Have You Checked Your WooCommerce Settings?

When was the last time you reviewed your eCommerce site’s settings? While most eCommerce shop managers will be in them daily to fulfill orders, update products, and offer support to customers, other settings in the site often go overlooked. These include things such as taxes, shipping rates, and privacy/security. Settings should be periodically reviewed to make sure they’re kept up to date with best practices and regulations. Any changes to your business will be reflected here as well. In this blog post, we will go over these settings and their importance, and hopefully, this will get you inspired and thinking about your eCommerce site.

WooCommerce General Settings

WooCommerce’s General Settings allow you to ensure your eCommerce site matches your business’ needs and goals. These general settings include important features like the locations you can sell and ship to as well as currency options. These settings may seem simple to set and forget, but it is important to make sure they are correct as they will affect other settings down the road.

Taxes

Tax Settings are probably the most important to review regularly. Ensuring that your eCommerce site is charging and collecting the right amount of taxes from your customers will prevent liability and lost revenue. Each business is unique and the ever-changing landscape of tax regulations can be daunting, but WooCommerce offers a few solutions that provide guidance and suggestions.

  • WooCommerce Core allows you to manage, import, and export tax rates, which will fit the needs of most store managers.
  • WooCommerce Services offers an Automated Tax Calculation when you connect your site through Jetpack. These rates are run through a third party service and stay up to date.
  • There are also a few third-party service options:
    • TaxJar – This service connects with your site and can help you calculate taxes, like WooCommerce Services, but can also help you file taxes based on your account.
    • Avalara – This service connects with your site and can help you calculate and file taxes based on your account.
These settings should be regularly reviewed. Consulting with a tax professional and/or an accountant on the applicable laws for your state, country, and business is recommended.

Shipping

Confirming your eCommerce site’s Shipping Settings for the purpose of offering your customers the most efficient and affordable rates will improve the conversion and fulfillment process. To do this, audit the Shipping Zones, Methods, and Rates on your eCommerce site to match your business’ and customers’ needs.

Payments

Reviewing and improving the Payment Processors and Settings used on your eCommerce site so you can offer the most convenient ways for customers to complete their transactions will also help improve conversion rates. It often leads to more cost-effective solutions for collecting and managing payments. WooCommerce offers some Core Payment Gateways as well as Third-Party Payment Gateways that will fit most every business need.

Accounts & Privacy

Accounts and Privacy Settings used on your eCommerce site let you safely collect and maintain customer data. Make sure to check the Personal Data Retention setting to only keep order data on your site as long as needed. You should consider local laws and specify how long your site will retain data in your privacy policy. WordPress 4.9.6 also offers a Personal Data Exporter and Removal tools to export/remove personal data associated with an email address from your site to meet privacy compliance laws. Taking the time to familiarize your business with these tools and update your Privacy Policy can help mitigate your eCommerce site’s risks.

Account and privacy data should be regularly reviewed. Consult with a lawyer when changing any of these settings or policy documentation.

Privacy Policy

Your eCommerce site’s Privacy Policy page should be reviewed on a yearly or quarterly schedule to keep up to date with your business. WordPress 4.9.6 introduced a Privacy Policy Guide to offer insight on how personal data is handled. Make sure a Privacy Policy page is selected to ensure it is displayed to customers on the account and checkout pages.

Terms of Use

Like your privacy policy page, the Terms of Use page should be reviewed on a schedule. This helps provide transparency to your customers while ensuring it meets your business standards and needs. Make sure a Terms of Use page is selected so it is displayed to customers on the checkout page.

Return Policy

It’s important for your customers to know whether or not you accept returns and that they understand the terms of that policy. Outlining how long customers have to make a return, the required condition of the product, and how refunds will be received can greatly impact your customer service performance and brand reputation.

GDPR Compliance

General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation in EU law on the handling of private data for all citizens of the European Union. This applies to you if you sell to anyone in the EU, regardless of your business location. It is worth taking some time to familiarize yourself with GDPR and adjust policies as needed. It may be a good strategy to adopt these policies even if you do not operate in the EU. You can find additional information about this from WooCommerce’s GDPR blog articles.

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