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Connecting your WooCommerce store

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Before you start

Check these on your WordPress site first. Most failed connections come from one of them.

  • WooCommerce is installed and active.
  • Your store address starts with https://. We do not connect to stores without a valid SSL certificate.
  • In WordPress, Settings, Permalinks is not set to Plain. With Plain permalinks the WooCommerce API cannot be found.
  • Your security plugin, firewall or Cloudflare does not block requests to /wp-json/. We talk to your store through this address.
  • You can log in to your WordPress admin as an administrator. You need this to approve the connection.
  • Optional but useful: set the weight unit you want in WooCommerce (Settings, Products) before you connect. We read it when you connect and send product weights in that unit.

WooCommerce is available on all our dropshipping websites. Connect it from the website where you have your dropshipping account.

Connect your store

  1. Open Channels in the menu. The Sales Channels page lists the channels you already have.
  2. Press Add Sales Channel.
  3. Find the Woocommerce card and press Connect. A window opens.
  4. In Woocommerce Account Name, type a name for your store, for example your shop name. The name is required, and it is the name you will see in your channel list. Press Next.
  5. Under Authentication Settings, type the full address of your store, for example https://mystore.com. Press Auth Store.
  6. We check that your store answers first. If it does, a new tab opens on your WordPress site. Log in if WordPress asks you to.
  7. WooCommerce shows that AW Connect asks for Read/Write access. Check that you are logged in to the right store, then press Approve.
  8. The tab shows a short message and closes by itself. Go back to the window in your dropshipping account and press Next.
  9. You see Connected! Press OK.

Finish all the steps within one hour. After that we forget the name and keys you started with, and you have to start again from Connect.

If your browser blocks the new tab, the approval page opens in the same tab instead and you leave the connect window. Allow pop-ups for our website, then start again from Connect.

If your store could not send us the keys

When you approve, WooCommerce sends the new keys from your hosting to our servers. Some hosting companies block this. You then see Your store approved the connection but could not send us the keys, and Next tells you You are not connected yet.

You can still connect by pasting the keys yourself:

  1. In WordPress, go to WooCommerce, Settings, Advanced, REST API.
  2. Add a key. Give it any description, choose your administrator user and set Permissions to Read/Write. Generate the key.
  3. Copy the Consumer key (it starts with ck_) and the Consumer secret (it starts with cs_). WooCommerce shows the secret only once.
  4. In the Woocommerce window in your dropshipping account, make sure your store address is still in the address box.
  5. Press My store could not send the keys, let me paste them.
  6. Paste the key and the secret, and press Use these keys.

After you connect

Your store now appears on the Sales Channels page. Click its name to open the channel dashboard. There you see Orders, Clients and Products. Press View all under Products to add products. See Managing products on WooCommerce.

When you connect, we also add two webhooks to your store: one for new orders and one for deleted products. Do not delete them in WooCommerce, Settings, Advanced, Webhooks. Without them new orders do not reach us straight away.

We import orders that are paid, have the status Processing in WooCommerce and have a shipping country. If an order is missing, press Fetch orders on the channel dashboard. It checks your store for orders from the last 14 days that have not reached us yet.

With Manage Sales Channel you can change the store name, your stock settings and your pricing rule for new products.

Connecting the same store again

If you delete your WooCommerce channel and later connect the same store address again, we bring back the same channel, with its products and orders. You do not start from zero.

When your store stops answering

We check your connected store regularly. If your store stops answering, or the keys stop working, the channel shows Your channel is not connected yet to the platform. Above it you may see the error message your store sent us. While this shows, your product list is hidden and you cannot upload products to your store.

To fix it:

  1. Make sure your website is online and you can open it in your browser.
  2. On the channel page, press Try to reconnect. Your WordPress site opens. Log in as an administrator and press Approve again. This creates new keys.
  3. If it still does not work, press Test Connection to check the connection again.
  4. As a last step, press Delete and connect the store again. Your products and orders come back when you use the same store address.

If your store keeps failing for a long time, we stop checking it. It starts working again when you reconnect it.

When something goes wrong

These are the messages you may see when you press Auth Store, and what to do.

  • We could not resolve your store domain: the address is misspelled or the domain is not live. Copy the address from your browser when your store is open.
  • Your store SSL certificate could not be verified: your certificate is expired, self signed or incomplete. Ask your hosting company to renew or fix it.
  • Your store refused our connection or Your store did not answer within 2 minutes: your hosting or firewall blocks our servers. The message lists our IP addresses. Send them to your hosting company and ask them to allow them.
  • Your store redirects to ...: your store lives at a different address, for example with or without www. Enter the address named in the message.
  • Your store url redirects in a loop: enter the final address of your store, the one you see in the browser after the page loads.
  • We could not find the WooCommerce API on this store: WooCommerce is not active, its REST API is turned off, or your permalinks are set to Plain. Change the permalinks in WordPress, Settings, Permalinks.
  • Your store answered with 401 or 403 and blocked our request: a security plugin, a firewall or Cloudflare blocks us. Allow requests to /wp-json/ in that tool.
  • Your WooCommerce store returned an error 500 (or another number starting with 5): your website has an error. Check your hosting error log, or ask your hosting company, then try again.
  • Your store answered with ... but did not return the WooCommerce REST API: the address does not point to your WordPress site. Check you entered the store itself, not a landing page or another site.
  • You are not connected yet, click auth store to connect and follow the instructions: you pressed Next before approving in WooCommerce, the approval did not reach us, or more than one hour has passed. Press Auth Store again, or paste the keys yourself as shown above.
  • We can't access your store, make sure you already put correct store url: we got the keys, but could not use them on that address. Check the address, and that the keys have Read/Write permission.

Problems on your own website, such as your store being down, slow, or blocking us, can only be fixed by you or your hosting company. We cannot change settings on your website.