Sometimes. a customer wants to remove their digital footprint from the Internet. Maybe they were the victim of identity theft, suffered online harassment, or just want reduce their online presence. Whatever the reason, store owners who collect data from EU residents can expect to receive “Right to Erasure” requests under the GDPR.

As with Right of Access requests, the data a person can expect to be erased includes the obvious — name, address, phone number — and the less obvious, like tracking numbers and VAT IDs. 

One significant difference is that Right to Erasure requests are more like a right to request erasure. As a business owner, you probably need to keep some data for a limited time to comply with contractual obligations and protect yourself, like keeping tracking IDs to defend against shipping disputes or keeping VAT information for tax audits. Before you get your first request, it’s important to know what personal customer data you need to store, and to include this in your privacy policy and terms and conditions.

When you’re ready to fulfill a Right to Erasure request, the good news is that — as with Right to Access requests — WordPress 4.9.6 and WooCommerce 3.4 have tools to help.

Before You Get Your First Request

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You probably know someone who’s requested their data from one of the big social media platforms. It can be staggering to see all the detail in one of these data “dumps”!  

If your store collects data from EU residents, you can expect to start receiving “Right of Access” requests under the GDPR. 

An EU resident has a right to a copy of all the data you’ve collected about him or her, ideally in an electronic format. This includes information like name, address, and phone number, along with less obvious things like shipment tracking numbers or VAT IDs. Thankfully, WordPress 4.9.6, WooCommerce 3.4, and many WooCommerce extensions automate the legwork Right of Access requests require — we’ll walk you through the process.

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Getting your business prepared for the GDPR is no small task, and it doesn’t end when the law takes effect on May 25th.

Step one: to get ready for the GDPR, May 25th and beyond, you’ll want to designate an employee to oversee compliance efforts and update your privacy policy. These aren’t just legal requirements — they also lay a good foundation for ongoing compliance and they can impact sales.

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Whether you’ve had a WooCommerce store for a long time or are in the earliest stages of an eCommerce endeavor, you’re probably  wondering what you need to do about this new European law—the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Our six-part series on Getting Ready for the GDPR explores the ins and outs of the law and how it applies to you, a WooCommerce store owner. Let’s get oriented with a few common questions and answers.

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One of the most popular categories for WooCommerce stores is fashion and apparel — you can sell anything from jewelry to scarves to suits to baby clothes with a WordPress store built using WooCommerce, Storefront, and Galleria.

Galleria is a Storefront child theme perfect for fashion and design stores. Monochrome and minimalist, it gives sites a classy look and is optimized for eCommerce.

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The Products block represents stage one of a project we’re affectionately referring to as “Wootenberg”—the preparation of WooCommerce for the arrival of the Gutenberg editor.

Gutenberg?

If you’ve missed it, Gutenberg is a brand-new, visually-driven content editor being built for WordPress and scheduled for inclusion in the 5.0 release. Read all about it and download the latest version of the Gutenberg feature plugin.

What is the Products block?

Essentially, the Products block is a modern version of the Products shortcode, built for the Gutenberg world we’re all soon to move in to.

The Products block provides an intuitive user interface for inserting products from a variety of sources, then delivers an accurate preview of how that selection will look when published. You’ll also be able to fine-tune the appearance of those products by adjusting the layout and ordering.

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We’ve noticed that successful WooCommerce stores tend not to stay the same—they change, iterate, grow, and get updated over time.

Perhaps your store is ready for something fresh?

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Conversion rate optimization is something we talk about, retweet about, and know we need to invest time in.

What does conversation rate optimization look like for a WooCommerce store? How much does it cost? Are there things that are quick to implement and will make a big difference?

Most importantly—if you have limited time to spend on conversion rate optimization, where should you begin?

Here’s a quick guide to conversion rate optimization (CRO) for WooCommerce, including how to measure your sales funnel, and redeem lost sales.

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At this very moment, your store is loaded with data, and that data is fuel just waiting to grow your business.

It provides invaluable information about your customers: what they enjoy buying from you, how often they make a purchase, and when they last made a purchase. Once you integrate your WooCommerce store with MailChimp, our powerful marketing tools – including automations and reporting – put that data to work to personalize your marketing and sell more stuff.

Here are 6 tools that’ll help you on your quest to build your brand:

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“I’m building a membership site.”

Those five words can have drastically different meanings. A membership site can mean many things, including:

• a site that lets people connect with one another
• a site to teach people something
• a site to send members a package of goodies every month
• a site to give certain customers special perks

There are a lot of different models for a membership site, so it can be difficult to know how you should set it up. What types of setups are possible? What tools are available for your desired setup?

To determine what setup is best for your WordPress membership site, you’ll need to define what your site should do, how you interact with members, and what the interaction between members looks like.

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The search for healthy food is no piece of cake.

It’s easy to get trapped, bouncing between grocery stores with tiny “Health Food” sections (what exactly is the rest of the store offering?) and stopping at multiple, specialized shops along the way, possibly never really finding what you want.

Around the world, healthy food store owners strike out with a vision of helping their clientele eat better. But it can be hard to make an impact — and a profit — selling specialized products in a small location.

That’s where WooCommerce swoops in to make a connection. You might think that it would be tough for stores with perishable goods to tap into eCommerce, but here are seven fresh and engaging retailers that have found success in this growing segment of the market.

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So you’ve made the decision to launch a new store using WooCommerce. The first few things you’ll do are choose a hosting solution and order your new domain name, then you can get started on setting everything up, and getting ready for launch.

But wait! What if someone visits your site while you’re working on it?

Welcome to to the useful world of Coming Soon or pre-launch landing pages. Let’s take a look at why it’s a good idea to set one up and how to add one to your store for free.

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Every new shop builder has the same goal: to make money from their eCommerce site. However, the first few transactions can sometimes be the most difficult to make since these are the sales that put your strategy, your store, and your patience to the test.

Luckily, the early days of any business offer the perfect opportunity to listen, learn, and experiment with different sales tactics. To help you get started, we’ve compiled ten ways to make your next sale with WooCommerce that will help you now and throughout the lifetime of your online store.

Let’s put some wind in your sales.

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Last year Pragmatic worked with PEI Media to deliver a digital transformation of their website portfolio — and, along the way, of their business.

My colleagues at Pragmatic and I are extremely proud of the results — including organic traffic increases of up to 40 percent — so we wanted to share some of the key things we learned from our work, from high-level observations to hands-on insights.

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There’s more than one factor that determines whether or not a shopper makes a purchase from your store — product selection, pricing, shipping speed, and so much more.

But there’s one major factor that determines whether or not shoppers even make it to your product pages in the first place, and that’s site speed.

As we covered in the past, your WooCommerce store needs to be as fast as possible to gain potential customers and keep them on the site. There are a lot of ways you can optimize your site for peak performance, like choosing reliable hosting and updating your plugins. There are also tools you can use to speed things up, and Jetpack is one of them.

Today we’re going to look at a handful of Jetpack’s features that help increase site speed, and how they can specifically help WooCommerce stores retain more shoppers.

But first we’ll give you a quick introduction to Jetpack, just in case you’re not familiar with it.

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One of the single best ways to create repeat customers for your eCommerce store on WooCommerce, or any eCommerce platform, is to give them an effective post-purchase experience. After all, retaining a customer is easier than acquiring a new one.

Let’s explore four ways to keep your customers engaged post-purchase.

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