Refining your Ecommerce Site for Sales

There are far too many Ecommerce sites that have diligently followed all the rules set forth for SEO yet still suffer from decreased site traffic and poor sales.  They spin their tires with little traffic, or higher traffic with no conversions.  For an Ecommerce site, streaming user traffic isn’t the ultimate goal.  While traffic is nice for any website, you have to learn to generate conversions so the traffic turns into sales.

Because Ecommerce should have different goals and requires different architecture than a standard site, it’s important to have your plan clearly developed and communicated with an SEO consultant or firm when engaging them for your marketing campaign.  You must be aware of your needs as they pertain to Ecommerce traffic and optimization for such a site.

Focus your content

The content on your pages needs to be carefully crafted, and of professional quality when it comes to any SEO campaign.  When you bring Ecommerce into the picture, your content has to take on a new form and serve a different purpose.  When people purchase things in the real world, they like to look at an object.  Pick it up, test its weight, shape, examine it closely, smell it, etc.  Inspection of products that we’re about to purchase is second nature to people.  You must be able to satisfy that urge through your content.  This means your product descriptions must be thorough, the images should be crisp and high quality, and product specifications should be readily available.  The content on your site should come together to give your customer a clear picture of what they will buy, how the process will work, and how you’ll get it to them.

Managing information

A number of Ecommerce sites need to gather registration information from their guests.  While it is a necessary evil on many occasions, from the user standpoint it can be a grueling and frustrating process to have a quick purchase halted by a lengthy form at checkout.  If it’s absolutely necessary to gather the information, make it as simple as possible.  If you can’t get around formal registration for whatever reason, then try to offer your users incentives for making sure that every field is filled in.  This process can really take off if the incentive applies to the order they’re currently working with.

Smooth Design from Start to Finish

No matter what you do for SEO, you can guarantee a quick, abrupt death for your website and business if your structure is a chaotic mess.  A search engine may be able to overlook a clumsy shopping cart system, but the human user won’t be able to get past the frustration that ensues.  Well-developed shopping cart software is worth the investment, as it makes it easy for your customers to load up on everything they need and complete the checkout process.  It’s important to make their continued experience a smooth one as well.  If they want multiple items, your cart system should recommend other products that have strongly written content, with clear navigation to continue shopping through your categories.

Make Payments Easy

If you want your cart to work seamlessly with your SEO, make sure the final payment has multiple options for your users.  Payment should be the most hassle-free part of your website.  People have come to expect that their preferred method of payment is going to be available to them.  If you only offer what’s convenient for you, then you can expect reduced sales.

An Ecommerce site should focus as much on end user optimization as they do on search engine optimization, if not more.  Your SEO is an integral part in making sure that people can find you, but you must use similar concepts in the design and usability of your site to ensure that once they get there – they stay there.

Related posts:

1. Rich Web Site Content for Dummies
2. How to Build an Effective Landing Page (part 1)