A successful online store brings better profits to any online business. However, a successful online store is strongly tied to traffic and conversion rates: the higher the traffic, the higher the conversion. With more people visiting your online store, your brand and product will be better known. But, visiting is not enough, oftentimes people just click and get going without browsing any of your products. This is why an online store owner needs to always find ways to engage their customers through optimisation.
An effective component in keeping your visitors on your website is the visitor’s experience, in technical terms, the User Experience or UX. To have good UX, website optimization is necessary. So, how do you optimise your online store?
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Pick the right domain name
A domain is the first impression of your online store. So, you need to pick one related to what you are trying to sell. If you offer baby needs, you should look for a domain like http://www.babyneeds.com or http://www.babypicks.com. A good domain is easy to recall. So keep it short and catchy.
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Include high impression relevant keywords
Including relevant keywords in your online store is a small part of search engine optimization (SEO). The aim is to get a better position on a search result. Place related and relevant keywords on the website title, headings, and body. Basic SEO requires you to write good meta descriptions for every page you create. Use Google’s Keyword Planner tools to find good keywords. However do avoid overstuffing your site with keywords, Google can penalise your website for having multiple keywords. At most, 1% keyword density on a single page is enough.
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Feature a photo of a “happy customer”
Your online store is a tool to communicate with your visitors. Since you need to gain trust to persuade your visitors, create your online store as lively as possible. Feature a photo of ‘happy customers to build trust among your visitors. A picture of smiling customers will tell visitors that people enjoy your product. Also remember to keep your images relevant to your target market. You need to consider audience, age, size, geographic location, ethnicity and gender when choosing feature images.
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Optimise page load time – especially when you have many visuals
Keep your visitor’s experience more pleasant by optimizing page load time, especially if you need lots of visuals to show. The shorter the page load time, the lower your bounce rate. Also, Google will improve the search engine ranking with an optimized website. No one likes a website or store that takes too long to load.
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State your value proposition
What are you offering to your customers? What makes your product different from the others? State your value proposition. Tell your visitors about what they should care about your product. Keep it short and straightforward without blasting them with too much information.
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Display personalized content and product recommendation
Logged-in customers find it more helpful when an online store displays personalized content and product recommendations. Personalized content helps the customers to find what they need on the site. Also, a site that recommends products is preferred by the shopper to return. You can use your customers’ preferences, habits, and history to create featured products.
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Improve navigation through menu and sitemaps
The visitor’s experience is also affected by the website’s structure and navigation. It would be best if you improved your sitemaps navigation by displaying the range of products so shoppers can easily find the items they are looking for.
Optimizing an online store is not simple. It needs some trial and error to get the best result since there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that is suitable for every business. To keep on track, tie back the implementation of your strategy with what you are trying to accomplish at different stages of your customer journey. Since you are aiming to create an online store with circulating visitors, remember to keep their experience pleasant and intuitive.