Running an online store is about much more than selling products; it also involves choosing the right tools to improve your customers’ experience, save time, and increase efficiency. And WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with one of the best multi-use tools available for WordPress: Jetpack.
Let’s take a look at how WooCommerce and Jetpack work together to improve store functionality, protect your customers, and save you time.
What is Jetpack?
Jetpack is the ultimate WordPress toolkit, developed by Automattic, the company behind WooCommerce and WordPress.com. It offers features for security, design, speed, marketing, and more in just one plugin, so you don’t need to weigh down your site to get everything you need. And if you don’t want the whole package, no problem: You can also enable the features you want and turn off the ones you don’t.
All of Jetpack’s functionality is provided and hosted by WordPress.com, so there’s never any additional strain on your server that could decrease your site’s load time. Jetpack is also used by extensions like WooCommerce Shipping and WooCommerce Tax to authenticate external requests.
How can Jetpack improve your store?
Ship packages with ease
Save time and simplify shipping with the free WooCommerce Shipping extension. You can print USPS and DHL labels right from the WordPress dashboard, charge them to your credit card, and save up to 90% on shipping.
This feature allows you to ship both nationally and internationally without having to wait in long post office lines — just slide your labeled package into any dropbox box or schedule a pickup from your door. Jetpack facilitates the connection to USPS and DHL, and also allows your credit card to be charged for labels.
Calculate taxes without the hassle
Depending on the location of your business and customers, tax calculations can be complicated and overwhelming. But the free WooCommerce Tax extension automatically calculates everything for you by city, country, or state.
WooCommerce Tax is also powered by Jetpack, enabling the extension to calculate both national and international taxes.
Back up your store in real time
If your website goes down for any reason — it’s hacked, there’s a plugin conflict, or you make a coding mistake — it can be detrimental to your online store. After all, every minute your site is down is time when you can’t make sales!
Jetpack Backup offers real-time backups that save a copy of your site every time you make a sale, update a page, or add a new product. The backups are stored separately from your host, so they won’t be compromised in the event of a hack and can be restored even if your site is down. The best part? There’s no need to hire a developer or understand code; you can restore a backup in just a few clicks. While this specific Jetpack feature requires an additional cost, it’s well worth it for ultimate peace of mind.
Manage your store on the go
As a busy entrepreneur, you’re not always in front of your computer. You might be out sourcing new materials, testing ingredients, meeting with suppliers, or traveling between your home and store. But that doesn’t mean that your online store has to be stagnant.
Easily manage your site on the go with the free WooCommerce App. Create, edit, and publish products; manage the entire order process from sale to fulfillment, and track your store analytics all from your mobile device.
Jetpack facilitates the connection between your store and the mobile app, enabling you to make the most of the tools without complicated configurations.
Keep your site safe and secure
When you run an online store, you’re responsible for more than just your products and content; you’re also responsible for your customers’ personal information. This means that security is a top priority.
Jetpack provides a variety of both free and paid security features, including:
- Downtime monitoring (free): Get an alert the second your site goes down so you can troubleshoot and get it back up and running as quickly as possible.
- Brute force attack protection (free): Block unwanted login attempts from malicious bots and hackers.
- Secure sign on (free): Protect the login process by requiring a verification code for certain users.
- The activity log (free): See a full list of everything that happens on your site — plugin updates, page additions, code changes, and more — along with exactly who took each action.
- Jetpack Scan (paid): Set up automated malware scanning that guards your site even when you can’t. Get real-time alerts if anything suspicious is found, and fix the majority of known issues with one click.
- Jetpack Anti-spam (paid): Automatically review and delete spam comments that can make your site look unprofessional and redirect customers to unsafe content.
When combined, these features provide full-scale security that you can trust. Learn more about securing your online store.
Make sure your store loads quickly
A slow website discourages customers and negatively affects your search engine rankings. Jetpack provides a suite of free tools that speed up your site without requiring complicated code or configurations:
- A WordPress CDN: Serve images, photos, CSS, and static Javascript files from WordPress servers around the world. This takes the load off of your own server, thus speeding up your site, and it is particularly helpful for international stores. Learn more about the benefits of a CDN.
- Fast video hosting: Embed videos directly on your site without pricey, ad-packed third-party services. Since the videos are loaded from WordPress servers, they won’t slow down your site.
- Image lazy loading: Automatically delay the loading of images until your site visitors scroll down to where they appear on the page. This means that customers won’t have to wait seconds (or even minutes) for all of the images to load at once.
Help customers find products quickly
You want potential customers to find exactly what they’re looking for on your site within seconds. Otherwise, they might leave your store for a competitor.
Jetpack Search provides a super-fast, dynamic search tool. Customers can filter results by date, category, tag, and other factors to quickly narrow down your product catalog. No more clicking through categories and menus to find the right fit!
While Jetpack Search is a premium tool, it includes unlimited searches and typically ends up being much more affordable than other options. Learn more about site search for WooCommerce.
Improve your store by installing Jetpack today
Not only do WooCommerce and Jetpack combine for a seamless, improved online store experience, they’re also backed by an unrivaled support team that knows WordPress better than anyone else. Get started with the only toolkit created by WordPress for WordPress.
Download Jetpack today.
