when admin reviews sellers’ product and makes it publish

New Seller Registered – Notifies admins when a new seller registers on dokan

Dokan New Withdrawal Request – Notifies admin when a seller makes a withdrawal request

Withdraw Approved – Notifies seller when admin approve seller withdrawal request

Dokan Withdraw cancelled – Notifies sellers when admin cancels seller withdraw request

Contact Vendor – Notifies sellers when a new customer contacts them via the message form

Dokan Vendor New Order – Notifies sellers when a new customer places a new order

Vendor Completed Order – Notifies customers when their order is completely processed by the seller

Dokan Announcement – Notifies the sellers when the admin makes an announcement

Updated Pending Product – Notifies sellers when admin updates their pending product

Dokan New Refund Request – Notifies the seller when vendor request refund

Refund Processed – Notifies the customer when their refund is processed by seller

Dokan Vendor Enable – Notifes the vendors when their account is enabled by the admin

Vendor Disable – Notifes the vendors when their account is disabled by the admin

Common Dokan Email Design Customizations

Some of the common Design Customizations you can use include:

Header Image – An image that you’d like to display at the top of all emails. You might want to use your logo or other brand imagery here.

Footer Text – Information found at the bottom of each email. Include a link to your website and contact information to make it easy for your customers to get in touch.

Base Color – The color used for headings, links, and the background of your email title.

Background Color – The color used for the background of the email.

Body Background Color – The color of your email content background.

Body Text Color – The color for all written email content.

How to Customize Dokan Email Template With YayMail

As an example, I will explain how to customize the ‘Dokan New Product’ Email template. Ideally, it is just the same method if you are customizing other Dokan Email templates too.

You can customize the ‘Dokan New Product’ email template via your wp-admin > WooCommerce > Email Customizer > Dokan New Product.

Here is a screenshot that shows the default WooCommerce design for this Dokan template:

Now, we can follow these easy steps to make a better design:

Change the Logo: You can change the Logo by clicking on the default WooCommerce Logo and changing it or simply by clicking on the “Element” tab and then dragging and dropping the Logo element to the top layer of the design.

You have many customizations for the logo such as align, padding, link, width, background color, .etc

Set the Heading color: This is the color of your Order Title background and it is better to set this based on your website’s color scheme and color consistency.

customize dokan email

Change the Title text: This is the title of the email and this can be designed by clicking on the title and then changing the font type, font color, etc.

add email heading to customize dokan email

Add a Heading text: You can add header texts, something nice to motivate your customers by clicking on the “Elements” tab and dragging and dropping the “Text” element to the canvas.

add title to customize dokan email

Personalize some parts of the Email content: This is a very cool way to win the hearts of your customers with a touchy and personal email, you can add or edit a “Text” element, then click on the “shortcode” options to see available name shortcodes to add in the text, so as to call each customer name in the email.

add shortcode to customize dokan email

Add a Button at the bottom and change its color for consistency: You can add a button by dragging and dropping to the working canvas via the basic “Elements” tab.

add button to customize dokan email

Add a nice footer text: A footer text is not so necessary but in fact, if well used it might add some spice to your designs and it might just be a great way to add watermarks, special links, unsubscribe links, etc. You can click to edit the existing one or add a new footer text via the basic elements from the “Elements” tab.

add footer to customize dokan email

What next after customizing Email template?

  1. Send test email: One click to send a test message to any email address to see how your designed email would look in the inbox.
  2. Preview: Instantly view your customized Dokan email in a pop-up in full-screen mode. You can see how it looks on desktop and mobile devices.
  3. Save: Save your edits at any point in time.
customize dokan email

Here is a screenshot that shows our new design for this Dokan template customized with YayMail:

Dokan template customized with YayMail

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, this article has discussed how to customize Dokan Emails with an easy-to-use Dokan addon plugin for the YayMail plugin. We now understand why it is important to have better, personalized, brand-centralized Emails sent to your customers, vendors, and site admins.

Basically, there are three tools discussed in this article; YayMail, YayMail addon for Dokan, and Dokan multi-vendor marketplace plugin. YayMail is an Email Customizer for WooCommerce that is accessible in both free and premium variants.

 

The free form is presumably enough for most sites, but you need the premium addon for Dokan to help you design Dokan Email templates.

YAYMAIL FREE YAYMAIL PRO YAYMAIL ADDON for DOKAN