In episode 46, I have the pleasure of chatting with Jason Cosper at WPEngine. And today’s topic is fine-tuning your eCommerce web site. We are in the middle of Web Week, where often when traffic is lower between the holidays, it’s the perfect time to do a tuneup on your online store. Jason brings his experience of working with clients of all sizes on their sites and what you should make sure and revisit throughout the year.

We chatted about:

Cleaning up the clutter on your WordPress siteWhat red flags to look for when improving your product imagesTips to buff up your SEO and what to look forWays to improve the search on your online store and other issues you may want to consider to help customers find the right productHosting and what to think about when making the decision of if your host is right for your needs

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: WPEngine

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone and welcome to episode 46. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. Well, as we wind up the year, you may or may not know that we are right in the middle of Web Week and our sponsor WP Engine is stepping up for today’s show. I’ve taken the liberty to call it eCommerce Web Week. What do we mean by Web Week? A lot of sites find the time between the holidays, and with the lower traffic, it’s a perfect time to get your new site ready or, even better, tune up your existing site. As we all know, your site needs to be a finely tuned engine. Even more so with the eCommerce site. It’s critical that your online store is running smoothly year round.

Today we are going to be looking at tuning up your eCommerce site. Now we know this shouldn’t only be done at the end of the year but also regularly throughout the year. Get ready as we chat with Jason Cosper, Senior Technical Advisor and Developer Advocate with WPEngine. By sharing his experience and knowledge, he’ll help you construct a plan for that tuneup. Hey Jason. Welcome to the show.

Jason Cosper: Hey Bob, it’s so great to be here. I’m a big fan of everything you’ve done and it’s great to actually to get the opportunity to come on the show.

Meet Jason Cosper, Developer Advocate at WPEngine

Bob Dunn: Thanks so much. All right, I’m glad this isn’t actual a visual thing because my face would start to turn a little red now and I’d go, “Oh.” So it’s great it’s just audio. Well I am so glad you’re able to join us. This is a busy time for everyone and I know we all have plans for the week so let’s just dive right it, get the show on the road. Before we get into the questions, for those who don’t know about WP Engine or what you do there, give us an introduction.

Jason Cosper: Yeah, so WP Engine is a managed WordPress platform. We host websites for WordPress, only WordPress, so a lot of shared hosts, a lot of other VPS solutions, things like that. You can bring in whatever you want. However, WP Engine specializes in WordPress. It’s what we do. We live, sleep, breath it, preach it from the mountaintops and really we want to make sure that everyone who hosts with us gets the best possible WordPress experience that they can have.

What I do over at WP Engine, as you mentioned, I am the Developer Advocate over there. I get to talk with plugin and theme developers and work with them. If they have a problem on our platform, if something happens where their plugin is problematic or plugin theme whatever is problematic, if we have a problem on our platform where we’re doing something that’s interfering with their plugin or theme it is my job to be the advocate for them and try to get that fixed in as timely a manner as possible. Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet gig. It’s cool work if you can get it.

Where should site owners start cleaning up their WordPress online stores?

Bob Dunn: Excellent.