Happy Wednesday!
I’m in Rome, and I think this is the first time since August that I’ve gone three whole days without playing with Claude Code. It feels weird, honestly… but it’s also good to switch off sometimes. Right now, it seems like you’re either all in on AI or you’re out, and I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it. I’d rather use these tools to run our businesses better than spend all our time building yet another side project that never makes a profit. Maybe taking a few days away from the laptop helps put things into perspective!
On the business side, I’m super happy with Checkout Summit 2027 launch. We’re still six months away from kicking off, and I haven’t announced a single speaker or sponsor yet, but we’ve already sold 35 of 50 early-bird tickets, 7 of 10 microsponsorships, one headline sponsorship, two happy hours, and a LOT of drink cards 🙂 Unbelievable! I’ll soon enable guest tickets, so you can bring your family along and enjoy Sicily together, and I’ve also added the hotel booking form, with rates starting at just €80 per room, per night, including breakfast. Not a bad excuse for a trip to Palermo, is it?
What Does the Future of the WooCommerce Admin Look Like?
Last month, Dave Loodts walked the Business Bloomer Club through his own concept redesign of the WooCommerce admin: cleaner, more merchant-first, closer to what Shopify has been shipping for years.
That talk was one version of the future, built from Dave’s own experience and perspective.
However, I’ve got another idea rattling around, a different direction the admin could take entirely. I’m not ready to share it yet… but I will talk about it at the (online) Zurich WooCommerce Meetup on Nov 4!
Interact with my full piece on Business Bloomer blog ▶️
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Purple development moves to the WooCommerce monorepo
Development of the Purple theme has moved from woocommerce/woo-themes to the WooCommerce monorepo. We’re retiring the separate repository and bringing theme development closer to the WooCommerce blocks it builds on.
Purple is the first theme in the monorepo’s new themes/ directory.
Keeping themes alongside WooCommerce makes it easier for contributors and AI coding tools to understand how templates and patterns use WooCommerce blocks.
How a 2017 Code Snippet Became Sales by State
Back in 2017 I was in the middle of a simple content rule I had set for myself: publish one WooCommerce code snippet per week on Business Bloomer.
Every week, a new problem and a new piece of code to fix it.
One of those weeks, I published a tutorial on how to calculate WooCommerce sales by state.
That post is where Sales by State started.
The idea wasn’t even mine. Like almost every snippet I’ve ever published, it came from client work.
Learn more on Sales by State blog ▶️
Why a WooCommerce Conference Swapped DIY Ticketing for FooEvents
In 2026, Checkout Summit brought 101 WooCommerce professionals to Palermo, Sicily. Behind the scenes, ticketing ran on a homemade system, AI-generated name badges and a pen-and-paper check-in.
For the 2027 edition, founder Rodolfo Melogli of Business Bloomer wanted a new system that could scale, so he moved the ticketing to FooEvents. Within two weeks of opening sales, Checkout Summit had sold 30 tickets to attendees from 15 countries, with very little admin.
Here’s how a WooCommerce conference sells its tickets on WooCommerce, and what other organizers can learn from the setup.
Learn more on FooEvents blog ▶️
Woo is the company behind WooCommerce, the ecommerce platform that powers 4M+ stores. Built on WordPress, WooCommerce empowers anyone, anywhere, to sell anything with truly unlimited extensibility, flexibility, and control over how they build and evolve their business. Launched in 2011 and acquired by Automattic in 2015, Woo is a fully distributed company with employees based around the world.
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Get a free Google Ads audit for your WooCommerce store from Wolf+Bear Agency, the team behind Pixel Manager for WooCommerce, trusted by 50,000+ daily users. We help established WooCommerce stores improve Google Ads performance and profitability by optimizing structure, tracking, and campaign logic—not by increasing ad spend, but by making your existing campaigns work smarter.
Where Shopify Is Particularly Strong in 2026
Shopify’s biggest strength is that its own tools all share one set of store data. Sidekick reads a store’s products, orders, and analytics; Flow acts on them; POS sells from the inventory; checkout and Markets run through Shopify Payments; and the AI shopping channels list the same catalog.
For merchants, that can mean less work connecting separate tools and keeping them in sync.
Our WooCommerce vs Shopify post covered what does and doesn’t change when you move from WooCommerce to Shopify, such as hosting being handled for you.
Here, we’re looking at where Shopify is particularly strong right now, from Shopify AI features and included first-party apps to checkout, B2B, and international selling. The goal is to give you an honest picture of what Shopify does well.
Learn more on CommerceGurus blog ▶️
Stop refunding to the card: turn refunds into store credit
A customer changes their mind about an order. You process the refund, the money goes back to their card, and a few business days later it lands in their bank account. The transaction is closed, and usually, so is the relationship: the revenue leaves your store for good, and the customer has no particular reason to come back.
A WooCommerce refund to store credit closes the order without closing that door. The money stays in your store as a balance the customer can spend on their next order, and with Account Funds for WooCommerce, it’s one button on the refund screen you already use.
Learn more on Kestrel WP blog ▶️
Our WooCommerce Products
- Business Bloomer Club: a private community for WooCommerce freelancers, agencies, plugin developers, and store owners who want direct access to expert support, live classes, feedback, and honest business conversations.
- WooWeekly newsletter: a weekly digest of WooCommerce news, tutorials, product ideas, business lessons, and industry insights delivered to thousands of WooCommerce professionals.
- WooCommerce mini plugins: small, focused plugins that solve one specific WooCommerce problem without the bloat. Install, activate, and move on with your day.
- Checkout Summit: an in-person event dedicated to WooCommerce professionals who want practical strategies, real-world lessons, and fresh ideas from people actively building products and businesses.
- Save the Plugin: a 30-day sprint for premium WooCommerce plugin founders who are watching their install numbers flatline. Join, do the work, get your money back
- Cart Rules: cart-level rules for WooCommerce, block combos, cap quantities, restrict what ships together. Set it once and stop policing carts by hand.
- Sales by State: sales reports broken down by state, built to work across ecommerce platforms, not locked to WooCommerce. See where your customers actually are, without digging through CSV exports.
- Ecommerce And Beyond: my book on ecommerce marketing. It features a practical 9-step framework to attract the right traffic, turn visitors into buyers, and grow revenue without getting lost in technical jargon.
CheckoutWC replaces your WooCommerce checkout page with a Shopify style checkout. It’s clean, mobile-first, conversion‑optimized and built with performance and extensibility in mind. Proven to reduce cart abandonment and keep you in full control of your code! Free to install, plus 20% off CheckoutWC Pro for WooWeekly readers with code BLOOMER
SnapEX Pay is a crypto payment gateway for WooCommerce. Customers pay in USDT on TRON, Ethereum or BSC, or in 50+ other coins converted to USDT, and the money lands in your merchant balance in USDT, with no wallets or nodes to run. The free plugin works with the Checkout block, classic checkout and HPOS, marks orders paid automatically and has a test mode that needs no real money. Pricing: 1% per payment, no setup or monthly fee.
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Enjoy the rest of the week and see you next Wednesday!
