Once your WooCommerce store is up and running, it’s time to maintain it to maximize the business. There are a variety of threats you have to deal with as an e-commerce store owner, one of them being fraudulent orders. But how can you focus on increasing your sales if you’re constantly worried about spam orders in your store?
To help you prevent spam and fake orders as you grow your WooCommerce store, we’ve put together some effective methods you can use.
1. Configure Basic Anti-Spam Settings
The first thing to know is that WordPress has some basic security options to prevent bots from harming your store — you just need to go to the WordPress settings page and configure the settings there, as this will also work for your WooCommerce store.
- Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Settings → General
- Deactivate the “Anyone can register” option in the “Membership” section
- Under the “Settings” section, go to “Discussion”
- Deactivate the checkbox “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) for new articles”
- Activate the option “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”
Each of these features will help prevent malicious users from placing fake orders on your WooCommerce store. You can make sure that comments don’t immediately appear on your site without your approval, which can also help you to avoid pingback spam.
It is recommended to create a custom login page as well. All WordPress websites offer the same login URL, namely https://yoursite.com/wp-login.php?action=register or https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/. This is the usual target for spammers. They will brute force your store by trying a variety of usernames and passwords repeatedly.
When you change the URL for the login or registration page, this will make it harder for bots to hack your WooCommerce online store, and they will be redirected to a 404 page when they try to access it.
2. Password Protection for Product Pages and the Entire Store
The primary settings mentioned in the first method only protect your WordPress website and your WooCommerce store. To achieve a higher level of security, you can take advanced precautionary measures. Password protection for product pages and the entire store is a great way to do this.
Password Protect WordPress Pro is considered one of the best password protection plugins and it allows you to lock your products and prevent uninvited visitors from placing fake orders.
Only certain customers with the correct password can access your products or store and make a purchase. Others will see a password form when they want to buy your products. In this way, you can filter out unauthorized or spam customers.
Password Protection for Individual WooCommerce Products
To start blocking your WooCommerce product pages, you need to have the PPWP Pro plugin installed and activated. Then follow the steps below:
- Go to the plugin settings page in your WordPress admin navigation menu
- Select Products in the Post Type Protection section
- Go to the product list and click on Password protection under the desired products
- Generate a random password or create your own
You can protect a product page with more than one password when you select the password protect option.
You can also make these passwords expire after a certain time or a certain number of clicks. This way users have no chance of passing on passwords and accessing your products without your permission.
Make the Entire WooCommerce Store Private
To so this, you need to install an additional extension called WooCommerce Integration along with the PPWP Pro plugin to password protect your entire store page.
Once activated, you can protect all products in a WooCommerce store at once:
- Go to Pages in your WordPress backend and find the store page
- Password protect the store page in the same way as other product pages
- Enter your passwords
Once users have entered the password to access the store, all product pages are automatically accessible — they do not need to enter passwords to buy private products.
3. Use Captcha Plugins
Another option is to use a Captcha plugin. Captcha is a verification method used to determine whether users are humans and not programs or scripts. Users must perform certain actions, such as selecting the correct images or entering the correct string of characters, in order to be identified.
There are a number of free captcha plugins for WooCommerce to choose from in the WordPress repository, so you can choose the most suitable plugin depending on your needs.
Conclusion
Fake orders are more than just annoying — they can actively damage your online business by affecting your revenue, lowering your website’s SEO performance, and potentially exposing valuable customer information (like payment details) to risk.
The good news is that there are various ways to protect yourself against fake orders. Start with those basic WordPress settings tweaks (they’re quick and free!), consider password protection for high-value products or your entire store, and or consider adding a captcha to your checkout process to filter out bots.
