Small business owners have a lot to think about.

If you’re thinking of launching a business—or you’re looking to switch your website platform or merchant service—here’s one thing you’ll realize pretty quickly: you’re going to have to make decisions on aspects of business that you might have little experience with.

For example, most small business owners aren’t experts at eCommerce platforms or payments processing, but here’s a small sampling of the steps you need to consider just to get your products or services available online:

• Launching a web store: Hiring a developer, selecting the right hosting service, designing your website, choosing a shopping cart, linking it to your website.
• Setting up payments: Comparing merchant services, including services provided, costs, and fees.
• Running your business: Choosing an accounting solution, figuring out how to link it with your shopping cart, learning how to use it.

Entrepreneurs wear a lot of hats. As one, you’re probably busy focusing on other aspects of your business—production, inventory forecasting, financing—the list goes on. There’s little time left for sifting through websites, watching tutorials, and comparing options for website hosting, payment processing, and managing the books. And this could be a barrier for many small businesses who are ready to get started and eager to bring in revenue.

Once you’ve made the decision to build a store with WooCommerce, you don’t want anything to slow you down.

If your store isn’t built with longevity in mind, however, you could run into trouble as time goes on. You might see product pages load slowly, extensions stop functioning, or even encounter serious issues like data loss or security breaches.

These are all issues that will ultimately lead to one thing: a decline in — or complete loss of  — paying customers.

To keep your WooCommerce store profitable, you need to build it with long-term stability, safety, and performance in mind. Let’s take a look at how you can build a WooCommerce store that will last for months, years, and beyond.

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WooCommerce is fairly flexible out of the box, giving you the ability to sell multiple product types and deliver them many ways. However, the goods you’re selling may require advanced customization, you might want to ask your customers for more information at checkout, or you might be ready to start experimenting with pricing and discounts.

If you need to go beyond what’s baked-in, that’s where our WooCommerce extensions come into play. These free or paid add-ons extend the functionality of WooCommerce, giving you the power to sell new product types, enhance your store’s performance, and more.

There are quite a lot of extensions that you might want to try — here are ten powerful extensions we recommend for new WooCommerce stores.

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Six years ago, I built my first online business. Like most entrepreneurs, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t the hard way: through experience. Despite facing many hurdles, each project I’ve built has been more successful than the last.

Recently, I began to wonder what is it that I’ve learned that’s made this difference. In other words, if I could go back six years and give myself a few tips, what would I say?

Here are seven lessons I wish I knew six years ago, before building my first online business.

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