Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, and for good reason. It’s easy to use and affordable, making it an ideal solution for small- and medium-sized businesses looking to start selling online. In fact, data from Built With shows that there are over 4.3 million currently active websites using Shopify.
But like any powerful Maintenance Software, Shopify requires some maintenance if you want your store to run smoothly. And while checking your plugins and extensions now and then isn’t tricky, you must do it regularly so that your website doesn’t suffer from any issues because of neglectful management on your part.
Check Your Plugins and Extensions
Go to the “Plugins” section in Shopify’s admin panel to check your plugins and extensions. You’ll see a list of all the active plugins on your site. As of this writing, there are 7,000 apps or plugins in the Shopify store. Some common issues that can be fixed by checking the settings of your plugins include:
- Problems with checkout pages not loading correctly or displaying errors
- Issues with payment gateway integrations (e.g., PayPal) not working properly
- Instability caused by conflicting third-party software
If you’re having problems with one of these things, try reinstalling it before contacting support. This will often solve most issues right away. If it doesn’t work this time, consider reaching out via live chat or email.
Take the Easy Way Out
If you’re just getting started or your store is experiencing issues beyond what you can handle, there are a few ways to get help.
- Use a Managed Shopify: This is the easiest way to manage your store. You’ll pay more than if you were doing it yourself, but it comes with 24/7 support and updates from Shopify.
- Hire an Expert: If you don’t want to spend money on managed hosting but still want someone who knows their stuff around for support and advice and possibly even building out new features for your store, then this option might be right. Experts can offer their services as consultants or contractors depending on your needs.
- Get Help from an Agency: Agencies provide similar benefits as experts but generally come at higher prices due to overhead costs associated with having multiple employees working together toward one goal.
A Shopify maintenance service provider agency can remove all the burden off your shoulders and enable you to focus on what you are best at. These services can include bug fixes, site backup, store updates, site audits, SEO, etc.
According to PRP Webs, these services can offer many benefits. The company states that the benefits range from improved user experience and reduced bounce rate to higher SEO rankings and increased site speed.
Make Regular Backups
There’s no getting around it. Backups are an essential part of maintaining your Shopify store, and they shouldn’t be ignored. Whether you’re a new or experienced user, there’s a good chance that at some point in your life as an online merchant, your site will crash and need to be restored from a recent backup file.
After creating backups, you must also ensure the data stored is secure. Many online stores cannot secure their data, leading to data leaks. In fact, a recent report from Sansec shows that 12% of online stores leak private backups.
Suppose you don’t back up regularly enough or don’t have any backups. In that case, losing data can devastate your business and its customer reputation. When this happens, it’ll also cost more than if you had taken steps beforehand. Repairing damage caused by lost information can be expensive.
Test Your Payment Gateways and Integrations
You’ll want to test your integrations before you open up shop. That way, if something goes wrong and one doesn’t work as expected when you launch, it won’t ruin the day for your customers.
If any integrations are crucial for your business, like payment gateways or shipping providers, ensure they’re working correctly before making a prominent announcement on social media or sending out press releases. You don’t want people who paid for something through PayPal getting their orders canceled because they didn’t pay anything.
Shopify also has an in-built payment processing platform called Shopify Payments. Through this platform, Shopify charges 2.9% of the customer’s total bill plus $0.30 as the transaction fee in 17 plus regions.
Use a Security Audit Tool
A security audit tool is one of the best ways to keep your store running smoothly. These tools can help you find vulnerabilities in your store and suggest fixing them so that hackers have less opportunity to break into them. There are many different security audit tools, but they all do the same thing, they look at how code is written and offer suggestions on making it more secure.
There are two main types of security audits black box testing and white box testing. White box testing tends to be more expensive than black box testing because it requires more time from developers who need access to source code before they start improving its safety measures. However, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from this article so far, nothing comes free.
Check for Spam Comments and Reviews
Spam comments and reviews are the banes of any online store’s existence. They can make it difficult for visitors to find relevant information about your products and hurt your SEO rankings. To avoid these problems, you must regularly check for spam comments and reviews and remove them immediately.
Here are some tips for identifying spam comments:
- Look at the time stamp of each comment or review if there’s no date next to it. There’s probably something fishy going on with that particular entry.
- Check out how many times someone has left their opinion on different products. If one person seems to have reviewed everything in your store, then some foul play might be involved here.
Run Regular Maintenance, Updates, and Upgrades to the Platform and Templates
Shopify is a constantly evolving platform, and the best way to ensure your store stays up-to-date and secure is through regular maintenance.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Check for Updates: Every time you log into Shopify, ensure your apps are up-to-date by clicking “Apps” in the top navigation bar and selecting “Manage Apps.” From there, click on each app individually and ensure it’s currently on its version number. If there are any updates available, click “Update Now.”
- Find Out What The Latest Version Is: If you’re running an older version of an app or theme than what was released most recently.
Conclusion
We hope you found this guide to Shopify maintenance helpful. As an eCommerce business owner, you must stay on top of all aspects of your business and ensure they are running smoothly. Following the tips in this post, you can easily keep your online store up-to-date and running smoothly.