Introduction

This post will go over a case study of a plastic surgeon client I had and how I was able to double its organic traffic by (really more) than 2x. The focus – or theme – of this case study is speed optimisation.

As you are (hopefully) aware – your page speed is a ranking factor for Google – and where it places your site. However many people do not know exactly what it takes to have a fast website.

Many think that a fast website involves nothing more than installing a WordPress speed plugin – perhaps tweaking some options and Bob’s your uncle.

However this is not always the case – and this particular client is a perfect example of how someone can have a very well designed, professional site – pay $10K+ for it – and yet still not have it optimised and fast.

The reason is because many times a client will test a web design’s company on their computers – which are normally extremely fast – and will not notice any speed issues – and will then sign off on the project – and there really isn’t a big incentive for the web design company to put any work into really optimizing the site for speed since the client isn’t even aware of the issue to ask about it.

Then the client could go to an SEO company – which can focus on various SEO factors like buying backlinks – but will not look at the underlying site structure as they (may) not be equipped to handle such technical undertakings.

Rather than creating a generic ‘How to make your WordPress site faster’ article – of which you can find many online – I instead wanted to show you a case study of a client who not only had a professionally created website – but also had a speed plugin installed – and how I optimized the site to its fullest potential – and allowed the site to perform to its greatest potential online.

Keep in mind – that this client’s site was not only professionally developed but also had a page speed plugin all ready – it was not “slow” per se.

This Case Study will go over the specific technical issues I had to fix – and may give you some ideas on how to squeeze some extra juice out of your site.

Good luck!

Let’s Start with The Results

Before we start let’s quickly look at the results that were achieved on this campaign (and when I say campaign I’m really only referring to the work done on site with speed fixes which will be outlined in this guide).

Please note the calculations used to come up with the total number in the title ($77,548.80) was done using my SEO Agency Audit method which you can find here.

First the overview graph

To show you how you could quantify the results of this campaign on a financial level let’s look a bit deeper into the numbers. Below is the comparison traffic report of the 2 months before the traffic upswing and after the traffic upswing:

The traffic only tells part of the story – luckily the client had tracked conversions through a long period of time on Analytics – so let’s look at how many enquiries were received over the same comparison period

You can see a 38% difference – or an extra 157 leads in 2 months – which is significant. Keep in mind that this is a high ticket industry – with a starting price of $10,000 for the smallest surgical operation.

To quantify this further we can look at CPC on individual keywords. Let’s give a couple of examples and add those up:

Here we see hairline lowering surgery has gone from 1 click in 2 months to 83 clicks every 2 months. Taking this one example – and using the Keywords Everywhere Chrome plugin you can see the CPC (cost per click) for this keyword below:

This comes out at $357.52 every 2 months – or $2,145.12 p/year – and that was just for one keyword change.

Note: to be fair I did some on page optimisation for that keyword above but here are ones where minimal changes were done:

You can make your own calculations on these keyword variations but taking ‘coolsculpting sydney’ at 55 additional clicks per 2 months at $5.80p/click comes to $1,914 p/year in additional traffic from that one keyword

In total taking all additional traffic into account and multiplying by the CPC the total additional traffic comes in at $16,156.01 over 5 months or $77,548.80 over 24 months (expecting these results to hold over that period).

Now I’d love to tell you that I achieved this with some voodoo magic behind the scenes work of powerful backlinks but actually all these results were achieved without a single backlink being sent to the site.

The two results above came from fixing one header (forehead reduction) and a broken link (coolsculpting) – but the thing that really put all this together is page speed.

The reality is most people have no idea on how to make their website faster – and this includes top of the line developers – so in this case study I will break down the road blocks that made me stumble – and what I learned.

Remember that this was not:

• A poorly built website. It was a professionally built website which cost tens of thousands of dollars (this was not a ‘broken’ or ‘slow’ site) – nor was it essentially a bad web development project. The company that created this site did a good job.
• There was all ready a speed plugin installed on the site (and yes – just because you have a speed plugin installed on your WordPress site doesn’t mean you will automatically see results like this)

So below I’ll go through the major challenges I faced – and that you will face too – when getting a site to optimal speed. This is a case study so the changes I made relate directly to this client – as well as the specific challenges I faced – I think learning from real examples and case studies is the best way to learn. So let’s get into it.

[su_box title=”Cons” style=”default” box_color=”#F73F43″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”0″]Keep in mind that if you don’t have the right plugin you will fall!.[/su_box]

HTTPS Redirects – The Silent Killer of Page Speed

I wanted to start with HTTPS redirects because it is one of the least discussed elements of making your site fast, the least understood (and slightly technical) and also one that has the potential to really screw up your site speed.

In fact – in all honesty – this really stumped me – and I actually had a few clients that had faster sites but were not getting under the 2 second load time that I was after – and I was racking my brains out to figure out why. The host couldn’t help – and WP Rocket support couldn’t help.

The hint came when I noticed that my staging site was loading much faster than the main site – and I noticed this and sent this news to my hosting cmpany – trying to figure out why. After all – they were pretty much identical in everything – except one – the staging site was loading fast and the main site had a 3 second load time.

The host couldn’t help me nor could WP Rocket support themselves – until finally I figured it out.

There was no redirect setup to take a user from https://myclientsite.com.au to https://www.myclientsite.com.au. So the server was trying to create this itself – and taking a long time (not sure why it was so hard to figure out).

But here are the steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you and you don’t rack your brains out like I did:

You do have an HTTPS certificate right?

Before we even start – I highly recommend – just for general SEO reasons to ensure that you have an SSL certificate.

If you go to your website on a Chrome browser and see this:

[ ]

You need a certificate. Get in contact with your host – “Hey, can you guys set my site up with an SSL?” or you can

If your address bar looks like this (check at the top) – then feel free to proceed to the next step:

To www or not to www – that is the question

The first site wide decision you’ll have to make is if you want your site to be in the format of www or non www.

For example – your site could be either

https://yoursite.com.au or

https://www.yoursite.com.au

Take my site – kostak4.sg-host.com for example. If type in ‘kostak4.sg-host.com’ into the address bar – you’ll see it’ll change to my site URL:

In my case I made the site be www. throughout – however I could just as easily have made it https://headstudios.com.au – it doesn’t really matter. But you must make this fateful decision.

Test site speed with waterfall and HTTPS Redirect (watch the blue dots)

[su_box title=”A quick note” style=”default” box_color=”#ffd400″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”0″]If your site URL is set to https:// without the www then technically you don’t need this section – as this only seems to happen for sites of mine that are https://www.[/su_box]

The first thing you want to do is find out if this is an issue that your site is currently experiencing. You can do this with either tools.pingdom.com or gtmetrix.com – in fact you could even do this with your own browser – but let’s use tools.pingdom.com for this example.

[image of tools pingdom]

Go over to tools.pingdom.com and type in your website URL without the www and without the http/https. So if your domain is https://www.lumbercaryard.com then type in lumbercaryard.com. This will force the site to create a redirect to the proper web address – and you can see how long this takes (if the server tries to do it itself – or if an htaccess file is setup).

You might also select the area you’re closest to your hosting server from the drop down but this isn’t that important.

[ image ]

Then wait for the site to load and once it does go down to the bottom and see the time it takes for the redirect to happen. Here is an example on my own site kostak4.sg-host.com:

On

Wordfence and other Plugin HTAccess Rewriters

One day my client called me to let me know the site seemed to be loading slower than usual. I didn’t know why this would be happening – we hadn’t changed anything – on the server or on the files – for the site to be slowing down.

However the culprit was soon identified (thankfully the server knew what the issue was in this case) – it was the Wordfence plugin – and some code the plugin had added to the htaccess file that was slowing down the redirect.

Wordfence is a very popular security plugin – and I use it on my sites – however just be aware of the potential for this plugin to cause issues. If it’s the case try disabling it and removing the htaccess code and see if this fixes your speed issues.

The Worfence code will look like this:

# Wordfence WAF
<IfModule mod_php7.c>
	php_value auto_prepend_file '/wordfence-waf.php'
</IfModule>
<Files ".user.ini">
<IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
	Require all denied
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
	Order deny,allow
	Deny from all
</IfModule>
</Files>

# END Wordfence WAF

This makes the browser execute a file called wodfence-waf.php before the site starts – unlike other plugins who – once the cache is activated – don’t have access to any WordPress hooks and have al their actions hooked – Wordfence can be a drag. So just be aware of this. There are other plugins that can potentially cause issues so just look for any code that redirects to a .php file in the htacess file.

Firstly – you’ll want to see if this is an issue that your site is currently experiencing.

Your htaccess file is required to tell the server where to direct your URL’s.

If someone types in ‘yourwebsite.com’ and the address bar immediately changes it to ‘https://www.your…’ that is due to the work performed by the .htaccess file.

A big problem I faced was configuring the htaccess file and I will now tell you how I solved the problems and made the site lightning fast.

[su_box title=”A quick note” style=”default” box_color=”#ffd400″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”0″]This section of the guide assumes your weba ddress is https and that you have an SSL certificate installed. If you do not you can find out more info on how to install your SSL certificate here.[/su_box]

Speed Optimisation

Mobile Cache

One of the mistakes I made at first – which was slowing down the site significantly was not creating a mobile only cache with WP Rocket (please note from memory this is not enabled by default). The worst thing is – I wasn’t even aware of how much more heavy my mobile website was because of this.

Let me explain.

Whenever you come to a website – with either your phone, iPad or desktop computer – your device sends information to the server about what kind of device it is. The application (that is your website) – can then have access to that information when building your site.

To keep it simple and not make it too technical – there can be certain elements on your website – like a big video banner – that are probably un-necessary on a mobile device (nobody wants to go to a site on their mobile and see some video auto playing and draining their mobile data – leaving them fuming at you).

By creating two cached versions of the site – mobile and desktop – WP Rocket will check what device the user is on – and then serve the cached version of the site that corresponds to the device.

Let me show you an example of why this is so important.

In the video above I am on the desktop site – however the desktop site is still responsive. When I make the browser smaller it looks exactly like the mobile site – but the big video you see at the top still loads in the background – it’s just not visible.

Below you can see the ‘Network’ Dev Tools from Chrome – which tells you which elements are loading in which order and how long they take – what I discovered was that the mobile site was still loading that big 8.8MB video file.

Every.

Single.

Time.

In our case what was happening was that after WP Rocket was activated the mobile site actually started loading slower.

This is what was happening and dragging down the mobile download speeds (Google looks very carefully at how big your mobile site is) – so I created a separate cache for mobile to fix this issue.

Conditional Loading

One way to save on mobile speed – (by the way – I should mention that Google is switching all sites to mobile first indexing – which basically means you better have your mobile site fast otherwise good bye rankings) – is conditional loading.

This will require a slight bit of programming – but it’s well worth it.

You see – most sites will hide elements on mobile responsive sites that show on the desktop site – but will still load those elements. In other words – just because you don’t see a particular image on the mobile site – does not mean it’s being loaded.

There are many sites that serve the same site regardless of what device the user is on – and unfortunately there’s no front end way I’ve found to not load images on mobile devices when they’re not required – lucky for you I’m a WordPress developer – and can show you how to do that now.

I introduce to you the results of my research – and it is a function called [….].

But let’s take a practical example. Here is my client site’s drop down:

Now as you can see image above there are 6 images being loaded – even though they’re not visible on the mobile version of the site menu.

You may conclude that these images are not being loaded but alas you would be wrong – there is a whole bunch of elements like this that are loaded on many sites and clog up servers.

So let’s get that speed edge over our competitors.

You are looking for 2 functions (and just a heads up this may get a bit technical – you may need a developer like me to implement) – preg_match and the $_SERVER variable.

Note: there are tools like Elementor that will allow you to hide elements on mobile screen with options – be aware that these tools do not remove the said item from the loading queue. This is the only way I could find that does this – and saves a bunch of date.

And here is how to hide images you don’t need:

Introducing the isMobile() function to your theme

In the source code of your website – in the location where your template is located – you need to edit a file called functions.php – don’t worry about all the other stuff on that file – just add the following code to the bottom:

function isMobileDevice() {
    $useragent=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if(!preg_match('/(android|bb\d+|meego).+mobile|avantgo|bada\/|blackberry|blazer|compal|elaine|fennec|hiptop|iemobile|ip(hone|od)|iris|kindle|lge |maemo|midp|mmp|netfront|opera m(ob|in)i|palm( os)?|phone|p(ixi|re)\/|plucker|pocket|psp|series(4|6)0|symbian|treo|up\.(browser|link)|vodafone|wap|windows (ce|phone)|xda|xiino/i',$useragent)||preg_match('/1207|6310|6590|3gso|4thp|50[1-6]i|770s|802s|a wa|abac|ac(er|oo|s\-)|ai(ko|rn)|al(av|ca|co)|amoi|an(ex|ny|yw)|aptu|ar(ch|go)|as(te|us)|attw|au(di|\-m|r |s )|avan|be(ck|ll|nq)|bi(lb|rd)|bl(ac|az)|br(e|v)w|bumb|bw\-(n|u)|c55\/|capi|ccwa|cdm\-|cell|chtm|cldc|cmd\-|co(mp|nd)|craw|da(it|ll|ng)|dbte|dc\-s|devi|dica|dmob|do(c|p)o|ds(12|\-d)|el(49|ai)|em(l2|ul)|er(ic|k0)|esl8|ez([4-7]0|os|wa|ze)|fetc|fly(\-|_)|g1 u|g560|gene|gf\-5|g\-mo|go(\.w|od)|gr(ad|un)|haie|hcit|hd\-(m|p|t)|hei\-|hi(pt|ta)|hp( i|ip)|hs\-c|ht(c(\-| |_|a|g|p|s|t)|tp)|hu(aw|tc)|i\-(20|go|ma)|i230|iac( |\-|\/)|ibro|idea|ig01|ikom|im1k|inno|ipaq|iris|ja(t|v)a|jbro|jemu|jigs|kddi|keji|kgt( |\/)|klon|kpt |kwc\-|kyo(c|k)|le(no|xi)|lg( g|\/(k|l|u)|50|54|\-[a-w])|libw|lynx|m1\-w|m3ga|m50\/|ma(te|ui|xo)|mc(01|21|ca)|m\-cr|me(rc|ri)|mi(o8|oa|ts)|mmef|mo(01|02|bi|de|do|t(\-| |o|v)|zz)|mt(50|p1|v )|mwbp|mywa|n10[0-2]|n20[2-3]|n30(0|2)|n50(0|2|5)|n7(0(0|1)|10)|ne((c|m)\-|on|tf|wf|wg|wt)|nok(6|i)|nzph|o2im|op(ti|wv)|oran|owg1|p800|pan(a|d|t)|pdxg|pg(13|\-([1-8]|c))|phil|pire|pl(ay|uc)|pn\-2|po(ck|rt|se)|prox|psio|pt\-g|qa\-a|qc(07|12|21|32|60|\-[2-7]|i\-)|qtek|r380|r600|raks|rim9|ro(ve|zo)|s55\/|sa(ge|ma|mm|ms|ny|va)|sc(01|h\-|oo|p\-)|sdk\/|se(c(\-|0|1)|47|mc|nd|ri)|sgh\-|shar|sie(\-|m)|sk\-0|sl(45|id)|sm(al|ar|b3|it|t5)|so(ft|ny)|sp(01|h\-|v\-|v )|sy(01|mb)|t2(18|50)|t6(00|10|18)|ta(gt|lk)|tcl\-|tdg\-|tel(i|m)|tim\-|t\-mo|to(pl|sh)|ts(70|m\-|m3|m5)|tx\-9|up(\.b|g1|si)|utst|v400|v750|veri|vi(rg|te)|vk(40|5[0-3]|\-v)|vm40|voda|vulc|vx(52|53|60|61|70|80|81|83|85|98)|w3c(\-| )|webc|whit|wi(g |nc|nw)|wmlb|wonu|x700|yas\-|your|zeto|zte\-/i',substr($useragent,0,4))) {
    return true; } else { 
        
        return false; }
}

What this code will do is allow us to quickly call it by using isMobile() anywhere on the site – and then choose what we want to display (or not display). Let me show you a live example implemented from the client’s website:

if(isMobileDevice()) {
$title_enhance = '<span class="fusion-megamenu-icon"><img src="' . $this->menu_megamenu_thumbnail . '"></span>';
//echo "You are on a mobile";
} else { $title_enhance = ''; }

That’s all I added! After that change has been implemented here is how the menu looks now (using the Chrome User Agent Switcher):

The plugin that I am using here is ‘User-Agent Switcher for Chrome‘ – this allows you to fake who you are to the website – making the website believe you are a mobile user when really you are on the desktop. It’s helpful to see just how a website will react when it thinks you are on mobile – during development and testing.

Summary

That is all there is to it. Using these 4 steps above I was able to increase the traffic to my plastic surgery client by $77,548.80.

Speed is a considerable ranking factor for Google – and while this client had a professional and well put together website there were a few speed tweaks that were required to make it look perfect in the eyes of Google.

If you suspect your site may be slow follow the steps and you have tried the traditional page speed advice you may want to try the tips above and you should see ranking and traffic increases especially on a well trafficked site.

The Challenge

Recently a client came to me in the recruitment industry who wanted to switch providers from Volcanic to WordPress. If you are in teh recruitment industry and were considering a website you would have most likely heard of Volcanic (in fact you probably clicked from an AdWords ad).

In this case study I wanted to give an overview of the challenges and pain points of the client on the Volcanic system – and the specific way I addressed these by recreating the site in WordPress.

It may be of interest to you if you currently use Volcanic and are considering other options – and how such a project was done.

[su_box title=”Note” style=”default” box_color=”#ffd400″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”0″]This case study is not 100% complete and I am only trialing this as an ad on AdWords – so fair warning it’s a little rough around the edges.[/su_box]

Monthly SaaS Fee vs. Development

When my client started with Volcanic they were paying a certain monthly fee. However this monthly fee – a lot of it anyway – was eaten up by the platform fee. In other words the client wasn’t really paying every month for development services – they were just paying to have access to the platform.

Now when I say platform – Volcanic is a CMS platform just like WordPress – however it was custom built from the ground up to work as a recruitment type CMS website. Which is like a WordPress CMS with some job recruitment plugins.

Tied to One Provider

When you use a CMS platform developed by a single web development company – you are tied to that one provider – whether it be an agency or a specialist recruitment company like Volcanic.

This might not seem like a bad deal when you are first presented with the features the CMS could do – in fact you could be shown a graph that says “Hey, this is everything our CMS can do that WordPress can’t”.

However being tied to one provider also has a whole host of negatives – and these include:

• The provider is less likely to take care of you since you are stuck within their ecosystem
• The switching cost is high – since no one else knows how to use this CMS besides the developer
• If you do switch – even if you keep the CMS platform the developer has built – you can pretty much count out doing any kind of custom development work

In my client’s case they were paying $x per month for Volcanic – however I suspect that amount included minimum custom development – the fee in essence was to have access to the Volcanic CMS Platform.

The Solution

After speaking with the client and going over some pain points – I proposed a solution where I would convert the site to WordPress and the client would continue paying a monthly fee to myself.

The great thing about this for the client was that not only were they paying less per month then they would be were they to stay with Volcanic – but that monthly fee could then be used towards my services including:

• Custom development and adding new features
• SEO and building organic traffic

This was great value for the client – since the client was going on a monthly plan with me rather than a one-off payment there would be minimal additional expense (other than the first 3 months of that plan being used to convert the current site and take it live).

Basically this was a web dev and SEO solution. But this case study deals with just the aspects of converting the site to WordPress.

The Project

Maintaining Permalink Structure

One of the most common and egregious mistakes WordPress developers make when converting a site to WordPress is not maintaining the permalink structure and losing Google rankings and organic traffic.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have a URL for your services page like so:

https://www.yoursite.com.au/recruitment-services

You convert your site to WordPress and put it live but the new URL for the page is:

https://www.yoursite.com.au/services

Now – any links pointing to that page from other sites will not be counted by Google – not only that but if Google has that page in its index – and it’s now being returned as 404 Not Found – this will lead to a higher bounce rate and – well let’s just say if someone doesn’t know how to convert your site to maintain (and maybe even increase) your Google rankings/traffic then that is a big problem – and it defeats the whole proccess.

After all what’s the point of saving money in IT costs by switching to WordPress only to lose your Google rankings right?

As part of my development I replicated every permalink and meta description on the site to match their current page structure – also I optimised/tweaked their WordPress page speed so it was as fast – if not faster than what it was on Volcanic.

Speed Increase

While the Volcanic site was loading quite quickly on browsers – it had a terrible PageSpeed score from GTMetrix (F). No one really knows how Google ranks sites – but we know that page speed is a ranking factor. It’s also a fair assumption that if your PageSpeed score is F that this would mean the Google crawlers are not going to be too happy with you – and you would give ground to your competitors whose sites are optimised.

As part of the SEO part of the project I tinkered and improved the page speed significantly

[su_box title=”Note” style=”default” box_color=”#ffd400″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”0″]Page speed optimisation is an on-going proccess – and there are still issues I am looking in to get the PageSpeed higher. But also keep in mind that GTMetrix scores are a guide – and you don’t need 100% PageSpeed score to rank high in Google – but you definately don’t want an F score either. [/su_box]

Broadbean Integration with WP Job Manager

More information coming soon – if you would like the full case study sent to you please fill out the form below:

I’m very excited to be writing this blog post because it deals with one of the most important – top line activities for any business operating online – getting paid. If you’re not getting paid, and staying in the black – or at least looking to do so – you may as well pack up and go home.

In this blog I’ll be covering the technical issues in relation to getting paid – if you are opening an online store or selling a single product and looking to integrate a payment gateway read on – this will be a technical breakdown of how I setup payment gateways for my clients to get paid – and what you need to be aware of. 

So without further ado, let’s get started:

1) Understanding the Simple Complexities of SSL Certificates

In order to get paid online you’ll need an SSL certificate. This is just some piece of software that gets put on your site that encrypts the data between you and the payment gateway software that you’ll be using.

Rest assured that while this may seem technical (where do I get an SSL certificate, which SSL certificate is the best to get) – the easy answer is this – you can get a basic SSL certificate for free – easy peezy. 

For example – I have a number of staging sites – and I can just get in contact with my hosting company through their online chat and have them put an SSL certificate on a client’s site. It takes 1 minute – alternatively there is an option in cPanel called something like ‘Let’s encrypt’ where you can do this on your own without speaking to you rhost. And the SSL certificate is free.

Don’t let anyone convince you that you need to pay for an SSL certificate – there’s absolutely no need – and SSL companies have been pushing this for a long time – the idea that “customers won’t trust you” if you have a free SSL certificate. 

However let me show you something.

Below is me checking the SSL certificate of Amazon.com (a pretty reputable company):

And here is me checking the security certificate of a client’s site using a free SSL certificate provided by my hosting company:

Notice that they look exactly the same to the client. So don’t stress about SSL certificates or which one to get! Just get a free one provided by your hosting provider. Believe me if you’re going to fail to make sales it’s not going to be because of your SSL certificate. I’ve never heard someone say “You know we launched our product but… if only we had a reputable SSL certificate.” Lol – no that’s never happened. 

2) Make sure you are not linking to any external images or content

This is just a basic web development tenent you should be following anyway – but if you are linking to any external images on your website then the SSL certificate won’t break – or won’t authenticate your site – and your payment gateway will not work. 

This is a pretty easy fix – in fact I had this issue with a site I was working on and my hosting company fixed this issue for me in 2 minutes. If you install your SSL certificate and see this:

It means your connection is not secure due to external images. If you do have this issue simply go to this URL:

Why No Padlock

And enter in your URL – and you will get a report specifying exactly what code is breaking the SSL certificate:

And that’s it! That’s the biggest issue that can come up when you install your SSL certificate.

2) Setting up an online store using WooCommerce

No matter if you are selling 1 item on your website – or 100 items – it’s still considered an e-commerce store. Luckily these days setting up an online store is easy with WordPress and there are many frameworks that have all the checkout functionalities you’ll need to make it all work. 

Just ask yourself what you want to sell and try to find a framework that closely does what you need. 

The best advice I can give is to take a framework that has done 90% of what you need – and modify the last 10% to your needs. Do NOT create a checkout/e-commerce/online store system from scratch. 

Believe me when i say you’re not the first person to do the type of shop you’re doing online – and there are lots of frameworks that all ready do what you need. 

Here is a sample framework for a construction company that may sell certain products/services online:

Construction Theme Example

This all ready comes WooCommerce ready and everything is ready to go at the click of a button – just install it on your hosting provider and you’re ready to go.

3) Setting up a payment gateway

There are many payment gateways to choose from – PayPal, Stripe and Square are the most popular ones at the moment – but there are many others to choose from. As long as the payment gateway you choose is integrated with WooCommerce that’s the most important thing. 

If you’re not sure if it does go to 

WooCommerce Extension Library

And type in your payment gateway – e.g. Stripe

Also note that the extension is free – and many times the developer of the integration software will actually help you. For example Automaticc – the guy who built the Stripe WooCommerce integration have been helpful in replying to issues that I was having. 

If they are unresponsive many times you’ll have to buy their software or something in order to get that email support.

Once you install the plugin it’ll be available in the WooCommerce in the WooCommerce -> Settings -> Payments tab

When you sign up with your payment gateway they’ll ask you for a bunch of details (your bank account details) – to get everything working. There’s three things you’ll need to be aware of in all these integrations:

Test Keys / Live Keys

Your payment gateway will have some Test/Live keys – they are like API keys – that you will need to insert into your settings page for that payment plugin. For example once you sign up with Stripe you can find them at this URL:

Click here to get your Stripe API key

Simply copy them from here and paste them into your site URL below (just replace yourdomain.com with your domain):

https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=checkout§ion=stripe

Couldn’t be easier than that – you can start planning your site with a test key and enter fake credit card details until everything works and then switch to live to make some test purchases with a real credit card to make sure payments are being received correctly if that’s important for you.

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That’s it – once this is done you’ll be ready to start receiving money online. 

Hopefully this has taken out some of the complexities of receiving payments online and cleared some things up for you.

Good luck and remember – there are so many complexities to anything you want to do (especially when it comes to the online space) – but the most important thing is taking action.