Spring Cleaning: Four Quick Tips for Tidying Up Your Data!

Tuesday, March 18th, 2014
0 Flares Filament.io 0 Flares ×

Just like your home, over time and with use, your online store data can get “dirty”. Not the dusty kind, but more like the cluttery kind, wrought with full garbage cans, disorganization, and duplication that may slow down your day to day efficiency. The longer your store is in business, the more old records you will accumulate, including orders, customers, products, coupons, categories, etc. It’s a great practice to do a little maintenance and cleaning to regularly keep up with your “chores” so you can enjoy running a tidy operation. If you are a Nexternal merchant, we have some great housekeeping tools for you.

  1.  Archive orders – You should set your system to automatically archive old orders, thereby compacting their storage space. Think of a reasonable timeframe in which you would want to keep orders easily accessible at your fingertips, and set your automatic archive point just beyond that timeframe. Don’t worry; they can be un-archived instantly with a few button clicks if you need to access them at a later date. In your Nexternal Order Management System, archive through Orders / Archive.
  2.  Product Cleanup – You may delete products that have never been ordered in the system. In your Nexternal Order Management System go to Products / Cleanup to execute. If a product has been ordered, it is not eligible for deletion, but you may discontinue it and hide it from your daily view via the Hide Inactive feature discussed in number four below.
  3.  Customer Cleanup – It is a good database practice to run a customer merge periodically to save space. You may elect to merge records based on matching first and last name, email address, or both. Execute your customer cleanup in your Nexternal Order Management System in Customers / Cleanup. Read the question mark there for detailed explanation of the merge options. You may only delete customers who have never placed an order in your system. Otherwise, you may de-activate the customer record, and hide it from your daily view via the Hide Inactive feature discussed in number four below.
  4.  Hide Inactive – This allows you to clean up the appearance of your Order Management System by only showing data and records that are currently active in your store. When this setting is on, by default, you will not see inactive, canceled, and discontinued products, customers, coupons, categories, vendors, gift certificates, affiliates, users, etc. If you search for them, however, these records will appear in search results. This option is available in Settings / Boolean Options – Edit / Hide Inactive. Read the question mark provided for details.

Happy cleaning!

Lanette Willis is a Senior Account Manager at Nexternal. Before joining Nexternal she spent nearly a decade working in market research and professional services marketing, before running her own successful eCommerce apparel business. Lanette is passionate about helping people and businesses thrive.