Welcome Hair Boss Babe — Website Manual Intro
We know you are reading this page right now because your new hair business website is up and running! First thing first, congratulations!
We know you want to launch your online hair store as soon as you can, but there are necessary steps that we’d like you to know before you fully launch your business online. In order to run a great online hair business, you have to be familiar with the technology and softwares that are helping you make money even when you sleep.
To help you get familiar with Siteground & WordPress, we created this manual to help you! Please read this page to understand necessary website maintenance to ensure your site’ functions normally. Some of these maintenance and updates are necessary for your site to stay online and avoid “site down” problems.
Enjoy this manual, you can revisit this page at any time through URL.
If text is marked in red color, it means the content is necessary maintenance steps. If ignored, your site can be slowed down or even goes into 500 errors.
1. Siteground
Your Siteground Dashboard, also called Cpanel, is the place where you control settings of your hosting. Here is a photo of the dashboard.
FTP is a tool that stores your website in the form of coding and html. Your FTP tool is located in the Cpanel, under “Site” “File Manager”. If for some reason your website becomes unaccessible through the front end, you can access the site and edit it through “File Manager” . This is an advanced method, if you are not familiar with coding, we suggest that you stay away from all the sections under “Site”. Wrong coding can cause “Site Down”.
Security section is to ensure that your site isn’t under malicious attack. This section has several quite useful tools.
- Backups—retrieve an older version of your site
“Site down” error can happen any time. Your site can go to “500” errors when you install an incompatible plugin, when you insert a wrong line of coding, or when you did a failed WordPress system update, etc. “Site downs” do happen unfortunately and are inevitable. But if it does happen, don’t panic.
If you are sure that your site went down because of a recent change. Go to “Security”, then go to”Backups”, you can retrieve any backup from the last 24 hours. Siteground automatically backs up your site for you.
2. SSL–NEEDS UPDATE REGULARLY
SSL certificate is to protect your site from attacks that can steal your customer’s credit card information. SSL certificate is necessary for your site. Your SSL certificate expires after a few months and you will need to renew it before the marked expiration date. Don’t forget to mark the expiration date on your calendar so you don’t forget to update the SSL.
A. Go to “Security”, then go to “SSL manager”.
B. To renew your SSL certificate, go to the “3 dots” under “Actions”, click “Renew”.
1. Cloudflare –Global Content Delivery
Cloudflare is a great global content delivery software. Cloudflare hosts parts of your site on their network so it can be delivered worldwide. For example, If you have web visitors from another country, Cloudflare will greatly improve their site speed since Cloudflare hosts the large files on a network that’s closest to your visitors.
In order to quickly serve your site visitors, Cloudflare stores a version of your site on its network. This version of your site is called “Cache”.
Whenever after you update content on your site, you need to “Purge/Flush Cache” in order to refresh and send the new content to Cloudflare.
To purge cache, you will go to “Speed” in Cpanel, then click “Cloudflare”, then click “Purge Cache”.
In order to use Cloudflare, your website needs to be indexed to “www”. Sometimes, this reroute can fail and cause errors when you want to purge cache. In such case, you can simply click away to another page then come back. The site will fix it itself.
2. Cache
SG optimizer is a built-in cache system that also stores parts of your site on your visitor’s browser. A visitor can click on your site once, and a version of your site will be stored on their computer or phone so the next page they click, it takes shorter time to load the page.
If your site is built with BHE, you don’t have to alter this part.
This section shows details about your WordPress. If BHE built your website, you can skip this section.
A convenient tool you can use is the auto update tool for WordPress, however, you can update WordPress core files in your WordPress dashboard. We do not recommend automatic WordPress update as it can cause failures and result in Site Down.
This section of your Cpanel gives your an insight to your domains. You can create subdomains in this section.
You can also edit DNS zones. DNS zone editing is for advanced users only. We do not recommend editing this part.
This sections is very important. This is where you can check your business emails.
1. Accounts –Access your business emails.
You can create business emails here or log into your emails to check.
You can configure these mailboxes onto your cell phone so you can get alerts whenever someone emails your business or when you receive an online order.
To configure mailboxes to your phone, go to“Mail Configuration”, go to “Manual Settings” and type the information in your phone’s mailbox apps such as “Mail” for Iphones.
2.Forwarders–Forward all emails to your own personal email or gmail.
If configuring the mailboxes is too complicated for you, you can also set up mail forwarding to receive order alerts and more on your own gmail or hotmail mailboxes.
3.Autoreponder
This part is quite straight forward. Autoresponder will return an automatic email to the senders and inform them that you are out of office, or on a trip and you will get back to them later.
If your site is built with BHE, you don’t really need this section. This is only for your information if you experience an error on your site.
This section of the Cpanel is not the most important one. However, you should pay attention to “Cron Jobs” section.
1.Cron Jobs
Cron job is an automatic task that your website completes itself. For example, cron job executes automatic emails and automatic updates on your site.
If your website is built with BHE, we have set your website on automatic WordPress Cron Jobs. This means that every time someone visits your site, cron job will be working.
However, automatic Cron job can over load your server if you have a large amount of visitors every day.
Please contact us to switch to manual cron jobs once your site receives over 10-30 orders a day.
2. WordPress
WordPress is one of the most easy to use, versatile website builder softwares. Its versatility has great advantage over other website builder. Most parts of WordPress don’t need explanation. Here we only want to point out a few tips that can help you prevent issues within WordPress.
You can write blogs for your site and publish new posts on your site.
Writing blog posts can increase your site’s visibility.
It also gives your subscribers something to read and entertain.
You can also set the blog posts feed up in newsletter plugin Mailchimp to send out emails every time you publish a new blog.
Your media library has all the images and videos of your site. You can add to this media at any time. However, website screen only needs pictures with pixel of under 72. If you upload large images fresh out of your camera or phone camera, these images can significantly slow down your site.
We recommend using Canva or photoshop to shrink your image sizes before you upload them. Any unused images should be deleted out of your media library to ensure your site has free space.
“Pages” section shows you all the pages you have on your website. You can go in any page to edit and add contents.
We installed “ELEMENTOR” on your WordPress. Elementor is the best website builder within WordPress. You can design your web pages easily without knowing anything about coding.
This section is very straight forward. You can navigate to decide how you want to edit the comments posted on your website.
Configure Contact Form
You can create contact forms in the “Contact” section. If you are a BHE website client, we already implemented the correct contact forms for you business and have configured them to your business emails. You can edit this yourself if you’d like to change the email accounts attached to the contact form.
WooCommerce is the most important part of your site. This is where you view your online orders.
The setting is very straight forward. If you are a BHE client, we have already set up order emails to go to “onlineorder@yoursite.com”. We have also set up abandoned cart and other order emails for you.
To get familiar with Woocommerce, you can place a “fake order” by manually entering your own information and see how the Woocommerce system interacts with yourself.
“Products” section is where you can add products to your store.
You can click on any product to edit its details.
If you are a BHE client, we have pre-designed your page for you. Feel free to explore and add more to your site to improve the looks!
“Plugins” section allows you to add more functions to your site.
You need to regularly update your plugins to make sure your site runs smoothly.
When you update plugins, please make sure to do so one by one.
Updating all plugins together can cause failures to your site. Then you will need to access Siteground Cpanel ” “Site FTP” section mentioned above to delete the corrupt plugin.
If your plugin fails to update and results in a corrupt file, please read this article, and deactivate all your plugins to troubleshoot the corrupt file.
After you find the corrupt file, you can delete the file and reinstall the plugin by going to WordPress Dashboard, “Plugins” -> “Add Plugins”
Every time you edit the site, you need to purge cache so your web visitors will get the newly updated version of your site.
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is the key to improve your site’s visibility.
SEO improvements require a lot of skills and time to build. It is impossible for your site to rank first on Google when you are a brand new website.
For a new website owner, we encourage you to go into every page and product of your website and write SEO related contents.
Mailchimp is where your newsletters account connects with your store.
If you are a BHE client, your mailchimp is already good to go.
Please note that you will need to go to mailchimp.com to write your newsletters.
WordPress needs to be updated whenever there is a new release.
We recommend updating WordPress when you have not edit your site for 24 hours. This way, if the WordPress update isn’t successful, you can revert back to the older version of your site by going to Siteground Cpanel, “Security” -> “Backups”
You can customize how your site looks by going to logging into WordPress Dashboard.
1.Click your site’s name.
2.Click “Customize” and you will be redirected to customize page.
What Should I Do Now?
So, you have a brand new site, where do you start?
We recommend you to complete the following steps before you fully launch your new hair website.
Our prices are default the same as our wholesale pricing. You will need to add your profit margin onto our wholesale prices.
You can bulk edit prices by going into WordPress->Product->PW Bulk Edit.
How to use PW editor to add a bulk percentage for profit.
If you want to add a 50% profit, please use “category” “is any of” “select everything” then click “Search”.
When you see this screen, you can scroll to the right to find “regular price” like below. Click on “Regular price”, you will have the option to add a percentage.
If you want to add 50% profit on all products, you can enter 50%. If you have different percentages to add to different products, you can click the checkbox to select different products and add the percentage separately.
It will give you a preview of the prices after editing the percentage.
Also if you did it wrong, you can go to your Siteground hosting panel ->Security->Backup to retrieve your website’s older version and revert all the changes you made. The hosting we provide you will back up your site every 24 hours.
We have included basic product descriptions.
But having your own product descriptions will greatly entice your customer’s buying intention. We recommend going into each product page and add your own wonderful product descriptions on top of our standard descriptions.
You can do so by going into “Products” , click on any product and edit.
Write your first hair blog!
Writing blogs can boost your website’s ranking dramatically. Learn to write SEO friendly blogs can help you develop a long way and save you thousands of dollars every month.
You can use the Yoast SEO block on every page to see if you blog is SEO friendly and if you site is ranking for the right keyword.
Go to “Media” and write caption, Alt text and descriptions for each and every photo unless it’s for pure decoration purposes. This can help your photo appear on Google and other search engines.
We recommend that you use shipping policy that matches ours.
We do recommend having a detailed return policy in place to help you protect any chargeback frauds.
Go to WordPress Dashboard “Pages” to edit Shipping and Return Policy pages.
Go to WordPress Dashboard, “WooCommerce”->”Settings”. You will see payment, shipping and order email configuration. You can then edit shipping there.
Go to WordPress Dashboard ->”Pages”->”Hair Care”
In this section, you can edit hair care tips that you want your customers to learn so they can properly care for the hair.
Your customers will find information on this page. Please edit this page and put in custom content. A good FAQs page can save you a lot of time from answering repeatitive questions.
Go to WordPress Dashboard, WooCommerce->Settings->Email.
These emails need to be edited in your own words because they will be sent to your customers.
It is recommended to include shipping time frame and processing time frame in these emails.
Go to WordPress Dashboard ->“plugins”->”Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce”
You can add your own touch to the default tracking number update emails.
Every time you edit a page or add content to your website, you will need to “Purge Cache” .
There are two places to purge cache.
one of the “Purge cache” buttons is located in your hosting ->Speed->Cloudflare
Click the “Purge” button.
Another button is located on the top bar of your WordPress dashboard.
Make sure to purge both cache whenever you edit your website.
WooCommerce is the shopping cart for your website to record customer’s orders.
There are a lot to cover for WooCommerce. We recommend that you follow the guidelines provided by WooCommerce themselves.
We have set up subscribe features on your website by implementing third party tool “Mailchimp”.
Please go to Mailchimp.com and log in with the the logins we provided on the progress report.
You will be able to send all kinds of emails and push notifications to your customers.
Log into your hosting, go to “Email”, you will see all the business emails we have set up in your website.
Your entire website is built with business emails in your hosting, including contact forms.
Please scroll above to the “Siteground” section and see “Email” to see how to set up email forwards to your phone.
Dropshipping Tips
Always make sure your customer’s address is correct.
Double check your orders to make sure everything is correct.
Make sure your custom order # is correct.
You can enable store notice to inform your customers if there is any shipping delays just like we do.
Log into your WordPress Dashboard. Click the name of your site at the top of the page.
Click “Customize” located at the top bar, it will redirect you to customize page.
Then go to “Woocommerce”. You can edit “Store Notice” there.
You can add a special order note to your customer’s order through your website.
Go to WordPress Dashboard, go to “WooCommerce”->“Orders”, find the order you’d like to edit and click into the order. Scroll to the right bottom, of the page, you will be able to either add a private note to the order yourself or add a note to inform an important message to your customers.
Go to WooCommerce->Orders, and click the order you want to add tracking to.
At the top right corner, you can add shipping carrier and tracking details.
Click “save”.
One an order is delivered, you can go to the same order and mark the order status “delivered”, then click the “update” button so your customers can get an email about the delivery.
This is to prevent a customer not knowing about the delivery.
For more questions, feel free to contact us at dropship@brandedhairextensions.com.