WooCommerce 4.0 Released – What’s New In The Store

The Automattic team launched the WooCommerce version 4.0 and there is bounty to anticipate in this update. The most recent arrival has been being developed since January 2020, however, a great deal of enhancements has been in progress since 2018.

Version 4.0 is a major release of the plugin. However, the team suggests the users create a database backup before upgrading. It would be best to give it a shot on the test site before upgrading on a live site, in order to ensure everything runs easily.

So, let us plunge into all the astounding highlights of WooCommerce 4.0 with no further ado.

New Admin Interface

With the developer and user feedback for over a year, the WooCommerce team decided it was time to merge its new admin interface into the core plugin. It was originally a separate plugin, named  WooCommerce Admin. The project was finally released publicly in February 2019, after the primary alpha testing phase.

The wc-admin has followed the lead Gutenberg and aimed to bring modern JavaScript patterns to WooCommerce, just as the Gutenberg has done for WordPress 5.4 core. So, the WooCommerce Admin is indeed the first step towards a more modern JavaScript-driven experience. It allows loading certain data while remaining on the same screen. This helps to efficiently manage your Woo Commerce stores. It is focused mainly on creating new and improved reports, and a dashboard to monitor.

The brand new interface enabled by the arrival of ‘React’ in WordPress core. It features a customizable dashboard. As compared to the previous iterations, the reports are also improved over time. The reporting tools and analytics have improved to a great extent. Besides it also provides an Improved, simplified notification experience and various store management tools.

New and Improved WooCommerce Reports

The reports were bulky to use and significantly less valuable to users, making just very few store owners analyzing the reports.

The existing reports are bulky to use and significantly less valuable to users than they could be with internal usage data showed that very few merchants even look at their reports.

There were nine reports which were worked on to help merchants better understand their stores.

Currently, the improved reports keep track on 14 different vital data points that include orders, total sales, net sales average order value, returns, downloads, shipping and many more.

The reports will allow the merchants to filter data quickly, compare date periods, download reports in CSV format.  importantly, having easy access to the data points that matter is an in huge improvement on the existing reports.

Brand New WooCommerce Dashboard

WooCommerce Admin was built around a new, central dashboard, designed to simplify your workflow. The new dashboard would be the default landing page when you visit WooCommerce. So, it will enable the store owners to have a look at how their store is performing. It also allows the merchants to control what the visitors can see.

Merchants will be able to see at a glance how their store is performing and control what they see, and the dashboard will be extendable by developers.

The design patterns similar to those found in Gutenberg were used to allow merchants to add and remove blocks from their dashboard.

Activity Panel

The activity panel mainly improves the order management and provides better notification experience. It provides with new store management tools, no matter where they are in their store.

Merchants can view recent order data such as the customer name, status, time completed etc. in just a click. Merchants will be able to easily fulfil orders, manage stock, manage inventory, manage store notifications in just a click. They can also watch and respond to the reviews. Above all, it notifies the ecommerce website owner about any additional task needed and provides a clear outline of tasks that needs attention before they leave the dashboard.

Action Scheduler 3.1

The Action Scheduler is the fundamental technology that is already in the WooCommerce core, the updated Version 3.1 of Action Scheduler was planned to be included in WooCommerce 4.0. It utilizes custom tables that provide a consistent experience of handling data from larger stores. More than 10,000 sites are already using the Action Scheduler with the WooCommerce subscriptions and this implies to the significance of the Action Scheduler.

Although Action Scheduler 3.1 remains compatible with previous releases, we do recommend performing a full backup of your website before updating.

Overall it is meant to provide an updated onboarding experience. The steps offered are simple and beginner-friendly.

 Also, in the setup wizard, there are options for connecting to Facebook and Mailchimp. The final step offers a selection of free and paid themes, which is quite useful for setting up a shop for many first-time store owners. Although the new Wizard is worth trying, the users have the option to select an old setup wizard if they are familiar

Other updates:

Here are the other updates likely to expect in the WooCommerce 4.0

• Improvements to email handling
• Updates related to Brexit and VAT
• Enhancement to the Order edit screen
• Latest fixes of WooCommerce Blocks package
• Optimization for payment gateways

Upgrading to 4.0

WooCommerce 4.0 is a fresh better version which as mentioned, is not fully backwards compatible with prior WooCommerce versions. However, the breaking innovation that has been introduced is only on the database level of Action Scheduler and hence the upgrade should run well for most customers.

You need to be aware of a few post-update database upgrade cycles that need to run after updating. On very large databases, running the upgrade routine with the WP CLI command wp WC update rather than the admin interface is better.

Although the WooCommerce 4.0 is a fresh better version yet it must not be forgotten that it is not fully backwards compatible with sites running on different versions of WooCommerce.

 It is worth mention that the Admin Interface is powerful and the introduced functionality of Action Scheduler is breaking innovation.

You need to be alert about the database upgrade cycles of a few post-update that needs to be run after updating. Moreover, it is recommended that on a large database you run the upgrade routine with WP CLI command wp wc update rather than of through the admin interface.

Moving to WooCommerce 4.0?

WooCommerce 4.0 is a fresh better version which as mentioned, however, it is not completely backward compatible with previous WooCommerce versions. This latest version comes with a new admin interface and an updated onboard experience for new users. You would need to run a few post-update database upgrade routines once you have moved to WooCommerce 4.0. You must also need to be aware of a few post-update database upgrade cycles that need to run after updating.