While lots of industries have been struggling to survive in the post-COVID world due to new consumer behaviors and government restrictions on trading, e-commerce is seeing an unexpected boom. Instead of going to brick and mortar stores, people are relying on ecommerce websites to get the products they need and want. Of course, e-commerce giants like Amazon are capturing a lot of this new spend, but not all of it. There are still lots of opportunities for independent online retailers to get in on the ecommerce boom.

Shopify is one of the best and most-respected e-commerce website builders on the market, and rightly so. The platform is not only easy-to-use but also extremely powerful. Even big brands like Tesla, Kylie Cosmetics, Gymshark, and Red Bull have adopted Shopify to sell products. Budweiser has registered more than $11 billion in sales through their Shopify store. So, there’s no denying it can help you generate a lot of revenue. However, with more consumer spend heading into the sector, the competition to be the best ecommerce website builder is sure to heat up. We know that Wix is working hard to improve its ecommerce features to stay competitive, but what is Shopify doing to improve its platform?

We reviewed all of the 2020 Shopify platform updates and highlighted the ones that we think can make the biggest positive impact on your business. Read the rest of the article to find out what’s new with Shopify.

Ecommerce

If you’re on Shopify or interested in creating a website with Shopify, it’s highly likely you’re going to want to know about the ecommerce features because let’s face it, it’s what the platform is all about. So, we thought highlighting the best ecommerce feature updates would be a good place to start.

Show off your products with video and 3D

A major sticking point when buying things online is that you can’t touch the products or look at them from a unique angle. This sometimes stops consumers from completing the buyer’s journey. However, that’s where video and 3D product images come into play. It makes the online buying experience more like what you would experience in-store. Video can show products in action (how to assemble, how they fit, etc.) and 3D images allow your visitors to get a better look at what they are buying. In September this year, Shopify released some updates to its Shopify AR (augmented reality) offering. Shopify claims that their AR features give shoppers new ways to engage with products online, increase buyer confidence, and bring your products to life. Shopify store owners can now use a combination of up to 250 images, videos, and 3D images to showcase their products. When done correctly, video and 3D image product listings will help you to convert more of your visitors into happy customers.

The Shop app is a free digital shopping assistant

In April, Shopify released their new app Shop which they describe as ‘a free digital shopping assistant’ and ‘the most convenient way for shoppers to buy from their favorite independent brands’. It combines the best features of their previous apps, Arrive and Shopify Pay to provide value to Shopify customers while giving Shopping Merchants another opportunity to communicate to their customers and drive sales. Users of the app can use Shop Pay (previously Shopify Pay) for a quick checkout process and offset delivery emissions. Shopify claims that the speedy checkout process has improved the conversion rates of returning customers by up to 18%. It’s also possible to see real-time tracking of deliveries, complete with the live map location. So, there’s no guessing where your parcel will be. Additionally, the app will give personal product recommendations from stores users have already bought from. This gives Shopify merchants a chance to turn one-time customers into repeat customers and drive more sales.

Automate responses to customer order status requests with Shopify Chat

Running an ecommerce business can be stressful, so anything that can streamline or automate a core process is a huge plus, right? Well, Shopify has made some changes to their chatbot that has done just that. As of September, the new Live chat feature allows customers to simply provide their order number and email address to receive automated responses about the fulfillment of their order. The bot will send them a tracking link which they can use to get updates about where their order is in the fulfillment process. This means you can provide great customer service without any additional work. The Shopify Chat app is completely free so the boost to your customer service offering won’t cost you a dime.

Design capabilities

Out of all of Shopify’s latest updates, it seems as though they have concentrated on new design features the least. This could be because their designs features are already industry-leading. However, they have made some improvements to developer workflows to and introduced a new theme.

New Express theme

Shopify has noticed how lots of brick and mortar stores have adopted online selling as part of their business plan as they pivot to keep afloat in the madness of post-COVID trading. However, a lot of businesses that are moving to online sales are looking for a quick and easy method to list products and generate income. So, in May, they released the Express theme which was designed for a one-page shopping experience. It’s best suited for restaurant and cafe businesses, but any business looking to list products and start selling quickly could benefit from the theme. It’s also responsive to different screen sizes so it will look good for your mobile visitors too.

Marketing tools & features

Shopify has been making moves to improve their marketing offer with some tools that they probably already should have had, plus some unique features that make them stand out from the crowd.

Email marketing from Shopify

Towards the end of 2019, Shopify announced a beta version of its email marketing tool to anyone interested in testing it before a full roll-out. After several updates and bug fixes, Shopify launched their email marketing tool to the masses in April 2020. It allows Shopify merchants like you to create email campaigns from ready-made template designs and it gives you the ability to send emails from your domain. You can send, manage, and analyze your email campaigns directly from your Shopify dashboard. No need to install any additional apps, everything you need is right there. Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods to drive sales, so it’s great that Shopify users can now tap into its power.

New on-page product analytics

As of July 2020, Shopify merchants can now look at detailed product analytics from the past 90 days directly on the product page. This makes it much easier and faster to dive into the analytics of the products you want to focus on. It’s a simple update but one that can save you a lot of time… Time that you can spend optimizing your product page!

Shopify Capital expands

Shopify Capital was originally launched in 2016 which provides simple and fast funding to Shopify businesses to help cover marketing costs, product inventory expenses, or other business-related overheads. There’s no need to go to the bank, it doesn’t take your credit rating into account, and funds will be available within hours of the loan getting approved. In May this year, Shopify announced that Shopify Capital will be expanded outside of the US to include the UK and Canada and they have committed another $200 million to the fund. So, if capital is an issue for your business then you can approach Shopify for a fast loan for amounts between $200 and $1,00,000.

Free listings on Google Shopping

To help Shopify merchants expand the audience that sees their products, Shopify has partnered with Google to enable online store owners to list their products on Google Shopping for free through the Google Shopping app. It’s only available for US store owners at the moment, but it will be rolled out globally by the end of the year. All you need to do is sync your products with the app, and all approved products will start showing up on Google Shopping listings.

SEO

From our research here at Website Builder Ninja, we know that Shopify is one of the better, if not the best website builder platform in terms of SEO performance. However, they are still releasing updates to improve it even further which is great to see.

Online store performance dashboard

In June Shopify released a beta version of their new online store performance dashboard that aims to provide insights to store managers about how various actions like app installs or theme code customizations affect their store’s speed. The speed of your store does influence your SEO because search engines consider it as a direct ranking factor. However, it will also improve the user experience and conversion rate of your store. So, keeping a close eye on how updates affect your speed and evaluating the trade-off between the value of the update and the speed, discoverability, and user experience of your site is well worth doing.

International domains

Setting up local domains for international web visitors that feature the local language and show the local currency will improve the shopper experience and encourage a higher conversion rate for international customers. It also can have a positive effect on your SEO as well. This is because Hreflang tags and sitemaps are automatically created on Shopify for every international domain you set up. Search engines will use these elements to find relevant web pages specific to the searchers’ country and region. So, having Hreflang tags will make the search engines job easier and therefore it will be more likely to pull up a page with Hreflang tags than without.

The Shopify International Domain feature is now live. It is recommended that you use it to create international domains for countries that provide significant revenue to your business. Be careful not to overdo it because too many domains can harm your site’s SEO.

Future releases

Here’s a couple of exciting things Shopify has in the pipeline…

Shopify Balance

Shopify is entering the banking game. Shopify users from the US will be given early access to Shopify’s business bank account later this year. A Balance account makes it easy to see cash flow, pay bills, monitor expenses, all with no monthly fees. They will also be given physical and virtual cards to use when purchasing things for their business online or instore. Finally, there will be awards such as cashback and discounts associated with everyday business spending. It will be rolled out to other countries sometime next year.

Shop Pay Installments

You might have come across Buy Now Pay Later payment processors like Klarna, Laybuy, and Zip. Well, Shopify will be launching their own pay by installments feature on Shop Pay sometime in the near future. Merchants will receive the full purchase amount straight away and Shopify will follow up with the buyer to collect the rest of the payments. Buyers will have the option to pay in four equal installments. The flexibility to break down the costs of buying from Shopify retailers will increase the likelihood of them committing to the purchase. Therefore, Shop Pay Installments should improve the conversion rates of some Shopify stores. If you operate a Shopify store in the US and want to have this feature at your checkout, sign up to the waitlist here.

If you want to find out more about this top-rated brand then check out our full Shopify review that analyzes the most important aspects of the platform and outlines all the pros and cons.

Beginner-friendly

9.8
Design capabilities

9.5
Main features

9.9
Value for money

8.5

The team here at Website Builder Ninja has lots of experience building blogs and writing blog content. So, we sat down together to brainstorm how we could break down all the information needed to create a successful blog. This step by step guide is suitable for complete beginners or for anyone who has a blog and is looking to find best practices and useful tips to help them optimize.

We’re going to talk through why you should start a blog, how to start a blog, and something everybody wants to know, how to monetize a blog. We know that when you’re first starting out, creating a blog can seem overwhelming. We’ve compiled our years of experience into this useful step-by-step guide so you don’t have to make the same mistakes we all did when we first launched our blogs.

What is a blog?

A blog is a regularly updated web page that hosts a series of content, articles, or blog posts that are usually centered around a niche topic or theme. Blog content usually includes text, images, videos, and animated gifs. The content can literally be about anything. So, you could be a marine biology expert looking to share your experience with an audience or you could really like cats and decide to create a blog dedicated to sharing cute cat pictures. Trust me when I say that the cute cat pics idea has been exhausted, so you might want to think of something else…

Blogs are created for many reasons, but ultimately they help individuals and businesses develop an online audience, attract new leads, and grow an online presence or brand awareness. When done correctly, they can be an effective method of driving traffic to your website.

Why should you start a blog?

You don’t need to be a great writer or an expert in a particular field to start a blog. You just need to be passionate about your subject, business, or lifestyle and be able to offer an interesting or new perspective on that topic. Often the most popular blogs are written in a very informal, easy, conversational style that’s fun to read. The aim of the game for any blog is to attract an audience, so making it enjoyable to read is often the best strategy.

You might already know why you want to start a blog. However, if you’re unsure whether you should take the plunge, we’ve pulled together a shortlist of blogging benefits and reasons why you should start blogging today.

Additional income – it’s possible to turn a blog into a lucrative business with blogs like the Huffington Post turning over $500 million every year from their viral content. While it’s not possible for everyone to generate half a billion from blogging, the average blogger in the US earns $13.33 per hour and lots of bloggers manage to earn a six-figure salary from their content. So, it can be a lucrative side hustle or full-time job if you work hard.
Build a portfolio – blogs can also be used as a stepping stone into other careers. As a writer just starting out, the quickest way to success is getting some work published so people know your name. Creating your own blog or writing for someone else’s blog is a great way to get noticed and to start building a portfolio of work. Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferris, and Michelle Malkin all started as bloggers.

Share your story – whether you want to share your daily diary with friends and family or tell your message to the world, a blog gives you a platform to do so. You can create a voice for yourself and articulate your unique perspective to the world to help, inform, or support others. Or you can keep your Grandma in the loop about what you’re having for breakfast each morning during your semester abroad. Whatever you feel like writing about, you can!
Promote your business – if you run a business, blogs can be a great way to promote and grow it. Hubspot reported that businesses that focus on blogging are 13x more likely to see positive ROI. When done correctly a blog will benefit your SEO and help you to start growing an organic traffic stream to your website. The best thing is that blog visitors will be relevant to your business and much more likely to convert into customers because they’re interested in the topics you write about.
Start a passionate community – something unique to blogging that you won’t get from launching a regular website is feedback from your audience. The nature of blogs invites readers to engage with your content in the comments section. It gives you the chance to keep in contact with friends and families or learn from the people you are writing for.

How to create a blog in 6 easy to follow steps

I hope you’re feeling in the mood to blog now that you know the variety of benefits you can tap into. So, now it’s time to get into the detail of how you actually go about creating a blog. Whether you’re creating a blog for yourself or your business, the fundamentals are the same. In this list we’re assuming that you already know what you’re going to write about, so make sure you have a topic in mind before starting this checklist.

1. Choose your blog name & purchase a domain name

Naming your blog

The first thing you’ll need to do is pick a name for your blog. Although it might be tempting to rush this step, it’s worth taking some time to get it right because you’ll want to include the name in your domain name, and changing your domain name once you’ve created a website and you have established backlinks is a big no-no. It can do damage to your SEO and brand awareness so it’s best just to get it right the first time around.

A great blog name will do the following things:

Signpost to your reader what the blog is about by including the topic you’re writing about in the name. For example, a food blog could be called ‘Eating Addict’ or ‘The Art of Cooking’ or ‘Cook, Drink, Eat’. These titles clearly signify that the content on this blog is centered around food, making it easy for the reader to understand what they are clicking on.
Include a target keyword in the name to help with SEO if you can. It’s not essential but if you can make a keyword you know you want to target sound good, then it can benefit you down the line.
Be simple and memorable – don’t get too complex because you want your blog name to be easy to remember. Try keeping your name to two or three words and avoid complex words that are hard to read and say.

If you’re struggling to think of blog names, you can use one of many free blog name generators like this one from Wix to give you some ideas.

Choosing a domain name

Before you get too excited, make sure that the blog name you decide on has an available domain name. There are lots of options when it comes to deciding on the ending for your domain name. However, best practice dictates that ideally, you want a domain name with a .com or .net ending. This is because consumers trust .com and .net sites the most from years of surfing the web. So, they are most likely to click on those types of domain names. However, if high website traffic is not your main aim then you can have some fun with domain names that end in things like .pizza, .sexy, or .LOL.

If you’re using a website builder then you can usually purchase your domain name during the sign-up process and pay for it in the same bill as your first subscription. However, if you’re going to build a WordPress site or use a website builder that requires you to purchase a domain name somewhere else, try sites like Dreamhost or Bluehost to register your domain name.

2. Choose a website builder that suits you

I won’t go into too much detail here because the best thing to do would be to check out our list of the best website builders for bloggers page. We’ve tried and tested the best website builders and ranked them based on how good they are for creating and managing a blog. There’s a detailed review of each brand for you to find out more information on any platforms you are considering. The top two brands in our best for bloggers list are Wix and Squarespace, here’s how they compare:

Wix

Read Full Review

Beginner Friendly

8.7
Design Capabilities

9.9
Variety of Features

9.7
Value for Money

9.5

9.5

Ninja Ranking

User ranking

Squarespace

Read Full Review

Beginner Friendly

8.9
Design Capabilities

9.6
Variety of Features

9.2
Value for Money

9.3

9.3

Ninja Ranking

User ranking

Things you should look out for when deciding on a website builder to create a blog:

A platform that’s easy to use with no design or coding knowledge required to get started
Professionally designed, good-looking web templates
A large variety of content blocks to help you build a stunning blog with great features
The ability to sync with social media channels
An integrated email marketing solution or the ability to link up to a third-party solution
SEO tools – at the very minimum you want the ability to edit headings (H1-H6), meta-descriptions, URLs and to be able to create sitemaps so your site can be indexed by search engines.
Try and find a builder with fast loading times as this helps your SEO too (Webnode has the fastest loading times out of all the website builders). However, whichever website builder you choose there are lots of ways you can optimize your site for faster loading times like compressing image files, using AMP (accelerated mobile pages), reducing the size of pages and much more.
If you plan on launching a personal blog, make sure it’s affordable. If you’re not trying to build a huge audience a cheaper plan from one of the cheaper brands will be more than enough

3. Decide on a web template and build your blog

A web template is great for speeding up the process of creating your blog. Most website builders will have a blogging category on their web template listings page. So, the best thing is to head there and pick the template that suits your blog the best. Make sure you list the features you need before you get to this stage so you can find the template with everything you need. For example, if you’re going to start a blog to talk about your photography business, make sure you pick a theme with great image galleries.

Make sure that your web template is mobile responsive to cater to mobile readers too. Most templates are automatically mobile-friendly, but it’s worth double-checking to make sure.

Here’s an example of a lifestyle blog template from Wix:

Here’s an example of a food and travel template from Squarespace:

Once you’ve decided on your template then it’s down to you to populate the pages with your images and text to get your site ready for your first blog post.

4. Write and publish your first post

So, you’ve chosen a blog name, a website builder, a web template and you’ve populated it with images and text. It’s now time for the fun part, it’s time to start blogging! Your content is what will generate your audience, provide you or your business with a platform, and give you opportunities to monetize. Great content will vary depending on your niche. Some niches require highly researched scientific articles, whereas others demand picture focused posts with very little text. Whatever your content strategy, great blogs will keep the following things in mind when writing content:

Speak to a specific audience and provide them with significant value. You could be helping your audience to grow their business, sharing personal experiences to comfort them, or keeping them informed with breaking news from within a certain industry. The best blogs communicate unique or new information that helps their audience in some way. If you really want to create a successful blog, think about your audience before yourself. What do they want?
Make your content accessible and good-looking by taking time to format correctly, find great images, and write great text. This includes everything from spell checking, sourcing high-resolution images, and making sure that the spacing is right on your web pages so that the text is easier to read. The aim of the game is to make your content attractive to readers so that they want to engage with it and come back for more.
Have some fun with it and don’t become too serious. Even if you’re writing on a serious topic or there’s money involved, it’s important to make sure it’s entertaining to read. The best way to do this is to write in a conversational tone. You’re not submitting blog posts to get graded, you’re sharing it with people reading in their leisure time. So, write as you speak and you’ll find it easy to create engaging content.

5. Think about SEO

If you want to monetize your blog at any point, you’ll want to brush up on your SEO skills before you get started. This way, you’ll begin to make SEO gains the moment you launch your blog. You’ll thank yourself later! A good place to start would be to read our post, SEO & website builders – everything you need to know for a detailed rundown of what you need to think about. However, if you haven’t got time to read another article right now, no problem. We’ll go over the basics now:

Keyword research – this helps you to find actual search terms that people use to find information about your topic on the internet. Search engines will trawl pages for keywords to judge whether that page is relevant to show in the search results. Pages with the keywords in the right places are much more likely to show up higher on the results pages. Knowing the keywords you want to show up for will help you to create content based on what your audience is actually looking for.
On-page SEO – help search engines to understand if your page is relevant or useful to your audience and will help it to judge if your content is of high quality. On-page SEO includes things like header tags (H1-H6), rich content (images and videos), internal & external links, titles & meta-descriptions, friendly URLs, and image optimization.
Off-page SEO – the main part of off-page SEO is backlinks. A backlink is an inbound hyperlink from another site to your site. A backlink from a respected site within your niche industry will signify to search engines that your web page must be important and relevant. Quality backlinks will boost your website authority and help you to show up higher in the search results, as well as providing another traffic stream to your site.

6. Promote your blog and grow your audience

Okay, so, unfortunately, you won’t get a ton of traffic as soon as you hit publish on your first blog post. The internet makes you work hard for web visitors and you will need to spend some time promoting your blog to get visitors, especially when your first start out. Here are a few things you can do to starting building an audience:

Tell your friends and family about your new blog. This is a great way to guarantee your first few visitors and as long as you ask nicely, they will probably share it with their own networks which will immediately expand your reach. Friends and family are also the perfect people to help you spot any typos or areas for improvement before you promote it any further.
Use social media to share your content. You should create a page on each of the major platforms for your business or blog and use it as a place to share new content. Over time your audience will grow and you will notice on your traffic analytics that a lot of your traffic will be referred from social posts. Also, circulating content on social media has a minor benefit to your SEO ranking as well.
Comment and post on other blogs. Get active in the comments section of other relevant blogs and provide interesting and useful comments about the topics discussed. Once you’ve been around for a while, ask the blog owner if you can share a link to your blog in the comments or write a guest blog post with a link back to your blog, and invite them to do the same. This way you can tap into each other’s audiences and get an SEO boost.
Create a newsletter sign up form to build a mailing list. With most website builders, you can add a signup form with just a few clicks. It’s great because you can build an audience that you know likes your content because they’ve made the effort to give you their contact details. You could create a weekly or monthly newsletter with updates and news from your blog with links to relevant posts. It’s another great way to generate traffic and it provides opportunities to monetize as your audience grows. You’d be surprised how much someone is willing to pay to appear in a newsletter that goes out to 10,000 people.
Engage with your audience. The easiest way to do this is to respond to all comments left on your blog. It could be a simple thanks for reading or you could ask a question to invite another response. Making your readers feel welcome and loved will make them much more likely to come back again and share your blog with others.

How to monetize your blog

It’s important to stress that taking the time to get the previous steps right will help you to maximize the potential revenue you could achieve when you monetize your blog. A sloppy blog with poor SEO and crappy content is never going to earn any money. Spend some time crafting great copy and working on the design of your blog and worry about the money later.

Once you have a following of regular visitors and have started to build a mailing list you can start to think about monetization. Here are a few ways you can earn money through your blog:

Run ads – this is best for high traffic blogs because you need a high volume of visitors to make a decent amount of money. There are lots of platforms that help you to list ads on your website. However, the easiest and best is probably Google Adsense. All you need to do is add a piece of code onto your website and Google does the rest.
Affiliate links – allow you to earn money via a commission if a visitor from your site follows a link to the advertisers’ site and makes a purchase. Affiliate links work best in product review posts. For example, if your blog is about skateboarding, you could do a round-up of the best skate shoes in 2020 and create affiliate links to each shoe that you include. Commissions will vary but you can typically earn anywhere between 2% and 40% of the sale price.
Memberships & subscriptions for exclusive content – you can create members-only areas of your website that hosts exclusive content like online courses, expert advice, exclusive videos, private forums, or premium articles and charge your visitors for access to this content.

Find the best blogging platforms

Hopefully, this article has answered the questions you might have had about how to create a blog. If there’s anything else you would like to know, leave a question in the comments below and we’ll get back to you.

If you’re still not sure about which platform to choose to create your blog, go check out our list of the best website builders for bloggers and read the detailed reviews to get a low down on the pros and cons of each brand.

It’s no secret that here at Website Builder Ninja we love the Wix platform. After extensively testing Wix and other website builder platforms, we found that time and time again, Wix comes out on top. However, like any website builder or online tool, Wix is not perfect. That’s why the team at Wix works hard behind the scenes to update the platform to make sure they remain the top-rated website builder platform. The competition is fierce with new platforms coming onto the scene and other respected brands doing their best to outperform Wix.

Wix releases numerous updates every week that improve various aspects of the platform such as design capabilities, marketing features, ecommerce tools, SEO features, payment options, and much more. It’s hard to keep up with everything and if you miss an email from Wix, you might not even know about a feature that could be used to help improve your website, boost sales, or develop your business further.

In the northern hemisphere, winter is coming. So, we decided to do a round-up of the most important updates that happened over the summer of 2020 to make sure that you don’t miss anything significant. Despite a global pandemic and a remote workforce, Wix has been busy. Read the rest of the review to find out the details!

Design capabilities

It’s important to update the look and feel of your website every so often to keep up with new competitors and to keep your site looking fresh. Here’s a list of updates that Wix has made to the editor over the summer to help you make your website stand out from the crowd:

COVID-19 related design features

Towards the start of the summer, Wix released some new design features that allow you to add Corona Virus themed design features to your website. This will show your visitors that you care about what’s going on and help to make your web design relevant to the time we are all living through at the moment.

Wix released COVID-19 badges in May which enables you to update your visitors visually about any changes to your business that might be in place because of restrictions from local governments. You can share that you are open for business as usual, ready to take online orders, or that you’re closed for the time being, and much more.

To access this feature you need to install the site badges app that’s available on the app store.

Alt text for background images

This one’s simple but effective. You can now add alt text to your background images, hover boxes, slideshows, and lightboxes. This will improve your website’s accessibility for visually impaired visitors and slightly improve your SEO. Anyone who uses a screen reader will hear the alt text to help them understand the images displayed on their screen and the context around them. Additionally, search bots use alt text to match images with specific search queries. So, this update gives you the chance to provide a better user experience and more opportunities to show up in search results, it’s a win-win.

To access this feature click on the background image > click change background strip > select settings > input alt text into the image text field.

Shared gallery app

As of June 2020, you can add a shared gallery to your Wix site where your visitors and members can share pictures, videos & gifs, write comments, tag other members, and more. This is a great feature if you want to develop a community of visitors and will drive engagement on your site. To access this feature you’ll need to install the shared gallery app from the marketplace and find it in the editor to configure the settings to your needs.

Wix challenges – design and sell challenges to your members

This one is another app released in June 2020. It allows you to create and sell challenges to your audience to help them achieve their goals and keep them engaged with your website and other content. It’s perfect for designing fitness challenges, reading challenges, diet challenges, and much more. The app allows you to split your challenges up into simple steps, manage participants, and keep track of their progress. Head to the app store if you want to add this feature to your website.

Marketing tools & features

Create subscription plans for premium content

This feature was released in August and allows Wix site owners to monetize their blog content by charging a subscription fee for access to premium and exclusive content. You can also set up free plans to encourage sign-ups so that you can collect email addresses for an email marketing campaign. This is a great way to earn money while you build a loyal following and community on your site.

If you would like to set up a paywall for exclusive content you need to head to your Dashboard> Blog > Create new post > Sell subscriptions > Select or create a subscription plan

Set up product subscriptions

We’re going to stick with subscription features for another update. In July, Wix released a payment feature update which now allows Wix store owners to collect a steady income from their customers by selling product subscriptions to their customers. You can now get recurring orders from your customers which works great for products like books, coffee, candles, toiletries, and much more.

To access this feature go to Dashboard > Products > Create a new or edit existing product > Scroll down & find create a subscription

Facebook Ads by Wix

This feature has been set up for over a year now, however in July, Wix made some updates to their algorithm to make it more effective. The idea behind it is that once you set up your Wix store with Facebook ads, the Wix algorithm will do all of the hard work for you by running A/B tests, optimizing the ads, creating lookalike audiences from your customer list, and much more. The fact that they are still working on the algorithm to improve it is a good sign and hopefully something that continues. If you’re someone that hasn’t had time to look into Facebook ads or if you don’t have the budget to pay a PPC specialist, then this is a could be a good option for you.

SEO

Verify your site on Google, Bing, and other search engines

A common problem that some Wix users experience is the length of time it takes for Google and other search engines to index their site and web pages. Some users have reported it taking up to three months for their site to show up in search engine results which is far too long. During September, among other updates to the Wix SEO tools, the platform released a site verification tool that allows you to verify your website on Google Search Console, Pinterest, Bing Webmaster Center, and Yandex Webmaster. This should hopefully speed things up a bit and get your site listed within days rather than months of publishing. Additionally, you’ll then be able to gain access to the insights available from the data collected from these search engine webmaster tools.

To find this feature go to your Dashboard > SEO tools > Site verification.

Wix SEO patterns

In August Wix released SEO patters. This feature allows you to apply the same SEO rules to whole sections of your website to save you time without comprising on SEO best practices. Rather than editing each page’s settings, you can apply specific rules to different types of pages. This is great for larger sites with hundreds or thousands of pages, especially ecommerce sites that regularly update their product listings. You can customize Google settings, social share settings, SEO tags, and more.

To find this feature go to your Dashboard > SEO tools > SEO patterns.

301 redirect updates

In August this year, Wix made a couple of updates to their 301 redirect features. The first thing they did was release an update that allows users to create a group 301 redirect to redirect website traffic from numerous URLs with the same URL path. This will help reduce some of the work involved if you’re migrating your site over to Wix. Additionally, there is now a feature that allows you to import or export up to 500 redirects via a CSV file which again speeds up and streamlines your workload when dealing with 301 redirects.

To locate these features go to Dashboard > SEO tools > URL redirect manager.

Eccomerce

Product image ‘zoom-in’ available for desktop visitors

Something that stops some shoppers from buying products online is the fact that you can’t get a close up look at what you are buying. Wix has installed a feature that has been available on other ecommerce sites for some time and that is, the ability to zoom in on product images. This will help shoppers get a better look and what they are buying and in-turn drive conversions. You don’t need to do anything to activate this feature, it now comes as standard on all product listing images and works for desktop visitors only.

Dropshipping with Spocket

In August Wix doubled their dropshipping offer with the addition of Sprocket. Sprocket joins Modalyst on the app marketplace and offers Wix users the chance to list millions of products to sell to their audience without the need to manage an inventory, fulfill orders, or to arrange shipping. Sprocket claims to list a massive range of high-quality US and EU based products, with cheap wholesale prices and fast shipping. Prices start from as little as $19 a month and you can set up an online store within 30 minutes.

Sync your products with AdScale for Google Shopping

The Google Shopping app AdScale has been available on the Wix app market place since August. The app allows you to sync your product inventory with Google Shopping so that you can create a multi-platform ecommerce store with minimal effort. The app will auto-optimize Google Shopping ads for you to bring more traffic and sales to your online store. Of course, Google will charge you on a PPC basis for the additional traffic but it’s a great way to boost your revenue.

To access this feature find AdScale in the app marketplace > install the app and register > configure your AdScale account.

Final thoughts

Hopefully, this has shone a light on some of the great updates released on the Wix platform over the summer that might have otherwise been missed. If you’re an existing customer these are all brand new things that you can use to boost your business, make more sales, and develop an even larger loyal following. If you’ve yet to sign up to Wix, these are just a few of many great features that you get access to with a Wix account.

If you want to find out more about recent Wix updates then check out the updates and releases page for all of the latest updates. Alternatively, if you want to find out more about the Wix platform read our full review which goes into detail about the pros and cons of the platform.

A male hand painting the words http:// and https:// onto a white wall

You may have been told that you should switch your website to HTTPS from HTTP immediately, or else! Alternatively, you may be wondering if the rumors that say failing to switch to an HTTPS website will damage your rankings are true… Or, you may simply be thinking, is it really worth the hassle, how much difference can it actually make to my SEO and website security?

The rest of the article will help you to understand exactly what HTTPS is, the benefits of it, and how you would go about switching from HTTP to HTTPS. Let’s start by diving into where it comes from and what it is…

A brief history of HTTPS

The internet started with HTTP. However, an issue arose when things started to be bought and sold online. When a website and server sent information over HTTP, anyone between the website and server could copy the data being sent across. This meant that hackers could easily access the personal financial details of anyone purchasing goods online.

In 1995, a company called Netscape spotted an opportunity to create a secure channel between online businesses and their customers by developing the existing HTTP protocol. And guess what? They called it HTTPS.

Over the next two decades, various vendors began to improve HTTPS protocols, making it more secure and easy to use. It was mostly used by ecommerce websites that had to take extra steps to protect their customer’s financial details. However, fast forward to 2014 when Google recommended that sites move over to HTTPS and now there’s a reason for everyone to consider switching to HTTPS. They incentivized website owners by suggesting that HTTPS sites would see a minor boost in their rankings, giving them a competitive edge over sites that did not make the switch.

Understanding the basics

Before we go any further into why you should consider creating an HTTPS website and how to do it, we should first go over exactly what it is so you know what you’re signing up for.

What is HTTP?

It stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and it’s the underlying system used by the internet to communicate data between systems. It’s most frequently used to transfer the data from a server to a web browser so that the user can open a web page. It’s basically a few lines of text that requests an action to take place to meet the users need. It’s called a GET request and it looks something like this:

GET /hello.txt HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.63.0 libcurl/7.63.0 OpenSSL/1.1.l zlib/1.2.11
Host: www.123test.com
Accept-Language: en

What is HTTPS?

HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is fundamentally the same protocol as HTTP with added layers of security to protect the user’s online data. It involves the use of an SSL certificate or secure sockets layer certificate which is used to create an encrypted connection between the server and web browser. This is what an HTTPS GET request looks like:

PIV0IRyiEhVpa6VnKyExMiEgNveroyWBPlgGyfkflYjDaaFf/Kn3bo6OfghFNITo6AfSHlNtL8N7ITEwIXc1gU5X73xyDJormzz

What’s the main difference?

The problem with HTTP is that it sends the users request in plain text. Although the above HTTP GET request example might look confusing to the untrained eye, it’s easy to understand if you have the correct knowledge. Therefore, it exposes the user’s actions and data to anyone that knows how to look.

As you can see the main difference between HTTP and HTTPS is that the data from the GET request is encrypted by the SSL certificate. The encrypted connection is what protects the user’s data and makes it much more difficult for hackers to access it.

How does HTTPS work?

The easiest way to describe how HTTPS works is that it takes the existing well-known HTTP protocol and simply adds a layer of security on top of it. The server and web browser still communicate in the same way, however, the data from the requests and responses that are communicated are encrypted.

The SSL security protocol has two main purposes:

Authentification – it verifies that you are speaking directly to the server that you think you are and that you haven’t been re-routed to somewhere else.

Encryption – the SSL makes sure that only the server can read the data you send and only your web browser can read what it sends back.

So, HTTPS works by enabling the communication between the server and website to happen through a secure HTTPS channel where the data gets encrypted as it travels between each location. Additionally, it ensures that the data travels to the correct server.

Why is HTTPS better?

So, now you know what HTTPS is, how it works, and the difference between HTTPS & HTTP. However, you might still be wondering ‘well, why is it better?’ and ‘how will it benefit me and my website?’.

Better security for your web visitors

We’ve already touched on this one but it’s the most important reason for people to consider upgrading their site to HTTPS, so it’s worth mentioning again. An SSL certificate has become the basic requirement for website security, especially if you are going to collect any form of data from your website visitors. It could be email addresses, delivery addresses, passwords, browsing history, or financial details. Whatever the data is, having an SSL certificate will show your web visitors that you take data protection seriously. In turn, this will help them trust your website and brand more easily.

Also some web browsers have started to launch warning messages to visitors that are about to enter a HTTP site, informing them that their connection is not private. It’s gaurenteed to make a customer wary of buying products or nervous about parting with any personal information. So, if you want your website visitors to do either of those things, you should sign up for a HTTPS site to avoid the ugly warning message.

Boost to SEO performance

There are several reasons why HTTPS will help boost your rankings in the search engine ranking pages (SERP). We’ve mentioned it already but HTTPS has been a direct ranking signal in Google’s ranking algorithm since 2014. While it won’t provide a dramatic increase on its own, an HTTPS site will have the advantage over an HTTP site. Additionally, HTTPS sites load much faster than HTTP sites and page speed is also a direct ranking factor. So, the faster your site, the higher it will rank. Finally, visitors are much more likely to click-through to and hang around on a website with a secure connection. Therefore, having an HTTPS site will improve your click-through rate and lower your bounce rate which are two more things that Google considers when deciding how to rank your page.

In summary, while HTTPS sites only receive a minor rankings boost as a direct effect, you will also benefit from the additional boost to loading speed and visitor confidence. Over time all of this combined will help to boost your SERP positions and help you to grow organic traffic. Of course, you will also need to follow SEO best practices to get the best results but switching to HTTPS is another thing you can do to optimize your website.

Boost conversion rates

A quick thought experiment helps explain why HTTPS boost conversion rates. Would you buy a product from a website without a secure connection to protect your financial data? Most likely the answer is no and findings from industry research backs this up. GMO Internet Group found that 84% of users would abandon a purchase if data was sent over an insecure connection. If you run an ecommerce site that is a huge amount of money that you are missing out on. The potential return on investment from the $100 it costs for an SSL certificate could be huge.

Gain access to referral data

Something else you gain when you switch from HTTP to HTTPS is referal data. If you have a HTTP site referal traffic will show up as ‘direct traffic’ in Google analytics which doesn’t give you much information to work with. HTTPS sites will save the data of the website that referred traffic to yours and you will then be able to see exactly which websites are bringing you traffic in Google analytics. This will help you develop an effective backlink strategy and more.

Qualify for AMP

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages were created by Google to help mobile devices load web pages much faster. AMP pages tend to rank higher than other pages on mobile search ranking pages because they provide a better experience for mobile and tablet users. If you want to be able to use AMP on your web pages, you need an HTTPS website to qualify. So, if making your website mobile friendly is part of your strategy, you will need an SSL certificate.

What’s the process of switching to HTTPS?

The Word HTTPS Formed By Wooden Blocks And Arranged By Male Fingers On White Table

Lots of people avoid the switch from HTTP to HTTPS because they think that it’s going to be super complicated and not worth the effort. However, fundamentally you only need to follow a few steps to make the switch. The below list outlines the basic procedures you need to follow to transfer your site from HTTP to HTTPS:

Purchase an SSL certificate from your web hosting service
Install the SSL certificate on your web hosting account (most web host providers will do this for you)
Edit all of your internal links so that they link to HTTPS rather than HTTP. You can use a site crawling tool to check that you haven’t missed any to avoid SEO penalties if some HTTP links remain.
Set up 301 redirects so that search engines can index your web pages again under the new and more secure HTTPS protocol.

Why you should adopt HTTPS

Making the switch to HTTPS has many benefits to your website. The main reason you should do it is to protect your visitors data by creating a secure connection between your website and the server it’s stored on. However, as well as improving the security of your website, you will also get a boost to your SEO performance, build trust with your visitors, and boost conversion rates if you’re selling products or asking for personal details in exchange for something. You will also get access to additional benefits such as access to Google’s AMP and referral data on Google analytics. The process of switching is relatively simple and the sooner you do it, the sooner you will start to see the benefits.

What are you waiting for? Go and make your website secure today! It’s a no-brainer.