You can sell anything on the Internet, right? Theoretically yes, but if you want to be successful in e-commerce, you need an effective website to help you sell. A lot can go wrong with an e-commerce site, and it doesn’t take much for fickle customers to look elsewhere for what they want. It’s time to improve your e-commerce website.
This week, I’ve collected several articles that look at how to improve your e-commerce website with good web design, savvy SEO, serious speed and more. I hope this information will help you build a better site and boost your online sales.
Tips for Improving Your E-Commerce Website
5 SEO Problems Plaguing E-Commerce Websites. Search Engine Land: “SEO is largely a top-of-funnel marketing channel. Users are still in the research phase of their purchasing cycle and tend to search as such, relying on more broad keywords (such as ‘TVs’ or even ‘LED TVs’) to help them determine what specific product they want. That means most SEOs want to drive traffic to the category or product listing pages rather than individual product pages. While the broader terms will drive most of your traffic, you can’t forget about the users who already know what specific product they want — for example, ‘Samsung 55in LED TV’ or even just the model number, ‘FH6030.’”
7 Tips for Targeting the Mobile Only Shopper. AlleyWatch: “There’s a customer segment you need to pay attention to: the mobile-only shopper. ComScore says it’s 13% of US Internet shoppers….Forget mobile as simply a ‘research touchpoint.’ Smartphone-only shoppers need to be recognized for their full conversion potential. Never consider your smartphone site as merely a research tool, ensure it’s usable from entry page through checkout. Make it easy to navigate and search, optimize images and copy readability, make it easy to save and retrieve items in wishlists and carts, rigorously test your cart process and form usability, etc.”
The Single Most Important Thing Missing From Your eCommerce Store. Business2Community: “According to a survey conducted by social media shopping company IMShopping and Harris Interactive, more than half of consumers polled claim that their decision not to make a purchase was sometimes a result of not being able to get assistance from a real live human being. Many times customers are not getting the answers they need from an eCommerce site’s FAQ section or customer forums. When they don’t get the answer to their question right away, they are more likely to turn elsewhere. In countless instances customers just need a little reassurance that they’re making the right buying decision, especially with expensive items like home electronics or furniture.”
21 Ways to Boost Your eCommerce Conversion Rate. BrainSINS: “Speed Up to Sell More. It’s a given that faster websites convert better. It’s even a Google ranking factor. If you thought that “all-you-can-eat” hosting offer looked really attractive well you weren’t alone – you’ll be sharing precious server resources with thousands of other customers. The simple truth is that cheap web hosting is a false economy for eCommerce sites. Whilst there are dozens of ways to speed up the front end of your site, the hosting is where the rubber hits the road. Switching to either a virtual or dedicated server or failing that to Solid State (SSD) hosting is going to give a guaranteed speed increase.”
An E-Commerce Site Owner’s Guide to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update. Search Engine Journal: “If your website is not considered mobile friendly, you will want to see if this has affected your traffic from Google organic search on mobile. You can find this out in Google Analytics using a segment that shows only mobile traffic from Google organic search….You can then view the Audience Overview report to see if there is a dip in traffic at the time the mobile-friendly update launched on Google.”
