It might feel as though the holiday season is eons away, but it has a way of creeping up on me every year, and I know I’m not alone! If you’re like tiny blue orange, your business isn’t as holiday dependent as a clothing store. Yet no matter what industry you’re in, there are a few things you can do to prep your WordPress site early.
Update Everything
You’re hopefully updating your plugins, themes + WordPress every month, or at least every quarter when I give you a gentle nudge. Now is a great time to make sure all of your site elements are up-to-date. I just tackled a few PHP upgrades for clients that are hosting with other companies so that their sites were benefitting from the best version.
Review License Subscriptions
I like doing this as part of my annual site review, but doing it now can help you know your spending options for the final quarter of the year.
Review each plugin on your site for the option to include a license. 9 times out of 10, those plugins are premium which means they cost money to use. Are you using that plugin to the full potential? Would the free version do what you need? Is it worth the amount you spend?
Inventory Management
WooCommerce sites would benefit from double checking their inventory numbers. You can set up low stock warnings to stay ahead of any issues. Reviewing your inventory will help you avoid customer service emails where an order was placed, but no item exists to send.
- In your dashboard, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Inventory.
- In the ‘Notifications’ section, check “Enable low stock notifications.”
- Enter your email address.
- Save the changes.
Updates + Edits
Last, but absolutely not least, if you have edits you want to make before 2025, work on them now. Unless you have an in-house team working on your business, you’re probably not the only one sending a request to your contractors in November / December.
Get those end of year requests in now + yours will be at the top of the list, not fighting for attention, etc. Like we talked about last week, WordPress was meant to be edited. And when you make changes to your pages, Google rewards you for freshening up your content. How about a higher ranking to kick off the holiday season?