|
View the web version
Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
If you’ve been using WordPress for a long time, there’s a pretty good chance your WordPress database needs to be optimized and cleaned up to ensure peak website performance.
In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about WordPress database optimization and how you can effectively improve your WordPress database, even if you’re not a developer.
Just remember to backup your database first, before attempting any suggestions in this guide.
Learn about how to improve your Database performance
WordPress 5.9 “Josephine” has finally arrived with the long-awaited full-site editing features that give users more control over site design and page templates.
For block themes, the new Site Editor and Styles interface has replaced the Customizer. Styles lets users customize their sites with different colors, typography, and layouts, as well as give blocks a more unifying appearance.
Twenty Twenty-Two is bundled with the release and is the first ever block-based default theme.
These full-site editing capabilities won't be available for most themes (there are only about 40 block based themes in the directory at present).
Before updating to 5.9 it would be best to do so on a separate staging site first. If you don't have a staging site your host can set one up for you.
Read about the new WordPress 5.9 Release
Colm found an excellent post on Ahref's blog covering the topic of competitor analysis tools.
It probably feels as if you need tens of marketing tools to get a complete picture of the competitor landscape.
Just a few tools will cover most of your competitor analysis needs. And they don’t need to break the bank. In fact, some of the most powerful ones are free. The tools mentioned in the guide are:
- Ahrefs itself – for SEO, PPC, and content marketing
- Brand24 – for brand monitoring
- SparkToro – for audience insights
- BuiltWith – for checking tech stacks
- Visualping – for monitoring webpage changes
Discover more about the competitor analysis tools you should be using
Results from this report indicate that winning the love of American consumers is difficult for direct-to-consumer brands, especially when they're competing against traditional retailers.
65% of respondents intend to purchase from a DTC brand at least once in 2022, a drop from 79% the year before.
Fast and free shipping was cited by 40% of survey respondents as a key reason why they would choose a traditional retailer over DTC.
Read more about US consumers and DTC brands
We get occasional questions about whether it's ok to update a site to PHP 8 and above and this article is a nice summary of the current state-of-play.
WordPress is currently not fully compatible with PHP 8.0 or 8.1. All remaining known PHP 8.1 issues are deprecation notices.
As the post makes clear, a deprecation notice is not an error, but rather an indicator of where additional work is needed for compatibility before PHP 9 (i.e. when the notices become fatal errors).
Also, a significant change is planned for PHP 8.2 (the deprecate dynamic properties RFC) which has the potential to cause a number of problems with themes and plugins.
All in all, it's best to stick with PHP 7.4.x for now.
Read about WordPress and PHP 8 compatibility
Harry Dry's Copywriting Examples site is a brilliant resource if you're struggling with your own website or marketing copy or just need an added dose of inspiration.
You can filter by type, e.g. Headers, Features and Social Proof. By style, e.g. Simple, Creative, Conversational. And by audience, e.g. B2B or B2C.
His newsletter is also well worth subscribing to.
Check out Copywriting Examples
That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message. Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus
|