Doing business on the web has never been easier than before. And this is the reason behind the enormous increase in the level of competition each business owner is facing today. The number of business owners creating the virtual version of the business is staggering which has made it extremely difficult for newbies to rank in the search engines and attract visitors.
In our 13 years of experience, we have handled more than 25,000+ websites. In this article, we share the 17 common mistakes that most of Ecommerce website owners make.
1. Poor Product Descriptions
A product description is the most crucial text on your product page. Search engine bots can’t read the text in the images so they solely depend on the description to categorize the item. Even if you are selling unique items having a unique name with a bad description, chances are that it will go unnoticed. We have seen many site owners that were too lazy to write original and comprehensive product descriptions and later paid a heavy price for that mistake.
It’s crucial to write quality product descriptions. For example: If you are selling jeans, provide information about the fabric that has been used, the quality of that fabric, where and how they are made, unique traits, etc.
By doing so, you are not only helping the consumers to make a well-informed decision but also helping search engine bots to understand your product type in detail and so they rank it accordingly. It’s a win-win for everyone.
2. Not giving importance to customer reviews
Nowadays, almost everyone sees reviews before buying any product. So if you are not giving reviews a prominent space on your product page, then you are actually making it tough for the users to make a decision. A very good example will be of none other than Amazon.
They not only give enough space for the reviews but also categorize it as “ Most helpful” and so on. Reviews play a crucial role in pushing the consumers further into the buying funnel. Also, it gives Google some more text to crawl into.
3. Improper Optimization of Product Titles
Many site owners do this fatal mistake of optimizing product title as per the name and not according to they type of product. It’s extremely important to optimize the product title as per the keywords people use to search. Use model numbers, brand names, product type and the things that people actually search for. No one is going to know the name of your product unless it starts with i (Pad, Phone).
4. Cramming Keywords into Product Pages
Using right keywords is important but overdoing it is a huge mistake. Don’t just insert keywords and most importantly repeated keywords just for the sake of visibility. It will not only annoy people but will also look spammy to the customers and search engines as well.
5. Absence of Image Alt Text
Providing image alt text is essential. However, it will cost you some extra efforts, but it will be worth it. It provides some context to the search engine about those blocks of content.
6. Not writing unique page titles
Using duplicate titles are like giving your competitors free traffic. If you don’t invest time in writing original, descriptive title, and just copy paste it from another website then google will treat it as a duplicate content and will rank the other pages instead. Also make it a point
to add offers in the page title whenever possible to make it more enticing to the end user.
7. Not using user-friendly URLs
Having a user-friendly URLs can benefit you in many ways. It’s easy for the consumers as well as for the search engines. A user will like “/women’s-tops/white-cotton-shirt” rather than “/kyc-24/product-32874?shirts”. Most of the retailers don’t pay attention to URLs so you can get a boost by opting for it.
8. Lack of Content on the Page
Having content less than required can be dangerous for your ranking. You must have enough content on the page. Description, Reviews, etc. Be informed that just because a user is on your site, doesn’t mean that they will hit the buy button. Remember their buying process and the importance of content in it.
9. Stuffing Sharing Buttons
You may have read numerous article stating that you should add the social media sharing buttons on your page, but keep in mind that user is now on your website and they are about to buy something. So don’t divert their attention by placing sharing buttons of every social media platform. Use buttons as per the product. For example, if you are selling tech products, adding a Twitter or Facebook button would be a wise move. For clothing, Pinterest would be advisable.
10. Lack of Sitemaps and robots.txt
Employ automated sitemaps that update as your products are added / removed to ensure that your new products & contents get indexed as frequently as possible and it’s crawled in the most appropriate path. Have a constantly adapting sitemap.xml to give Google a clear crawling path.
11. Absence of Content Driven Internal linking
Content is still and will be the king. Nothing can beat the impact a good content can have on your customers. Creating evergreen content that will be beneficial even for those who are not currently interested in buying and linking it to your product page can do wonders. About 50% people who will read your blog post will most likely buy your products.
12. Lack of Technical Elements
Avoid using dynamic parameters, do employ dashes instead of underscores and use lower-case letter in the URLs. Redirecting the home page can hinder you from ranking well on search engines. Don’t make things messy, keep things clean so that Googlebot can easily crawl your website without getting confused. Use 301 redirects to take customers to a different category. Utilize the Google Search Console to eliminate duplicate content.
13. Having a Slow Website
People have become too impatient these days. So if your page takes too long to load, users will simply move to your competitor. Keeping your source code clean and using non-heavy images can help you achieve the target. PageSpeed Insights by Google can provide you the instructions using which you can make your pages load faster.
14. Not Using Schema Markup
Use Schema.org to display your product page information on search engine result pages. By employing it, you will be able to generate trust even before a user has entered your website, thus increasing the click-through rates and more chances of them buying the product from you.
15. Lack of content heavy category pages
Putting guides, links and other information on the category pages will help you push the user further down the buying funnel. Remember, the more information you will provide, more the chances of user converting into a customer.
16. Not Adding physical location information
If you have a brick and mortar location, then do include the address in your footer. In case you have stores in many locations, label the headquarters in the footer. By doing that you are pleasing Google and as a token of appreciation, it will rank your better on local search. It also builds more trust as far as the end user is concerned.
17. Absence of a Strong, Dynamic CMS
A dynamic CMS can make your dream of having a successful Ecommerce a reality. Make sure your CMS is SEO enabled i.e. it should have the functionality to implement all possible SEO changes. On the other hand, it should be user friendly too.
