WooCommerce 11.0 has launched, with most of the changes aimed at store speed and cleaner reporting rather than new storefront features.

Faster pages, especially for bigger stores

If you run a large store, the Orders screen should load faster and stop timing out on searches that previously returned empty results. New stores also get a product-object caching experiment by default, which WooCommerce says makes variable products (ones with size or color options) load 9 to 12% faster, and speeds up checkout for bundle products by 6 to 12%. If you run an existing store and want the same speed gain, ask your developer to check WooCommerce’s product object caching documentation, since it’s not automatically switched on for stores that predate 11.0.

Your sales reports just got more accurate

Two changes affect how your Analytics numbers read:

  • Refunds now count in the month they happened, not the month of the original sale. If you compare July’s net sales to June’s, both months now reflect refunds that actually occurred in that period, which makes month-over-month comparisons more trustworthy. If a developer built custom reports for you, flag this change to them, since it applies to the newest version of the sales report.
  • Session counts are stricter about what qualifies as a real visitor, filtering out bots and fleeting connections. Expect your session totals to dip slightly after updating. That’s expected, and it means your conversion rate numbers are now more accurate, not worse.

Guest checkout gets friendlier

When a customer buys as a guest and later creates an account with the same email, their past guest orders now automatically appear in their order history. That means fewer “where’s my order” support tickets from returning customers who didn’t create an account the first time.

A new way to test abandoned-cart messaging

Stores can join a Checkout Recovery beta to test recovery emails, the reminders sent when someone doesn’t finish checking out, before rolling changes out to every customer. It ships with one-click unsubscribe built in, and your developer can adjust which order statuses trigger it.

What to do

Update to WooCommerce 11.0 from your Plugins page like any other update. If your store relies on custom analytics reports, check the refund-timing change with whoever built them before your next reporting cycle.

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