E-commerce has taken the global business structure onto a different level altogether. Whether it’s the success story of Amazon or the energetic Reebok, the results have been sufficiently encouraging for every ecommerce site to uplift its standards. And the improvement need not only be in terms of page design, page loading speed or something technical, but an ecommerce site should also be a radiator of vitality, something that can compensate for the otherwise virtual shopping.
Far from being perfect, most of the e-commerce sites that I see these days are not even workable. Some sites have poor images, or the sales page don’t just load, something or the other error pops up while I want just to buy a particular product. And then I grow impatient, only to run away from the site, feeling sad that I couldn’t buy that stuff and irritated because the website gave me a bad deal of experience. IMO, the e-commerce websites need to have a great outlook and have better SEO done so that the customers have an ease and a convenience. A smart e-commerce portal will encourage him/her to make the purchase decision with a smiling face.
I have jotted down a list of four essential issues that I find in faulty e-commerce websites. Let’s fix them up if your ecommerce site has similar issues. While getting these features will not only make your ecommerce feature awesome, you can surely see the improvement in ROI in terms of higher conversion rates and a greater loyalty factor among your targeted audience.
Poor Product Image? Bad sight for your audience
Whether it’s a jewellery portal or a site where you buy home appliances, images account for a great deal of the aesthetics and the information value for the e-commerce portal. As a customer, you believe what you see, and it is necessary that the product images and other graphics should be of a higher quality. Also, it should have a standard zoom-in feature so that customers can see the larger than image view to getting a real feel of the products they browse for.
From a search engine point of view, it is crucial that the images should be positioned in an intelligent way. Otherwise, the search engine robots will not be able to locate and understand the context of the images you put on your landing pages. Image optimization is an important part of search engine optimization.
You will need to use the right keywords in the product description and alt tags so that the image gets a comprehensive description of itself. The keywords ought to be unique so that the search engines find no trouble in differentiating the products. Search engines can find you better and place you at a higher rank on the SERPs. It is a must step for your ecommerce site.
Broken Links? Fix the soup immediately
This is something that annoys me every time. I search for a product and then ultimately find that it’s available on some e-commerce site. All excited to make the purchase, I get my credit card in my desperate hands and click on the link. Voila! The link opens only to show me a “404-Not found”. Now that’s not just a disappointment because I no longer want to buy that stuff, it is also an insult to my time and intelligence. It makes me feel stupid about me. And I tend never to visit the same site again, any matter what they offer me the next time.
Now since I have worked for some e-commerce portals myself, so I understand that with a little bit effort, all your broken links can be fixed. All you need to do is to keep a track of all the links on your e-commerce websites. Once you discover that a link is broken or has issues that need to be addressed, do the needful asap. You don’t want your customers to have a bad impression of your ecommerce site, do you?
You can also check for some available plugins that can check the broken links for you. You will save time and then you can improve those links to provide a better user experience.
Meta Descriptions that speak
Meta descriptions don’t help much in search engine rankings; this is one of the reasons why SEO executives have neglected the value meta descriptions hold. A good and relevant meta description will facilitate the click through rates and can invariably inform the users about the landing page’s content, thereby providing them a signal to click and explore your web pages.
What if you don’t do the meta description optimization?
The search engines are designed in such a way that in the absence of a meta description, they pick up some automatically generated descriptions that may or may NOT be relevant to the context of your content. You can understand that is not a good choice since you risk the control on how your website is listed in the SERPs.
Responsive Web design: Proactively responding to your online audience
We are in an age when technology and innovation are as important as food and water. We don’t like anything that is too old or not upgraded to fit the latest trends and advancements. With almost everyone having access to mobile devices and internet access, it is essential that your website has a great design and responsive patterns to make the customer rise in love with your website.