Ecommerce Website Optimization - Best Ways to Increase Sales
According to a recent survey, there are around 30.7 million e-commerce websites all around the world. And each one of them shares one common goal – which is to experience as many sales as possible.
However, attracting a good number of sales depends on many factors. But one of the major ones is website optimization.
No matter how quality of product, service, or content you are offering, if your e-commerce store is not optimized according to search engine and targeted audience requirements, it will not experience good sales and SERP visibility. So, NEVER EVER underestimate the importance of optimization.
In this blog post, we are going to discuss some proven ways of optimizing an e-commerce website to experience maximum sales.
5 Major Ways to Optimize E-commerce Websites for Better Sales
Below, we have discussed some of the proven ways that can be taken to effectively optimize an e-commerce store for increased sales.
1. Work on Website UX
Search engines like Google always reward websites higher in the SERP that offer a top-notch browsing experience to the customers.
So, you should spend time, effort, and resources to elevate the overall user experience of your website. For this, you will have to take off a number of things that we have mentioned below.
Site Navigation. The design of your store should be user-intuitive, allowing the potential customers to seamlessly navigate through it. To achieve such perfection, you should simplify all the menus in the store and also categorize the relevant products.
So that the visitor can quickly find their desired product or service without getting overwhelmed. If possible, you can also provide a search bar or button.
If you are using SpreadSimple to create your e-commerce website, you have a kickstart of a ready-to-use navigation setup that is proven to be efficient. You can customize navigation with badges, filters, menus and other elements to make the website even more convenient for your audience.
Optimize Loading Speed. It is important to note that the loading speed of a website is a Google ranking factor. This means when evaluating a site for ranking, the search engine carefully considers how much it takes to load. If it is loading under 2 seconds, it will be rewarded with a higher rank, or else a penalty will be imposed.
There are multiple strategies available that can help you optimize the loading speed. First of all, you should remove all the unnecessary HTML, CSS, and JS code. Besides this, compress all the images using tools like TinyPNG. Moreover, consider getting server hosting services from a reputable provider.
Ensure Responsiveness. Not every customer will access your e-commerce store through a desktop. Some will also use mobile phones and tablets for portability. According to a statistic, 72% of the global e-commerce sales were conducted through mobile devices in 2023.
Due to this reason, site responsiveness is considered an essential part of optimization. Each element i.e., product picture, button, text, etc., should look flawless and perfectly fit the smaller screens.
Remember, making your e-commerce site responsive is quite difficult, it is recommended to hire a professional instead of creating a mess on your own.
2. Optimize Product Pages
Your product pages are key to turning visitors into customers. Below, we cover their essential elements and the optimization process.
Visuals. Images and videos are the most important thing in an e-commerce product page. These greatly assist the potential customer in gauging the quality and look of the gadget they are planning to purchase.
Always make sure your images are of high quality in terms of resolution. Additionally, try to take pictures of the product from every angle, and make sure the photos have a transparent background. Use free tools like Canva to make images transparent seamlessly.
It is recommended to add zoom-in functionality to the pictures for easy evaluation of the product.
Clear & Engaging Descriptions. Product descriptions are text pieces that let both the customer and search engine know what benefits and features a product offers. A good product description not only contributes to increasing sales but also elevates the overall visibility of the product in the SERP.
For this reason, it is recommended to keep them clear, engaging, and fluent. Hire a professional copywriter who will ensure the creation of such product descriptions. An easier option is to go for the paraphrasing tool like Editpad. It will automatically turn your dull description into a fluent and readable one while keeping the original meaning unchanged.
Call-to-Actions. CTAs are crucial for increasing sales, as they guide the customers towards the purchasing options. These have many forms like a button, a link, or just plain text. You should create relevant, clear, yet concise content for your product.
Some prime examples are Signup Now, Avail Discount, etc. Additionally, it is essential to place the CTA where the chances of clicking are higher. For this, the best approach is to test out different positions to figure out which one is providing good results.
Customer Reviews. The customer reviews on the product give a positive indication to both Google and potential customers that you are a genuine brand. This will ultimately help in building trust and give a boost to overall sales.
So, always add real customers (no matter whether they are positive or negative) on your product pages.
3. Improve the Check-Out Process
The most important thing that impacts the sales is the bad check-out process. No matter if a customer loves your product, if they face errors or any other issue, they will leave the purchase in-between and leave.
So, take the necessary steps to test and optimize the checkout process.
Less is More. Your e-commerce website’s checkout should be too long like someone applying for a scholarship or job. Just limit the entire process to a few simple steps, asking only necessary information. This way, potential customers wouldn’t have to spend much time and effort.
Offer Guest Checkout. This is something that will greatly contribute both to the optimization and conversion. You should allow potential customers to seamlessly check out without needing to create an account on your website. The easier the process, the more chances your customers will actually want to leave money on your website.
Accurate Pricing. We have seen many websites displaying less upfront cost, but when you proceed towards check-out (in the last step), the price of the product increases due to the addition of taxes, shipping rates, etc. This way, there is a higher probability that the customer will leave the purchase in the end.
So, you should avoid this approach and display 100% accurate pricing upfront. No surpises!
Versatile Payment Options. It is recommended to offer the audience versatile options to make payments. You can add a debit/credit card, online payment services like PayPal, and many more.
With SpreadSimple, you can connect multiple checkout options to make sure your customers will find a convenient one for them. The options include Stripe, PayPall, BillPlz, and others.
4. Focus on Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is the type of SEO that plays a key role in improving the visibility of your e-commerce in the SERP. When the ranking is improved, the site will attract more potential customers and ultimately sales.
There are multiple things that need to be done to elevate the off-page SEO of the store, some of the major ones are:
Build Quality Backlinks. Backlinks from high-quality websites act as a vote of confidence, indicating to Google that you are doing good work that’s why people are linking to you. You can either earn backlinks naturally or manually invest time and effort to earn them.
There are multiple strategies that can be adopted in this regard. The most effective one is guest blogging in which you reach out to other webmasters for a backlink collaboration on their website. Another one is broken link building which involves finding broken links on high-authority websites and then requesting your link placement.
Social Media Presence. When rewarding brands with a ranking in SERP, Google considers their social media presence. So, it is important to create social media pages against the name of your e-commerce website and then start posting valuable content regularly.
It is also essential to engage with the followers through comments to gain their trust and loyalty. If budget is not your concern, then you can even go for paid social marketing campaigns to drive traffic for better sales.
Collaborate with Influencers or Brands. To increase awareness of your e-commerce store, you can consider partnering with a well-known and reputable influencer or brand. This will greatly help in building a good relationship with the targeted audience which will ultimately lead to improving sales.
If you want to learn more about ways to make you e-commerce website more successful on search engines, check out out guide to on-page and off-page SEO.
5. Test & Optimize
The heading is already saying everything – you must keep track of your every optimization and marketing strategy.
User Behavior. It is essential to continuously monitor how every customer is behaving on your website. This will provide you with an idea about their specific needs and preferences. So that, you can then provide them with a personalized browsing experience next time.
A/B Testing. Create multiple versions of product titles, descriptions, and CTAs. And use and monitor each version’s performance to determine which one is providing good results.
Customer Feedback. Continuously gather feedback from both satisfied and unsatisfied customers about your website and then take the necessary steps to overcome the highlighted issues for better results.
Ending Notes
If your e-commerce isn’t providing good sales, then this clearly means it is not satisfying both the audience and search engine requirements. Proper website optimization is a must to fix this issue. In this blog post, we have discussed 5 ways of perfectly optimizing an e-commerce store for increased sales.