How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Site

Did you know that the vast majority of people today prefer shopping online? Nearly 75 out of 100 U.S. people order products via the Web due to no need for physical travel, no hassle of getting stuck in traffic, no crowds at stores, the ability to compare prices across different sellers, and convenience of purchasing. From this perspective, it is natural to see that more and more individuals seek to create an ecommerce shop and start selling online. 

But let’s assume that you already have one. What’s next? Things are not that easy when it comes to ecommerce as you will most likely face numerous challenges, such as low traffic and almost zero sales. Especially, if you are a beginner in online trade. So unless you prefer to miss out on potential customers, you should make sure your website is optimized for the search engines. In this article, we have decided to focus on some of the most critical areas for optimizing your ecommerce site and troubleshooting.

Read also: HOW TO BOOST CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN ECOMMERCE

Ecommerce Optimization Explained

In a nutshell, search engine optimization comes down to increasing the visibility of your web pages. Ecommerce optimization, as its name suggests, means exactly the same with a focus on ecommerce. Optimizing your ecommerce website is a high-impact activity that significantly affects your bottom line by increasing the quantity and quality of your traffic. Whether you are an ecommerce business owner or just someone who plans to launch an online shop, you will sooner or later start thinking of ways to improve its popularity and visibility. So would you like to skyrock your revenue potential? Optimizing your ecommerce shop can help do just that. Interested? Let’s explore it in more detail.

How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Website?

Ecommerce optimization is all about improving your rankings for search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google. The following are the important areas for you to focus your attention in the first place. 

  1. Perform the SEO audit 

Obviously, doing SEO auditing regularly is essential to building a strong online presence. Here are some tips to keep your web pages up-to-date, clean, and relevant:

  • Monitor search engine algorithm updates. Some of Google’s updates can negatively impact your SEO.
  • Check errors on Google Webmaster. This allows you to fix defective links or those which Yahoo, Bing, or Google have difficulty crawling.
  • Implement XML sitemap. This provides search engines with the ability to crawl your ecommerce site more effectively.
  • Avoid unoriginal content. Duplicate descriptions and texts can hurt your SEO

Read also: HOW TO GET STARTED WITH ECOMMERCE

  1. Implement Blogging

This is a crucial part of your online business success. Blogging can help you keep your online store fresh, improve SEO rankings, enhance niche authority, establish brand image, generate backlinks, and decrease bounce rate. Here is how to make your blogging effort effective: 

  • Actively share/promote your blog posts everywhere. Add social sharing buttons
  • Use your target audience’s slang
  • Create SEO-friendly and catchy titles. Use visuals, bullets, and subtitles 
  • Allow comments for feedback
  • Invite other bloggers to guest post for you and guest blog on other sites within your niche
  • Post high-quality and original content 
  1. Improve your UI/UX design

You do not want your visitors to leave your ecommerce site the moment they land on your page, do you? So make it as user-friendly as possible:

  • Optimize for mobile. Make sure your customers can shop from your site from various devices
  • Improve your page load speed by upgrading your hosting and compressing content, photos, and videos. Nobody likes waiting, you know that. 
  • Organize your site’s structure. This includes contact details and search bar (make them visible), chat widget, checkout process and navigation.

Read also: HOW TO INCREASE YOUR ECOMMERCE SALES WITH MOBILE DESIGN

  1. Strategic internal linking

This will make it easier for your customers to get from one product page to another.

  • Try to limit the amount of links you add per page 
  • Add a related products section
  • Use breadcrumbs.They are useful to both search engines robots and your users, helping them navigate your ecommerce store
  • Link your main products/services, categories, and other high priority pages
  1. Optimize high-value web pages

They are the ones that are the most visited on your site. Typically, these high-impact pages include trending pages, blog posts, category and product pages, and homepage. Here are some tips on how to attract more people to them:

  • Optimize categories pages. Highlight your top items and best-selling products
  • Optimize product pages. Include relevant information, such as ratings, reviews, and stock data, keep out-of-stock product pages live, add customer reviews, create unique product descriptions 
  • Optimize your homepage by adding visuals (with ALT tags) and structuring your navigation 
  • Use URLs that are readable by both search engines and users. Ensure that they are straightforward and simple. Avoid character combinations and strange symbols that do not make sense
  • Use long-tail (at least three words) keywords. 
  • Figure out keywords that your target audience is using taking into account their ranking difficulty, location-based popularity, relevance, and search volume

Read also: LARGE-SCREEN ECOMMERCE DESIGN

Key Takeaways

There are myriads of guides and tips out there on the Web on how to optimize your ecommerce website. Hopefully, this article will put you well on the way to improving ecommerce conversions. No matter what you sell online, always think of usability, user experience, and do not forget about SEO! At Loonar Studios, we believe that the best thing about launching an ecommerce shop is that you have no income ceiling. But if you really want to make more money, you should start with eCommerce optimization. Contact us if you have any questions. Good luck!