It’s that time of year when we make new year’s resolutions. Online businesses and brands do that too, but in a bit different manner. In this post we will see what an e-commerce businesses should consider as its new year’s resolutions.
1. Run a content audit
It is very important to review your existing content in order to remove outdated, unnecessary, and irrelevant information. It also helps you remove content which doesn’t fit with your new year’s agenda or plan. A good practice involves creating a spreadsheet to mark each page for the content audit. This spreadsheet will help you enhance your site’s navigation and user experience. Moreover, it will also help you with dead or broken links on your website. Dead links are not good for your search engine results page (SERP) rankings and they also drive away impatient visitors.
2. Conduct a design audit
Conducting a design audit will help you explore ways to make your e-commerce website more attractive and user friendly for visitors. Selecting the right typefaces, colors and degree of white space adds considerable value to a site’s ability to interact with its visitors. These elements reflect a site’s credibility, usability and mood. Therefore, it is vital to tailor them for a given audience. Furthermore, do not clutter your site with too many images or text, so that users can clearly see what’s on offer and they don’t get distracted and leave the site out of frustration. The objective of this audit should be to make your design clean and simple.
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3. Make sure your site is mobile friendly
According to IBM, Black Friday mobile sales accounted for 27.9 percent of total online sales, which is 28.2 percent more than last year’s number. One can easily understand what an e-commerce website is missing without a mobile version. Without a mobile friendly or a responsive design, users will find your e-commerce website hard to navigate on their mobile devices and will likely leave your site within first few minutes of their visit. Moreover, Google is also placing icons indicating a mobile version in the search result, which will further drive traffic away from your site. If your website does not have a mobile friendly or responsive design, you should definitely get one in the year 2015.
4. Improve your product descriptions
There is a lot of competition when it comes to getting found on Google. Therefore, it is very important to add exceptional descriptions for your products. The more details you add to your product description, the more phrases will direct users towards your products. It is notoriously common to use stock or manufacturer descriptions for your products, which is a big mistake on SEO part, so please avoid it.
Having said that, it does not mean that you should fill your product descriptions with complex, jargon-heavy information; your visitors may not be able to digest it. One way to influence users with a product description is to tell them the benefits of the product rather than what the product is. Apple is exceptional in doing this. Videos are a valuable content form in this regard. It adds value to a user’s understanding of a product, hence, increasing the conversion rates.
5. Analytics in place
A couple of weeks ago, we did a detailed post on digital attribution which sheds light on understanding what factors influences a user’s buying behavior. It is very important for an e-commerce website to understand how different advertising channels influence a user’s buying behavior. So, make sure you have analytics in place, this way you know which pages are attracting views and how your e-commerce site is garnering all those views and visits. Make sure every page of your website has a tracking code for Google Analytics or whichever analytics platform you’re using. The more you learn about your visitors, the better you will be prepared to improve your site’s performance.
Wrap Up
In the year 2015, e-commerce websites will remain a prospering element in online business models. We have discussed a couple of things which may help your e-commerce site by enhancing its overall performance and user experience. We hope you find these helpful and wish you a happy new year!
