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Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
We’ve just published the second report from our community survey, and this one is for our customers!
It looks at why you chose Shoptimizer, which CommerceKit features you use, what you like and what you’d like us to improve.
We were delighted to find that over half of respondents have been with us for three years or more, and nearly four in five use at least five CommerceKit modules.
There’s plenty for us to think about too, from more flexible shop and product-page layouts to checkout improvements and ideas for new modules. We’ve included customers’ own words throughout, alongside the numbers.
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to answer. It’s been incredibly useful to read through your feedback, and we wanted to share what we learned.
Read our Customer Perspectives 2026 Report
🎉 Introducing CommerceGurus Turbo!
One plugin. One click. CommerceGurus Turbo is the only performance plugin built purely for WooCommerce stores.
Includes page and edge caching, CSS and JS optimization, lazy loading, Cloudflare image optimization, and preloading — all with safe defaults that work immediately.
Discover CommerceGurus Turbo
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A new WooCommerce guide looks at how store data can help identify why products are being returned, rather than simply treating returns as an unavoidable cost of eCommerce.
Nearly one in five online orders were returned last year, and Woo suggests starting with your analytics to identify products with unusually high refund rates and looking for patterns around suppliers, packaging, customer groups, or particular product categories.
Product pages are one area where relatively simple changes can make a difference.
If customers regularly return something because of sizing, compatibility, or because it wasn't what they expected, adding better size charts, measurements, comparison photos, videos, FAQs, specifications, and clearer product imagery can help address those questions before purchase.
Discover How Better Data Helps Reduce eCommerce Returns
Maria Wendt looks at how people are turning surprisingly niche hobbies and skills into successful digital products.
One example is Jen, who teaches parents how to make felt birthday hats for children and is approaching $1 million in sales.
Her strategy is relatively simple: consistently publish visually engaging Instagram content that makes the digital product feel tangible, then send customers to a straightforward sales and checkout page.
Another example is artist Heidi, who has generated more than $10 million over eight years by teaching her painting skills online.
Rather than needing a huge audience or a broad topic, the focus is on packaging useful knowledge for a particular group, creating content that demonstrates its value, and making it easy for interested customers to buy.
Watch Maria Wendt Discuss Digital Products That Are Secretly Making Millions
Mike Mazur from NorthDuty examined 100 WooCommerce stores featured in web agency portfolios and found that 15 had problems that a basic homepage uptime check would never detect.
Five had technical issues involving the WooCommerce Store API or SSL certificates, while another ten had broken links in their navigation, cart or product pages. Every store's homepage loaded normally.
Some of the findings were particularly serious. Three stores returned critical WordPress errors when accessing their product API, while others had broken product categories, incorrect product information or cart links leading to 404 pages.
Although the study wasn't a representative sample of all WooCommerce stores and didn't test actual purchases, it highlights the limitations of traditional uptime monitoring. Just because your homepage loads doesn't mean customers can successfully browse or complete a purchase.
Discover What Uptime Checks Miss
Jean Galea has launched Vireo Analytics, a new WordPress plugin that lets you track your website traffic without relying on Google Analytics or sending visitor data to third parties. One of the main attractions is simplicity.
Google Analytics 4 can be unnecessarily complicated if all you want to know is how many people visited your site, which pages they viewed, and where they came from.
Vireo puts that information directly in your WordPress dashboard, without needing to navigate GA4's reports or set up a separate analytics account.
The free version includes the core analytics features, Google Search Console integration and Core Web Vitals reporting.
Vireo Pro adds more advanced features for eCommerce stores and agencies, including WooCommerce revenue attribution, conversion funnels, shareable client dashboards and weekly email reports.
Check out the Vireo Analytics Plugin
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That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message.
You can also take a look at our entire back catalog of newsletters.
Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Simon and Colm from CommerceGurus
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