How to Pause Your Magento 2 Store In Google Search During Coronavirus Outbreak

As per Statista, between March 6 and 18, 2020, all major stock market indices lost value due to the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the globe.

Businesses like airlines, restaurant bookings, car, fuel, etc are the most hit along with the startups and the small online and offline businesses.

The coronavirus outbreak has caused the stores to shut down their business when not being able to cope up with the pandemic. Some online shops have decided to pause their store in the wake of COVID-19.

If you are such a store running on Magento 2 platform, here are some tips on how to pause your Magento 2 store in Google search during coronavirus outbreak.

With the outlook of coming back and being present for your customers, here are a few recommendations on how to pause your Magento 2 online store who have paused offering their products or services online, and minimize impacts with Google Search.

Steps to pause your Magento 2 store in Google Search during Coronavirus Outbreak:

When your plan is to temporarily pause the site and not shut down permanently, it is recommended to limit the store’s features and allow people to access the site, add items to a wishlist, share the product URLs, check the product reviews, limit the cart total value or number of items purchased, etc.

Here are some of the things that you can implement while pausing the Magento 2 store amidst COVID-19 and the method to do so:

• Disable Magento 2 Cart:
  Method 1: From Admin Panel:
  Navigate to Store > Configuration > Sales > Checkout > Checkout Option > Enable Onepage Checkout> Set to No
  Method 2: Programmatically
  Create app/code/[NameSpace]/[Module]/etc/di.xml
  
  <?xml version="1.0"?> <config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd"> <type name="Magento\Catalog\Model\Product"> <plugin name="module-filter" type="[NameSpace]\[Module]\Plugin\Magento\Catalog\Model\Product" sortOrder="1" /> </type> </config>

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  <?xml version="1.0"?> <config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd">       <type name="Magento\Catalog\Model\Product">         <plugin name="module-filter" type="[NameSpace]\[Module]\Plugin\Magento\Catalog\Model\Product" sortOrder="1" />     </type> </config>

  Create app/code/[NameSpace]/[Module]/Plugin/Magento/Catalog/Model/Product.php
  
  <?php namespace [NameSpace]\[Module]\Plugin\Magento\Catalog\Model; use Magento\Catalog\Model\Product; class Product { public function afterIsSaleable(Product $product) { return false; } }

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  <?php namespace [NameSpace]\[Module]\Plugin\Magento\Catalog\Model; use Magento\Catalog\Model\Product; class Product {                   public function afterIsSaleable(Product $product)     {                       return false;    } }

  The above code will hide the “Add to Cart” links everywhere in Magento 2.
• Mark the items as out of stock in Magento 2 store.For doing so in bulk, you can update product attributes in bulk in Magento 2This method allows for changing the product labels in bulk. While implementing this method, go to Advanced Inventory, and set quantity to “0” and the stock availability to “Out of Stock”.No need to edit one by one product for these things, owing to batch update for Magento 2 product attributes!
• Use responsive popups that show the details about the business position, upcoming plans to survive the business in the crisis, delays in order fulfilment, and any such information that helps the customers plan their shopping and expect accordingly.You can use Magento 2 Popup extension for generating and displaying popups with the important action to retain visitors’ attention.
• If your store uses structured data, make sure to update it according to the availability of the current product.
• Use search console and sitemaps in order to notify Google about these temporary changes.
• Limit maximum product quantity purchase per customer if you are selling items essential for living in order to effectively manage the orders when the staff capacity is reduced. For Magento 2 stores, one can use the Magento 2 Limit Product Quantity Per Customer extension.
• If your business is still functioning for all categories but with restrictions and limited staff, restrict the number of quantity allowed to be purchased from the leisure items’ category for loyal customers. The Magento 2 Limit Quantity Per Category extension can help implement it.
• Due to the pandemic and panic buying, many stores have faced the out of the stock situation and the customers who wish to buy such items get disappointed. In order to balance this situation, the store can offer a subscription facility to customers to get notified about the desired products when back in stock. Also, the store owners can understand the demand for products and manage the inventory accordingly during the coronavirus outbreak. Meetanshi offers an easy-to-use tool, Magento 2 Out of Stock Notification, to implement the same.

Apart from these, you can change the business hours on Google My Business if it is affected due to the pandemic!

If you are preparing for the worst situation, and disabling the store entirely, which is not recommended, but you are still going for it, you can enable the maintenance mode using the Magento 2 Maintenance Page extension.

Even after taking the above precautionary steps when you disable or pause your Magento 2 store in Google search during the coronavirus outbreak, your store visitors and customers may have questions and might contact you. Keeping in mind the staff shortage, you can implement the FAQ section using this free extension.

Taking down a business is stressful and hopefully, the above steps will help keep maintain your Magento 2 store during the COVID-19 disaster.

I would be more than happy to help the Magento store owners with their online stores facing difficulty during this global crisis, in any way. Feel free to mention them in the Comments section below.

Spread the word using social media, hoping it would be of some help to the Magento stores affected by the coronavirus crisis.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

Thank you.