5 Quick Wins for eCommerce Websites

Making the most of your eCommerce site needn’t be a struggle. Especially if your abide by ecommerce store best practices but here are 5 ways you could give your site a boost in a matter of days:

1. Make sure you have unique product descriptions

Ensure you write unique, compelling and informative copy on each product page. If you have various pages of similar products (perhaps in different colours or sizes), there are a number of things you can do:

• Use a canonical tag to point to the most popular product page
• Combine the products onto one product page and use filters to vary colour and size
• Write unique descriptions for each product page

Whatever you decide, it’s important to avoid having duplicate blocks of text across your site.

What to do if other websites sell your products

Make sure your product pages go live first. You can put the pages live (without linking to them from the navigation if they’re seasonal) and use the Fetch as Google tool in webmaster tools to get them indexed straight away so Google sees  your site as the original owner of that content.

The last thing you want is your wholesalers getting your descriptions indexed before you, as it will make your site look low quality to Google. Read more in our ecommerce product page optimisation tips article.

2. Don’t let duplicate content screw you over 

If identical blocks of text appear on every single product page (e.g. delivery information), there are a few things you can do to get around it:

• Link to a single page with the full information. However, having information upfront is good for your conversion rates so…
• Display the delivery information as an image
• Use an iframe to display text from your delivery page
• Use pop ups to display delivery information quickly, keeping the user on the page

If you take a quick scan around the web, you’ll see that many of the huge retailers are guilty of duplicating this kind of text.

It’s true that Google can distinguish this kind of text as delivery information and excuse sites for using it. However as a rule, it is recommended to keep the text to a minimum and link to a delivery page for full information.

3. Tag your products in Google’s Data Highlighter

Take advantage of Google’s rich snippets and tag your products using the Data Highlighter tool, which you can find in Webmaster Tools.

This allows Google to display information about your products in the SERPs, including price, availability and reviews, which improves click-through rates!

4. Tap into Site Search data

Setting up Site Search in Google Analytics allows you to tap into some fantastic data about your customer base.

Not only does it allow you to see exactly what your customers are searching for on your site, but you can use the data to seriously improve conversion rates!

• Spot common themes – Is there a common search term? Does something need to be added to the navigation or made more prominent?
• Are there searches for products that aren’t currently being sold? Are there new opportunities that you could be taking advantage of?
• Does the search results page result in a high exit rate? If so, could it be optimised?
• Do the same pages always result in site search attempts? Use this to re-order on-page content.
• Inform your SEO strategy with accurate keyword data direct from the source. Uncover new keywords you didn’t know existed!

5. Create a custom 404 page

What do you do when a product goes out of stock/out of season? Rather than a generic 404 page, why not create a custom page to be displayed when an item is no longer available, that suggests ‘similar items’.

This keeps the user on your site and funnels them back into the buying process.

You should also checkout common ecommerce SEO mistakes to ensure you’re not falling into any of these classic traps or findout how to optimise your ecommerce website checkout process to ensure users don’t drop off before converting.

For more information about how your eCommerce site can grow online, check out our eCommerce Best Practice guide or find out why we’re the number one Cardiff SEO agency and checkout how our ecommerce SEO agency can help you today.