A job all ecommerce site owners should do
All ecommerce site owners know that you should optimise your products. It can increase search engine rankings, traffic and conversions. Yet it can seem a daunting task, especially when your store has thousands of products and you may lack technical skills. So where do you start and what do you do?
The sooner you start...
With thousands of products, where do you start? The answer is to start on the products that matter most to you and those that you want to sell more of. Don't use the number of products as an excuse not to start. You could start with your best-selling products or those for which you have the best margins. Have a look at your analytics. What products have good traffic, but a low conversion rate or a high bounce rate?
Pick 100 products and work through them. Then pick the next 100. Make a resolution to optimise at least one product per day. There are no magical quick fixes or free rides, but the more that you do, the faster you'll get. And once you've finished, you'll probably want to start over.
Once you start and see the benefits, you'll probably spend a lot of time on this, because in the end, it is one of the factors that will determine whether you will succeed in selling on-line.
So what do I optimise?
What you actually optimise depends on your technical skill levels and the flexibility of your shopping cart. What's important is getting good, unique, informative, well-thought-out content on to your site. I've outlined some ideas below for what you can optimise. How to optimise these will be covered in more detail in future blog posts.
Content
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Headlines
- Informative, original descriptions (lose the manufacturer's description!)
- Customer and benefit focused copy
- Search engine friendly URLs
Photos
- Large photos
- Alternate photos
- Views from different angles
- Photos showing people using the product
- Zoom and pan features
- Image ALT text
Pricing
- Compare your pricing with your competitors
- Product or service driven?
Be creative
Be creative with building value. Anything you can do to make your ecommerce site better than the competition is worthy of consideration. You should think outside the box and try things that your competitors are not trying, such as:
- Videos
- How to guides
- Downloadable manuals
Creating value through your content
Improving your product content will make your site a destination for information related to your industry. This is important for both your customers and for your search engine rankings.
It will help you gain new customers who may never have been on your site and to keep those customers that you already have. It will help you sell your products by establishing credibility. Providing real value through unique content can also earn links from relevant sites, bringing long-term SEO benefits. It's about bringing in more traffic and converting it. So what are you waiting for?