How to connect to WooCommerce
There are two ways to view WooCommerce data in Octoboard:
- Marketing Analytics dashboards and reports (Octoboard for Agencies and Octoboard for Business products)
- Advanced product, customer analytics, data segmentation in the Octoboard E-commerce Analytics
Both - Marketing and E-commerce Analytics - can use WooCommerce standard programmatic interface (API) as well as the Octoboard WooCommerce plugin that you can install in your store separately.
To access WooCommerce data in the Octoboard core dashboards visit the left panel and select the WooCommerce dashboard as shown in the image below:
You can view WooCommerce data in reports by accessing the Reports item in the left panel.
Data widgets in core dashboards and reports will display information available through the standard WooCommerce programmatic interface (API) that will require you to enter WooCommerce keys when creating a connection.
WooCommerce API connection can be used by the Ecommerce Suite to analyze individual transactions and build advanced analytics data views. E-Commerce Analytics will also build customer CRM, create segments and will support your email marketing campaigns.
Both E-Commerce Analytics and Marketing Analytics Octoboard dashboards use the following methods to connect to the WooCommerce store data:
- WooCommerce standard API for core reporting in Octoboard. It is used by most data widgets in Octoboard reports and dashboards.
- Octoboard WooCommerce plugin offers an additional level of live data. It supports real-time Shopping basket events and sales funnel views such as web store visits, product interactions and other metrics.
When adding a WooCommerce widget, template or when a newly added dashboard prompts you to enter your store details, you will need to provide the following information:
- WooCommerce ConsumerKey and SecretKey.
- WooCommerce store URL
When entering the store URL, make sure you enter the full domain starting with https:// or http://
Then you need to create your WooCommerce keys. Visit your WooCommerce administration console and generate the API keys (Consumer and Secret). Check out WooCommerce API Key Generation Page for more details (WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API > Select Add Key).
To be able to use WooCommerce API you must have:
- WooCommerce 3.5+.
- WordPress 4.4+.
- Pretty permalinks in Settings > Permalinks so that the custom endpoints are supported. Default permalinks will not work.
To check Permalinks settings, go to your WordPress configuration (Settings > Permalinks) and set them to any but Plain option.
The following WooCommerce posts cover data API requirements and WooCommerce troubleshooting options.
Sometimes, after you have done the above checks, we still can not retrieve data. Octoboard will report "Internal error" or "WooCommerce website not configured for external API (headers)". This happens in cases when WooCommerce stores are configured to remove HTTP authentication headers from data API requests. This is a known issue in WooCommerce community. There are a few options that you can try to remove this limitation. Check out this post that shows available options.
Once you have generated the keys and added them to the WooCommerce popup dialogue in Octoboard widgets will start displaying data.
You will be able to see the new WooCommerce connection in the Connections panel on the left:
After you have added your new WooCommerce store keys, Octoboard dashboards and reports can start displaying data. By default, the E-Commerce Analytics does not receive any events from the store. You need to explicitly add the same connection to the E-Commerce Analytics.
To send WooCommerce store orders to the E-Commerce Analytics, visit the Connections panel on the left and click "ADD EXPORT" next to your WooCommerce Store.
Give your connection a new name and click APPLY.
This will add the store to the E-Commerce Analytics. Our platform will start downloading orders and analyzing the data.
Your connected stores will also be visible in the E-Commerce Analytics > Connection panel shown below:
The status of the newly added connection is "Resyncing". This means that the E-Commerce Analytics is downloading and analyzing orders, products, clients and customer segments.
The same status will be displayed at the bottom of all E-commerce widgets until the process of data resyncing is complete.
There are several widgets in the E-Commerce Analytics and in the core Octoboard dashboards and reports that display real-time data from your store. They are related to the store visitors' browsing behaviours, shopping cart operations and sales funnel analytics.
If you would like to monitor currently active and abandoned shopping baskets and send email campaigns to your store visitors, you will need to enable Octoboard WooCommerce plugin in your WooCommerce Store.
To do so, visit your WooCommerce control panel and install Octoboard for WooCommerce plugin.
The plugin configuration options will be available under WooCommerce > Integration > Octoboard tab in your WordPress admin panel.
This completes the tutorial on how to add WooCommerce connection to Octoboard dashboards and the E-Commerce Analytics.
For more details on the E-Commerce Analytics platform, read this Knowledge Base post.
