Ecommerce businesses are flourishing and seen recording a vast growth in the US. Website platforms like WordPress are ubiquitous with many businesses using its eCommerce plugin - WooCommerce for setting up their online store. One needs to have WooCommerce powered digital stores to be operational and secure all the time.
However, losing website data, or website crashes can be a harrowing experience for anyone. Most of the businesses don’t tend to prioritize their website back up and see it as time-consuming and expensive. It’s only in the event of data mishap, they tend to wake up. But with growing challenges like security threats, maintenance failures, many businesses are looking for some backup plugins which serve as life insurance for businesses.
In this article, we try to understand why regular backups are key to any eCommerce store.
Why do we need backups?
WordPress is one of the most popular CMS. With millions of user base, WordPress and its plugins like WooCommerce are prone to various malicious attacks putting the security of the customer data in jeopardy.
Since your website serves as your digital storefront, any outage can cause massive damage. If your website is crashed, you may lose out on your orders affecting your revenue. This also mars your brand reputation. Disaster recovery is a time-taking process and may also need additional resources. Hence a regular backup of your WooCommerce online store is crucial in saving a great deal of revenue and time.
Reasons for WooCommerce Online Store Backups
1. Manual risks - To err is human! Not everything can be blamed on technology. Sometimes, upgrading to the latest versions of WordPress plugins and themes is neglected and this may make your website more vulnerable. Things done in haste may bring your whole website down. An innocent mistake may also wreck your operations. Sometimes, even a minor edit can take everything down.
2. Hackers - Ecommerce customer information which includes their sensitive information like card details too. This is prone to security attacks from hackers who inject malicious viruses to steal customer information. They may also slow down the website performance with undesired actions like increasing the load on the website.
The wooCommerce platform is constantly monitored by the team and volunteers across the globe. The primary cause of hacked websites is outdated plugins. Cybercriminals exploit the loopholes and vulnerabilities of the WooCommerce plugin to get hold of the sensitive data on your website.
3. Technical glitches - Technology failures may disrupt your operations if you continue using outdated versions. Website crashes and server failures are common glitches that can result in some data loss. Any new WordPress update can go sideways and can end up breaking your site. Server outages are also inevitable and if it is not recovered on time, you could potentially lose out some conversions.
4. Natural Disasters - If your business infrastructure is in places prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones, severe damage can happen to your hosting systems resulting in the loss of data.
How Backup makes the difference?
1.Data loss Reduction - A strong backup plan is a prerequisite to reduce your data loss. Any backup plan first stores the latest data and saves it in a secured vault. In case of any unforeseen circumstances, one can quickly restore the lost data. This ensures uninterrupted business operations and your website is available for your customers all the time.
2. Avoids critical data breaches - An effective backup strategy includes no loss to the critical business information like customer records, database records, payment information. If this data is backed up, it becomes easier to recover the critical information first and restore the site later without much loss of time.
3. Multiple locations - As discussed above, some geographic locations are more prone to natural disasters. Have a backup of your data and store it in the systems located in a different geographical location.
4. Withstand Crash - Backup storage can save the data on an independent cloud system that is not prone to website crashes or failures. Even in case of such a crash, you can easily roll back your website to the last working point.
5. Security - WooCommerce plugins store the backup on the web servers to reduce the storage space and this also reduces the exposure to external threats. Security is a non-negotiable aspect even if you are a small enterprise as even you could become the soft target of hackers. In fact, contrary to popular belief, hackers abuse small businesses websites more by easily pulling off shady campaigns. So having a regular backup leads to less damage. Even if they corrupt your files or lock you out, your first priority as a part of the disaster recovery process is data recovery and safety of it.
6 .Real-time shopping - A solid backup plan is crucial for WooCommerce websites. Any downtime or loss of orders may result in severe damage - an increase in customer churn rate, loss of orders, reduction in sales, damage to brand reputation, and more. With backup solutions, the real-time shopping experience is always possible.
How to backup your WooCommerce online store?
WooCommerce stores can be backed up using a WordPress backup plugin - BlogVault which comes with easy backup features. Install BlogVault and ensure that you configure automatic WordPress backup schedules too. You need frequent database backups to ensure that you’re catching up on the current orders and sales data. BlogVault also helps you to have offsite backup storage as well. It also sends you notifications in case of any anomalous behavior based on which you can fix the errors.
Another solution is Jetpack backup that could restore your data in minutes. This is made specifically for WordPress and its plugins and can be integrated seamlessly into your WooCommerce site. It offers both daily backups (auto backup performed once a day) and real-time backup (as and when changes are made on your website). Real-time backups are a game-changer as you can easily trace out what took the website down and restore it to its previous place by undoing it. Jetpack offers offsite store - backup data being on the external servers rather than on the hosting provider so your data would still be safe even in case of server outages. It also has two data centers one in the US and the other in a different physical location.
How often should your WooCommerce store require backup?
Since orders are placed all through the day, backing up at only fixed intervals won’t suffice. It is essential to keep backing up the data at regular intervals without regretting the loss of time, data, and sales. Do it as often as you can. Never be tricked into thinking that it’s not of immediate priority. It can save your revenue, hours of labor, and other externalities.
Wrap-up
Regardless of how secure your server is, you ought to have a well-thought-out backup plan in place. The first thought of squandering on numerous manual procedures like FTP registries and databases makes backup an intimidating task. However, the trade-offs that backing up creates are much more profitable and desired. Also, unlike earlier times, today we have many latest plugins making backup much easier. Go for incremental and multiple backups that can make the whole process less server-intensive and also pick a reputable backup plugin.
We stringently follow the best practice and proven work methodology for providing an end-to-end WooCommerce development services. A great user experience, the speed of the website, security, store performance and its responsiveness are some of the criteria. Get your WooCommerce store online with unique capabilities and functionalities!
