• Fixing time-to-first-byte TTFB

    Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) is one of the most useful website performance metrics. It’s also one of the hardest to improve. Caching plugins can’t do much for it; actually they contribute to it. Caching plugins don’t fix cache warm-up, authenticated sessions, submissions / processing, and administration. To improve those you need to get TTFB in range. The…

  • Leading open eCommerce framework

    Check out my blog post WooCommerce – The Leading Open eCommerce Framework featured on UpCity. In this article I discuss where WooCommerce and open-source fits into the overall eCommerce Platform segment and popular proprietary systems. I also discuss community events and some technical tips.

  • Splitting a store from a website

    Recently a client brought in an interesting request to split their store off onto a subdomain, for example https://store.mywebsite.com. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this idea. I thought I’d share those insights with my audience. Pros The plugin load gets split, so each site runs less plugins or customization risks above the core…

  • The importance of payment gateway UX

    During a recent Amazon Pay webinar I attended entitled Optimizing Your Mobile Checkout, I couldn’t help but notice their prioritization of credit card fields. This stuck out to me because I’ve observed all manner of credit card gateway user interfaces. Research data is telling us to pay particular attention to these fields. Of the presenter’s…

  • How to have a perfect WooCommerce site

    After working with dozens upon dozens of WooCommerce sites, here’s some of my best tips…

  • Hello good lookin’

    Somebody call the cops, because it’s got to be illegal to look that good! Check out these good looking and effective WooCommerce powered websites…

  • The most popular themes

    Recently I’ve been assessing WooCommerce sites based in California as part of a new client outreach effort. Through this process and its first 100 subjects I’ve discovered more data on where people host their WooCommerce sites, what errors are showing up (SSL, JS/console, ADA, state compliance), performance metrics, who they use for hosting/registrations/email, what all…

  • Avoid WooCommerce template overrides

    There’s an irritating message we see whenever a site has modified WooCommerce template files and the WooCommerce plugin updates one or more minor versions. There can be one or more default WooCommerce template file(s) that had been copied into the child theme and the HTML code tailored for the design. It’s not unusual to see up…

  • WooCommerce Los Angeles presentation

    Join WooCommerce Los Angeles Meetup back at WeWork Santa Monica Broadway on Wednesday, June 5th at 6:30pm for a demonstration session on database cleaning.

  • WooCommerce, skunkworks edition

    Awhile back I voluntarily moved into a role developing a customized enterprise WooCommerce platform to power a couple dozen properties. I eventually came to understand this as a Skunkworks – a project “developed by a small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation”,…

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