Friday, May 5, 2023

15 Best WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales

Are you looking for easy and smart ways to automate tasks and increase sales in your WooCommerce store?

By automating tasks in your online store, you can save time and money while growing your business and increasing sales.

In this article, we will show you how to use WooCommerce automations to increase sales.

15 WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales

Why Automate Your WooCommerce Store?

If you are running a WooCommerce store, then you probably spend a lot of your time performing repetitive tasks. These can be anything from sending marketing emails for your online store to processing customer invoices.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could automate all of those tasks and focus on growing sales and your business instead?

Luckily, you can use the best WordPress automation tools and plugins to automate WooCommerce tasks. By doing this, you will save time, offer a better user experience to your customers, and ultimately increase sales.

With that being said, here are 15 WooCommerce automations to increase sales:

1. Use Automation to Personalize Your Email Marketing

Are you keeping in touch with your customers using an email newsletter? You may not be taking advantage of all the automation tools available in your email marketing software.

For example, the best email services like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, and Omnisend all have integrations with WooCommerce. They allow you to personalize your emails by adding the customer’s name and more.

They also let you set up a Welcome email series using a drip campaign. This is a sequence of automated emails that will go out automatically to new customers.

Choose an email automation

You can learn how to get started by scrolling down to the automated drip emails section of our guide on how to send automated emails in WordPress.

Additionally, if you are looking for a complete tool that offers WooCommerce email customization and automation, then we highly recommend using FunnelKit Automations.

Apart from letting you fully customize your WooCommerce emails, it also lets you set up smart, automated follow-up emails and workflows to boost your sales.

You can get started with FunnelKit Automations by selecting an automation from a library of handy templates.

Autonami Email Library for WooCommerce

For example,

you can automatically send an email series to new customers, recover abandoned carts, send promotional emails to selected audiences, and more.

There is also an option to create your own WooCommerce automation from scratch. You will then see a visual email automation builder where you can make any customizations that you need.

Autonami Marketing Automation Email Analytics for WooCommerce

For example, the screenshot above shows the workflow for sending out a thank you email after a customer makes their first order. You can even see in-line analytics for each email.

You can learn more in our guide on how to customize WooCommerce emails. Make sure you scroll down to the section on FunnelKit Automations.

Tip: We recommend combining FunnelKit Automations with an SMTP service like WP Mail SMTP. This will make sure your emails are delivered to your customers and won’t get lost or end up in the spam folder.

2. Set Up an Automated Marketing Campaign With Push Notifications

You can also run an automated marketing campaign using push notifications instead of emails. These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device. This means they have a much higher engagement rate, similar to SMS messages.

The easiest way to set up automated push notifications is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software for WordPress, and over 10,000 businesses use it to send targeted messages.

Create a new drip autoresponder

For each notification, you can change the title, message, URL, icon image, and more by expanding it.

There is also a preview of how your notifications will look in the browser.

Edit your push notifications

PushEngage also lets you choose when to send each notification. For example, you can immediately send the first notification and select a different time for the following one.

For more details, see our guide on how to set up automated drip notifications in WordPress.

3. Let Customers Track Orders With Automated Transactional Emails

WooCommerce will need to send different transactional emails to your customers. These help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, and find out more information about your online store.

You can customize and automate these emails using FunnelKit Automations, which is a popular WooCommerce plugin for marketing automation.

The FunnelKit Automations dashboard makes it easy to create a new automation. You can simply click on one of the plugin’s many templates.

Funnelkit Automations WooCommerce Automation Templates

You can filter the list to quickly find the WooCommerce automation you wish to use. For example, you might want to send automatic thank-you emails to repeat customers.

You can then customize the automation using the visual automation builder, including the content of the email.

Funnelkit Automations Workflow and Email Customization

For detailed instructions, please see the section about

sending automated transactional emails with FunnelKit Automations in our guide on how to send automated emails.

4. Quickly Update Your Customers With Automated SMS Messages

Many customers prefer to receive text messages to notify them about their orders. Plugins like YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications or FunnelKit Automations will automatically send SMS messages to your customers.

Yith SMS Notifications Plugin

SMS messages are an effective way to keep your customers up to date. They have a 98% average open rate, with 95% of messages being read in the first 3 minutes!

You can send automatic texts to your customers when their orders are dispatched or their status changes. You can automatically send SMS notifications to your customers or let them opt in at checkout.

Learn how by following our guide on how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users.

5. Automate All Invoicing and Payment Processes

As a business owner, there is a lot to manage. If you are still creating invoices manually, then you can switch to professional invoicing software that automates all invoicing and payment processes. Then, you will be free to focus on growing your business.

A plugin like WooCommerce PDF Invoices makes it easy to automatically generate invoices, collect orders, and manage your finances.

WooCommerce PDF Invoices

You can also save time by accepting recurring payments or adding subscriptions to WooCommerce. These WooCommerce automations will help automate the billing process and can save you time.

With automatic recurring payments, you don’t have to spend time manually sending invoices and waiting for payments from your customers.

Plus, adding subscription payments to your eCommerce business will give you a more consistent cash flow, fewer payment errors, and fewer payment delays.

Creating a recurring payment in WooCommerce

6. Use Automated Store Activity Notifications to Boost Sales

Automated FOMO and social proof notifications can also increase sales in your WooCommerce store.

FOMO, short for fear of missing out, is a marketing technique used to create excitement about a product. It uses psychology to encourage customers to make buying decisions faster.

Plus, social proof shows visitors that other customers have purchased your products. This can convince users that your online store is trustworthy.

The best way to add social proof to your website is by using TrustPulse. It is one of the best social proof plugins for WordPress on the market.

TrustPulse automatically monitors activity on your site. When potential customers are close to buying something, they will see a notification showing that another customer has just made a purchase.

By simply displaying social proof, you will give your visitors a small push to complete their purchase. To learn more, see Method 1 of our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.

7. Automatically Display Your Best Product Reviews

Would you like to automatically display the best reviews of your products from across the internet? You could copy and paste them manually, but that is a lot of work. Plus, there would be a delay before they appear on your website.

Luckily, Smash Balloon has a Reviews Feed Pro plugin that lets you automatically show off your best reviews from platforms like Google Reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.

Customer reviews, displayed on a WordPress website

It comes with pre-designed templates, so you can display your reviews in different layouts, including showcases, carousels, grids, and more.

The Reviews Feed automatically copies your website’s design so that the reviews look like a natural part of your website rather than content embedded from another platform.

You can follow our guide on how to show Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews to set up your own automatic review feed in WooCommerce.

8. Use an Automated Sales Funnel to Boost Sales Conversions

A sales funnel is the path a user takes on your website to become a customer. It

is made up of the specific pages a user may visit before making a purchase.

For example, a new visitor might land on a blog post, then view a product page, then go through your checkout flow.

Unfortunately, only 10% of shoppers, on average, will add anything to their carts. After they do, 60-80% of them abandon their carts without completing the purchase.

Luckily, you can use

FunnelKit, the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin, to change that. You can use the plugin to optimize each step, offer a better user experience, reduce distractions, and nudge users toward completing their purchases.

For example, it comes with a one-click

Upsells feature, which allows users to add products to their carts on their way to the checkout.
WooFunnels One Click Upsell
FunnelKit also lets you customize the user journey with pre-checkout offers, custom checkout form layouts, beautiful templates, and more.

For instance, the FunnelKit Funnel Builder lets you add order bumps to boost profits if someone adds $X to their cart. You can also add one-click order bumps to your checkout page.

Edit design of your bump offer

To learn more, see our guide on how to make a high-converting sales funnel in WordPress.

9. Reduce Cart Abandonment With Popups and Push Notifications

As we said earlier, 60 to 80% of people who add items to their cart don’t actually buy them. This means if you have an online store, then you are losing out on a lot of sales.

Luckily, you can use automatic push notifications to reduce cart abandonment rates. For example, you can pop up a notification when a user is about to leave your website and offer a coupon or free shipping.

Or, if the customer already has discounted items in their cart, they may just need some reassurance that they are making the right decision. Push notifications like these can help you recover 3 to 8% of abandoning cart sales.

Smash Balloon exit intent popup

You can learn how to use

OptinMonster to add exit-intent popups by following our guide on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales.

But what if the customer leaves your site before they see the popup? Push notifications can also help you connect with your visitors after they leave your website. These messages will display in your subscriber’s browser even when they are not actively browsing your store.

Push notification abandoned cart example

The easiest way to do this is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software on the market, and it is used to send over 15 billion push messages every month.

For more details, see our guide on how to add web push notifications to WordPress.

You can also significantly reduce cart abandonment by simply improving your online store and checkout process. We share plenty of proven tips with real examples in our guide on how to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales.

10. Send Automated Coupons to Bring Back Customers

It costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one. Over time, people may lose interest in your website, forget about your products, or start shopping with a competitor.

One way to bring those customers back is to automatically send them a coupon code via email. You can use automation tools to send a coupon to customers who have become disengaged, such as when they don’t place an order for 2 months or have stopped opening emails.
Scheduling an automated coupon code

You can learn how in our step-by-step guide on how to send automated coupons in WordPress to bring back customers.

Another good use for automated coupons is recognizing and rewarding customers when they engage with your online store. For example, you might send a coupon after a customer reviews one of your products.

This builds loyalty to your store and can get you more sales. It also encourages shoppers to review more products in the future.

You can also schedule coupons in advance so that they go out automatically on popular holidays like Black Friday, Christmas, New Year’s, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. This will leave you free to focus on promoting your offers and getting as many sales as possible.

See our guide on how to schedule coupons in WooCommerce for detailed instructions.

Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, you can also offer a coupon in a popup. Showing a coupon at the right time makes a huge difference in converting your website visitors into paying customers.

There are a few ways to do this, and we give you all the details in our step-by-step guide on how to create a coupon popup in WordPress.

11. Automate Your Social Media Channels

You can also use automation to post your online store content to your social channels. This lets you keep your social followers engaged with fresh content.

Uncanny Automator has integrations with all popular social platforms. It will let you publish new blog posts on Facebook, show off your latest product images on Instagram, advertise your sales on Twitter, and more.

Post a featured image to Instagram from WordPress

You can learn how to do this step-by-step by following our guides on how to automatically post to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

12. Automatically Display Social Media Content in WooCommerce

Are you looking for ways to show fresh content without doing any extra work? One way to do that is to automatically display your latest social media activity in your WooCommerce store.

This can save you time and keep your website content fresh and engaging for visitors. Plus, it can boost social proof by displaying your social media followers, comments, and like counts.

Smash Balloon automates your website content by displaying your latest social media activity. It is a popular social media feed plugin for WordPress that is used by over 1.4 million websites.

For example, you can add a Facebook feed to WordPress, and new posts will automatically appear in real time. Your customers can also like, share, and comment on your WordPress posts, which is a great way to get more engagement on Facebook.

An example of an embedded Facebook feed, created using Smash Balloon

You can change the feed’s color scheme, design a custom header, add ‘like’ and ‘load more’ buttons, and much more.

If you are posting beautiful photos and engaging videos to Instagram, then it makes sense to post that content to WordPress too.

An Instagram photo feed, created using Smash Balloon

You can even show other people’s photos on your site by creating a hashtag feed or displaying the posts that other people have tagged your account in.

In the following image, you can see an example of an online store that uses a custom Instagram feed to show user-generated content.

An example of Instagram user-generated content

For details, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add your social media feeds to WordPress.

Tip: For more tips on how to use social channels to grow your online store and increase sales, you can see our complete social media cheat for WordPress.

13. Make Your Forms Smarter Using Automation

You can use form plugins like

WPForms to collect all kinds of information from your customers.

For example, you can use a form plugin to display a contact form, create a questionnaire, gather testimonials, or build a survey form.

The best thing is that WPForms easily integrates with many other tools and plugins, so you can easily automate any action after someone fills out your form.

For example, when someone fills in an order form, you can use conditional logic to send an email notification to the correct department, depending on the product that was purchased.

WPForms Conditional Logic for Sending Notifications

You can also send a confirmation email to the customer who filled in the form to let them know you will be in contact soon. This a nice gesture that lets your users know that you have received their information.

In addition, by using the Google Sheets Addon, you can send any form fields you want to a spreadsheet. This will allow you to use spreadsheet features to analyze the data and collaborate with others in your team.

Using WPForms' Google Sheets Addon

To automate your forms further,

Uncanny Automator will let you connect WPForms and other form plugins to 100+ third-party services without having to pay fees to services like Zapier.

For example, you can create an Uncanny Automator recipe to send customer form data to Airtable. Then, your team will be able to access and use the data easily.

Using Uncanny Automator to Send WPForms Data to Airtable

To learn more, see our guide on how to create automated workflows with Uncanny Automator.

14. Automate Live Chat Using Artificial Intelligence

Automated chatbots are the future of live chat software because they allow you to engage with your customers 24/7. They can free up time by automatically answering common customer questions, generating leads, improving user experience, and making more sales.

Chatbot.com is the best AI chatbot software for WordPress. It lets you easily automate live chat on your website by setting up your own chatbot using a drag-and-drop builder. You don’t need to do any coding or have any special technical skills.

ChatBot live chat

It even comes with pre-built templates that you can use as a starting point to quickly get your AI chatbot up and running. These templates include different scenarios like selling products, customer service, recruitment, bookings, and more.

For example, you can use the eCommerce bot template to walk your customers through the entire buying process. There are even templates for specific industries, including a coffee shopbot, recruitment bot, and restaurant bot.

If visitors want to communicate with a real person, then you can easily forward them to your customer support agent, phone support, or any of ChatBot’s live chat software integrations, such as LiveChat.

15. Use Uncanny Automator for Even More WooCommerce Automations

This article contains many specialist tools that do specific automation jobs very well. By contrast,

Uncanny Automator is a Swiss army knife that allows you to create all types of automation workflows without having to write any code.

It acts as a bridge so that you can get different WordPress plugins talking to each other, as well as loads of third-party services.

You create automation by building Uncanny Automator recipes, consisting of triggers and actions. The action will be automatically run when a user or WooCommerce triggers an event.

Uncanny Automator Triggers and Actions for WooCommerce

Here are some of the WooCommerce triggers you can use to run a recipe:

  • A customer viewing a product
  • A customer adding a product to their cart
  • A customer paying for a product
  • A payment failing
  • A customer reviewing a product
  • And much more

Then the recipe can automatically run any of these WooCommerce actions:

  • Creating an order with a product
  • Changing the price of a product
  • Generating and emailing a coupon code
  • Giving an order a specific status

There are dozens of recipes that you can create, allowing you to save hundreds of hours while running your online store more efficiently.

For instance, you can use Uncanny Automator to automatically create a new customer account when someone submits a contact form on your website, or send notifications to Slack.

Bonus: Track Conversions to Learn How to Increase Sales

To use any marketing automation platform effectively, you will need easy-to-understand reports that tell you exactly what is working for your business and what isn’t.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you get a clear picture of what is happening on your site and what you can do to bring in more sales.

It comes with WooCommerce conversion tracking, form submissions, outbound link tracking, and user tracking.

Its Reports page has an ‘eCommerce’ tab that shows your most important conversion metrics, including the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value. Below that, you will see a list of your top products with quantity, sale percentage, and total revenue.

Ecommerce report in MonsterInsights

You will also see your top conversion sources. You can use this report to attract more customers and offer exclusive discounts for customers from specific sources.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to set up WooCommerce conversion tracking.

You can also connect Google Sheets with WooCommerce to easily record and manage your orders and customer data. Once the information is in a Google Sheet, you can easily filter it based on factors like the order total, the customer’s location, coupons used, and more.

You can then share this information with your team, even if they don’t have access to the WordPress dashboard. For example, you can easily send this data to your suppliers, marketing departments, or other team members.

You are even able to turn this data into charts and graphs. All of this makes it easier to analyze the information and then use these insights to fine-tune your business and get more sales.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to increase sales using WooCommerce automations. You may also want to see our guide on how to add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 15 Best WooCommerce Automations to Increase Sales first appeared on WPBeginner.


May 05, 2023 at 04:00PM

Thursday, May 4, 2023

How to Use WordPress for Document Management or File Management

Do you want to use WordPress to manage your files and documents?

You may have spreadsheets, images, and other documents that you need to share with the rest of your team. By uploading these files to WordPress, you can easily collaborate with other people, or simply keep these documents within easy reach on the WordPress dashboard.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use WordPress as a document management or file management system.

How to use WordPress for document management and file management

Why Use WordPress to Manage Documents and Files?

It’s easy to lose track of documents when you use lots of different tools. For example, you might share drafts using a platform like Google Drive, track the edits with a tool like Asana, and communicate with editors and guest bloggers using Slack.

The problem is that it’s easy to lose track of a project when you’re using so many different tools. By using WordPress to manage your documents, you can keep everything in one place. This will save you time and effort, and make sure you never lose important files.

That said, let’s see how to use WordPress to manage your documents and files easily.

Setting Up Your WordPress Document Management System

The easiest way to set up a document management system in WordPress is by using WP Document Revisions. This plugin allows you work on files with other people, store documents online, and see a complete revision history for each document.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll see a new ‘Documents’ option in the left-hand menu. To upload a document to WordPress, head over to Documents » All Documents. Then, click the ‘Add Document’ button.

Document library add new document

Next, you need to give the document a title. This should be something that helps you identify the document, especially if you share the WordPress dashboard with other people such as guest bloggers.

With that done, click the ‘Upload New Version’ button.

Upload a file or document to WordPress

This opens the ‘Upload Document’ popup, which works similarly to the standard WordPress media library.

You can either drag and drop your document onto the popup, or click ‘Select File’ and then choose a file from your computer.

Upload new document

WP Document Revisions will now upload the file to WordPress.

With that done, you can set the document’s workflow state. If you share the dashboard with other people, then this lets everyone know that the document is an initial draft, under review, in progress, or in some other state. This can help you avoid misunderstandings and improve the editorial workflow in multi-author WordPress blogs.

Simply open the dropdown under ‘Workflow State’ and then choose an option from the list.

Using WordPress for document management and file management

Next, you may want to add a description, which will help other users understand what the file is about.

To do this, simply type into the text editor. This section includes all the standard text formatting options, so you can add a link and create bullet points and numbered lists, as well as add bold and italic formatting and more.

Adding a description to WordPress documents

You may also want to add a document image, which can help users understand the file or provide extra information, similar to an index or appendix.

The process is similar to adding a featured image to WordPress posts and pages. Simply select ‘Set Document Image’ and then either choose an image from the media library or upload a new file from your computer.

Adding an image file to a document in WordPress

When you upload a file, WP Document Revisions marks you as the document’s owner.

To assign this file to someone else, just open the ‘Owner’ dropdown and choose a new user from the list. This can help keep your documents organized, especially if you’ve added lots of users and authors to your WordPress blog.

Changing a document owner's in the WordPress admin area

By default, WP Document Revisions will publish the file privately, so only logged-in users can see it.

Another option is to publish the document to your WordPress website, so people can access it without logging into the dashboard.

Even if you publish the document, it’s still a good idea to add a password by clicking on the ‘Edit’ link next to ‘Visibility.’

Making files and documents live on a WordPress website

Then, select ‘Password protected’ and type a secure password into the ‘Password’ field.

With that done, click on ‘OK’ to save your changes.

How to password protect a file in WordPress

Don’t want to use a password? Then you can follow the same process described above, but this time select ‘Public.’

No matter how you publish the file, WP Document Revisions will show its URL directly below the title. People can see the file by visiting this URL.

To create a custom permalink instead, click on the ‘Edit’ button.

Changing the URL permalink in WordPress

Then, type in the new URL and click ‘OK.’

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on the ‘Update’ button to save your settings.

Managing Document Revisions and Workflow States in WordPress

WP Document Revisions also has powerful version control features. This can help you collaborate with other people, by showing a document’s entire history. You can even open previous versions of the file, and restore an earlier version at any point.

Every time you upload or update a document, you can type a note into the Revision Summary.

Revision summary box

These notes will appear in the revision log towards the bottom of the screen, next to the name of the person who made the update.

If the update included a new file upload, then you’ll also see a ‘Revert’ link.

Revision log and restore

Simply click the link to restore this version of the document. Even if you revert to an earlier version of the file, the history will remain intact so you won’t lose any information.

Customizing and Creating Your Own Workflow States

Workflow states make it easy to see whether a document is an initial draft, in progress, or some other state. Similar to how you save blog posts as drafts or published, states can improve the editorial workflow.

WP Document Revisions comes with four default workflow states: final, in progress, initial draft, and under review. You may need to change these default states, or add more states. For example, if you’re creating a client portal then you might make a ‘under client review’ state.

To change the workflow states, go to Documents » Workflow States. If you want to customize an existing state, then just hover over it and click on the ‘Edit’ button.

Customize existing workflow states

This opens an editor where you can change the name, slug, and description of the workflow state. This is similar to how you edit categories and tags in WordPress.

Once you’re done making changes, click the ‘Update’ button.

Edit existing workflow state

You can also add new workflow states.

In Documents » Workflow States, type in a new name, slug, and description. Then, click the ‘Add New Workflow State’ button.

Add new workflow state

Managing User Roles and Document Access in WordPress

WP Document Revisions assigns different document editing capabilities to people, based on their user role. For example, authors can’t edit documents published by other people or read privately-published documents.

The default permissions should be a good fit for most websites. However, if you want to review and change any of these settings, then the easiest way is by using Members. This plugin allows you to customize the permissions for every user role, and even create completely new roles.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate Members. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the Members » Roles page to see all the different user roles on your WordPress website.

Changing who can access and edit documents in WordPress

Here, hover your mouse over the user role that you want to modify.

You can then go ahead and click on ‘Edit’ when it appears, which opens the user role editor.

How to edit user roles in WordPress

The left column shows all the different types of content such as reusable blocks and WooCommerce products.

In the left-hand menu, click on ‘Documents.’

Changing the file and document permissions

You’ll now see all the permissions this user role has, such as the ability to delete another person’s files or edit their own documents.

Simply click on the ‘Grant’ or ‘Deny’ checkbox for each permission.

Granting and denying permissions in WordPress

When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, click on ‘Update.’

For a more detailed look at the Members plugin, please see our guide on how to add or remove capabilities to user roles in WordPress.

Saving custom user permissions in WordPress

After installing this plugin, you can even control who has access to each document. Simply head over to Documents » All Documents.

Here, hover over any file and click on the ‘Edit’ link when it appears.

Editing a document's settings in WordPress

Now, scroll to the new ‘Content Permissions’ box. Here, you’ll find a list of all the user roles on your WordPress blog or website.

Just check the box next to each role that needs to access this document.

Restricting document access based on user role

In this section, you’ll also see a Paid Memberships tab. This allows you to restrict access to paying members.

For more information, please see our ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site.

Paid membership settings

When you’re happy with the changes, click on ‘Update’ to save your settings.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use WordPress for document management or file management. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a free business email address and our expert pick of the best live chat software for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Use WordPress for Document Management or File Management first appeared on WPBeginner.


May 04, 2023 at 10:30PM

How to Fix WordPress Redirecting to Old Domain After Migration

Do you want to fix the issue of redirecting to an old domain?

When you migrate a WordPress website to a new domain, there is a possibility that users will be redirected back to the old domain.

In this article, we will show you how to fix WordPress redirecting to an old domain after migration.

How to fix WordPress redirecting to old domain after migration

What Causes Redirection to Old Domain After Migration Issue?

When you’re moving your WordPress website to a new domain, it is important to set up redirection. This way, users automatically land on the new location, and you get to keep your keyword rankings and traffic.

However, redirection to a new domain may not work properly, and your visitors would be redirected back to the old domain.

One of the main causes for this issue is that your site URL and home URL values are different in the WordPress database tables. You need to make sure that both these values lead to your new domain.

Besides that, DNS issues can also cause users to redirect to the old domain after migration. If the DNS server is not responding or DNS records haven’t been updated, then your visitors won’t be able to view your new website URL.

That said, let’s see how you can fix WordPress redirecting to the old domain after migration. We will cover different methods, so you can click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section.

Method 1: Update the Site Address in WordPress Settings

The easiest way to fix this issue is by ensuring that the WordPress address and site address is the same in your WordPress settings.

If your Site Address (URL) still shows the old domain, then users will be redirected to the previous URL after migration.

To fix this, simply head to Settings » General from your WordPress admin panel. After that, enter your new domain under the ‘Site Address (URL)’ field.

Site address URL

Once you’re done, simply save your changes and visit the new domain to see if the problem is resolved.

If, however, the URL fields are greyed out and won’t let you type a new address, continue reading and use one of the other methods to redirect your domain.

Method 2: Changing Site URL in WordPress Database

Another method of fixing the redirecting to the old domain issue is by updating the site URL in the WordPress database tables.

You can easily access the database using the cPanel provided by the WordPress hosting service. For this tutorial, we will be using Bluehost as an example, but the process is similar for other hosting companies like Hostinger, SiteGround, etc.

First, you’ll need to log in to the hosting service control panel. After that, simply click on the ‘Advanced’ tab from the menu on your left.

Bluehost's PhpMyAdmin tool

Next, you can scroll down to the Databases section and click the ‘phpMyAdmin’ option.

You will need to wait for a few seconds until phpMyAdmin opens.

Once it opens, you will need to go to the wp_options table from the navigational panel on your left.

Do note that each hosting service has a different naming convention for database tables. However, the one you’re looking for will always end in ‘_options.”

For example, in this tutorial, we will click the ‘staging_45f_options’ table in Bluehost’s phpMyAdmin.

Open the options table

Next, you will need to edit the ‘siteurl’ and ‘home’ options.

First, go ahead and click the ‘Edit’ button for ‘siteurl’ option.

Enter siteurl

After that, you will need to enter the new domain name in the option_value field. Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Go’ button.

Now, you can return to the main wp_options page and edit the ‘home’ option.

Enter the home field value

Next, you will need to enter the new domain in the option_value field.

After entering the value, click the ‘Go’ button.

Method 3: Flush DNS Cache on Your PC

If you’re still unable to resolve the issue of the old domain redirecting after migration, then you should check the DNS settings.

At times, it can take up to 12 to 48 hours for the change of domain name to take effect. As a result, internet providers that don’t have updated DNS records will redirect users to the old domain.

You simply flush the DNS cache so that it gets the latest information and the new website URL. This also helps resolve the DNS server not responding issue.

For more details, please see our guide on how to clear your DNS cache on Mac, Windows, and Google Chrome.

Pro Tip: Use SEO Plugin to Perform Full Site Redirect

When you manually perform redirection to a new domain, then there is always a chance of errors. As a result, users would still be redirected to the old domain.

An easier way of setting up redirection is by using an WordPress SEO plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It offers a powerful redirection manager that you can use to redirect your entire site to a new domain without any issues.

Full site redirect in All in One SEO

This tool was built by our team, and it is what we use when we’re migrating websites to a new domain or merging two sites into one. You can learn more by following our step by step guide on how to properly do a full site redirect in WordPress.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to fix WordPress redirecting to an old domain after migration. You may also want to see our guide on the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them and our expert picks for the must-have WordPress plugins for business sites.

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The post How to Fix WordPress Redirecting to Old Domain After Migration first appeared on WPBeginner.


May 04, 2023 at 03:48PM