Here are some things we recommend when you set up your storefront for the first time to take advantage of the SEO features of both OrderStorm and WordPress plus make it easy to get your product catalog entered efficiently. Many of the settings are a one time thing – set it and forget it. Then you can focus on your suppliers, categories and products to create a great shopping experience for your customers.
In your WordPress dashboard:
1. Use the permalink setting for custom structures as follows: /%category%/%postname%/
2. Change the slugs in WordPress for the Category Page and Product Page (installed with the plugin as orderstorm-ecommerce-category-page and orderstorm-ecommerce-product-page) to something appropriate for your store. Note: Do not mess with the shortcode on these pages.
3. Install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Revisit the sitemap plugin and manually re-build your sitemap frequently as you make changes.
These first three things together will get your products and categories indexed correctly by the search engines.
In the OrderStorm eCommerce sys admin (log in at www.orderstorm.com)
4. Enter the exact slug for the Category Page and Product page exactly in the Storefront Settings. This tells OrderStorm which page on your site has the shortcode so we can deliver your data.
5. Create an seo-slug for every product and category in OrderStorm.
6. Add vendors to the cart first, then categories, then products.
7. Use the Copy feature for easily adding products that have similar features and options. Add one product. Then create shipping options and feature sets for that one product. Once the product is assigned to a category and all options are in place, use the ‘copy’ feature to copy the product. Category selection, features and shipping options will all copy over. Modify the copied product to make it into the next product.
8. Assign every product to a vendor (or yourself) so POs and shipping notices auto-generate.
9. Add your logo or custom text to the checkout screen.
10. Run a test order for each payment type – PayPal, Credit Card etc.- after you configure your payment options.
Happy Selling!
