Wise Startup Blog

“New Year Greetings to all Wise Stratup Blog readers from www.Retail-Ecommerce.com, an official ecommerce blog owned by Mobius Knowledge Services”.

You can setup an ecommerce store or an affiliate site with a minimum effort with the technology available today, but running and managing it successfully is a real herculean task. The ecommerce market is highly competitive. Big players like Amazon, Buy.com, 1800flowers, etc have dominated the entire ecommerce terrain, leaving the small and medium online retailers almost inconspicuous in the web space.

Well, there is no need to sweat it out. To become a successful online seller, you have to properly optimize your ecommerce store.This article provides ecommerce 100 tips and tricks to optimize an ecommerce website, which would eventually lead to high site visibility, traffic and conversion.

100 Tips to Optimize an eCommerce Website

General:

1. Get your senior management’s support and commitment on your efforts to improve your website.

2. Identify the changes required and build a good operations team.

3. Always remember that your goal is to provide better online service to your customers. (Remember Zappos)

4. Set achievable goals for every webpage.

5. Make sure you have an “about us” page filled with company information,

6. Provide a clear cut return policy page.

7. Set a key performance indicator (KPI) for every online marketing campaign you conduct.

8. Never depend completely on technology.

9. Set up different communication channels with your users– Email, Telephone, Physical address, live chat, etc.

Retail ecommerce usability/merchandising tips:

10. Don’t use too much animation in your home page.

11. Display top-selling and newly launched products on your home page.

12. Make sure every product page is reachable within 2-3 clicks.

13. Recommend product accessories for items that have been added to a shopping cart. For example, if a customer buys a notebook, then recommend laptop accessories, like a USB mouse or bags. Just recommend, don’t add them automatically to the shopping cart; otherwise it will lead to shopping cart abandonment

14. Add a buy button to your recommended list or wherever you show a product.

15. Also show product prices for each product in your recommended product list or anywhere else you display your products.

16. Make sure your content has compelling call to actions – buy now, limited offer, etc.

17. Wow customers by offering surprise gifts, offers, and price discounts.

18. Have good site search functionality within your site.

19. Also include advanced search functionality, such as search by color, size, etc.

20. Add breadcrumb navigation, which helps users to keep track of their location in your site.

21. Allow users to modify their shopping cart lists. They should be able to add or remove products and change the quantities that they want to purchase.

22. Avoid hidden cost – imposing additional cost on the total value of the purchase. Allow users to add associated products manually. Don’t ever automate it. Hidden costs lead to shopping cart abandonment.

23. Don’t force users to register, even for adding items into their shopping cart.

24. Glean only necessary information during the sign up process.

25. Display security badges clearly.

26. Give alternate payment options. About 74% of online merchants provide alternate payment options.

27. Offer free shipping for a certain price threshold.

28. Install an analytics program to help you better understand user behavior.

29. Use a visual analytics program to facilitate easy interpretation.

30. Avoid having a long check out process.

31. Provide all necessary information, such as shipping, privacy policy, return policy, delivery date and time, etc.

Retail ecommerce design/development tips:

32. Ensure that the site’s html code meets web standards.

33. Minimize graphics like flash, scripts, etc.

34. Graphical links are of no use. Make sure that your links are text based.

35. Ensure that your site loads quickly.

36. Use a secure server include (SSI) in your pages.

37. Be creative with your 404 page. You can merchandise it, add site search functionality or link it to another section of your website.

Retail ecommerce SEO tips:

38. Conduct SEO competition analysis.

39. Conduct keyword research.

40. Use about two or three keywords per page and not more than that.

41. Focus on long tail keywords (e.g. canon power shot 4x digital camera).

42. Don’t use the manufacturer’s product description. Use your own instead and make it spider and user friendly.

43. Use keyword rich titles and Meta tags, headings, etc. However, make sure you don’t spam. If you do it right, you get it right.

44. Use product related keywords in your product descriptions.

45. Get quality back links to your product pages steadily, but not suddenly.

46. Recommend products and accessories on your product page. Smart and sophisticated interlinking helps in SEO (a good example is Shopping.com’s comparison product page).

47. Ask customers to review products that they have purchased from your site. User generated content helps in SEO.

48. Allow customers to tag the product.

49. Use keywords in interior links.

50. Don’t have more than 100 outgoing links from a page.

51. Optimize images for fast loading and for search engines

52. Create a sitemap – it ensures that none of your web pages are orphaned.

53. Create search engine friendly (SEF) URLs that are easy for both users and crawlers. Opt for URL optimization like mod_rewrite to static URLs.

54. Write blog posts on the products you sell.

Ecommerce email marketing tips:

55. Conduct an opt-in email campaign.

56. Invite users to sign up for your newsletter after a sale.

57. Avoid spam words like free in the subject line.

58. Make sure you have an unsubscribe option.

59. Provide a proper mailing address.

60. Include tell-a-friend functionality.

61. Email consistently.

62. Offer exclusive discounts to opt-in customers.

63. Include compelling call to actions in your email message.

64. Make sure your offer is visible above the fold in the email.

Pay per click (PPC) marketing tips:

65. Start by advertising top-selling products.

66. Bid on popular and relevant keywords.

67. Use negative keywords as well.

68. Use keyword options like phrase and exact match.

69. Focus on improving your quality score.

70. Add keywords in the ad copy.

71. Add call to actions in the ad copy.

72. You don’t have to hold the very top position. Find a balance.

73. Make sure you give the right landing page; otherwise you’ll meet with a high bounce rate.

74. Turn off the content network, if you meet with no sales.

75. Test your ad copy.

76. Test your PPC ad campaign.

77. Test your landing pages.

Comparison shopping engine (CSE) marketing tips:

78. Choose the comparison engines for your campaign; start slow and steady.

79. Choose your top performing products to start with.

80. Prepare feeds according to the shopping engine’s requirements.

81. Use common product names or street names in the feeds.

82. Don’t forget to use recommended data feed fields.

83. Try to use optional data feed fields as well.

84. Make sure your feeds are placed in the right taxonomy of each shopping engine.

85. Use the exact MPN or SKU.

86. Update your data feeds daily, weekly or monthly (daily is highly recommended).

87. Prepare and send data feeds to Google base feeds and other free to list shopping engines.

88. Don’t advertise out of stock products.

89. Provide an appropriate landing page.

90. Remove poor performing products.

91. Conduct CSE competition analysis with other merchants in context with title, price and other promotional offers within each CSE.

92. Track your rankings in the CSE.

93. Track clicks and sales at the product level.

Ecommerce customer support service tips:

94. Provide exceptional service to repeat customers.

95. Provide good customer service to first time customers as well.

96. Make sure you respond to customers in a timely manner.

97. Get a toll free number.

98. Train customer representatives properly. For example, offer product and sales training.

99. Make sure your contact info is available on all your pages.

100. Thank the customer either by calling or sending an email for the purchase they made.

What do you think about these tips? Please feel free to add more. Start from 101

Important Note: The above mentioned tips are just a suggestion from Retail-ecommerce.com. We have implemented the above ecommerce optimization tips and have had great success with our clients. I recommend you to test them.

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