Quick wins for optimizing your online store performance
Optimizing your eCommerce site for discoverability is not an easy feat. The truth is, there’s a lot that goes into striking ranking gold on the internet. The good news is, it’s possible to set up good web optimization, so you can rank well and be seen by search engines, and, therefore, users who are your potential customers.
Though web optimization may seem daunting, Elementum wants to make running your eCommerce business, online accessibility and establishing your customer journey optimization nice and easy with the following quick wins that anyone can do.
(Click here to jump down to the TL;DR. We understand)
How accessible is your site?
Companies who value community make building an inclusive and authentic community a priority, which means staying connected with their community through their brand, business choices, and even accessibility are key.
Easy accessibility simply means making shopping online easy and hassle-free for as many users as possible. It’s important to note that consumers with disabilities account for $175M in discretionary spending. In order to make shopping a little easier for everyone, here are a few things to consider:
Set up keyboard-only navigation options. People with mobility disabilities, blindness, low-vision, or those who simply don’t use mouse navigation might find it frustrating and leave your site without making a purchase if they find shopping on your site too difficult.
Start using alt text. Short for alternative text, alt text is the words in place of an image on a webpage when the image doesn’t appear. Good Alt Text explains the what or why of an image in relation to the content, and is also known as “alt tags” or “alt descriptions.” Alt text is read by Google, so descriptions matter for ranking Google images.
Caption your videos. We know video marketing is powerful; a Wyzowl survey shows that 81% of companies who added it saw an increase in sales. Adding captions, or some may know it as subtitles, to your videos capture even more of an audience because it provides clarity, and is inclusive to those who are deaf, have trouble hearing, have cognitive disabilities and even second-language learners. Don’t worry about the time it could take… There are automation tools that can help with that.
Notice the color contrast of your site. It may seem silly, but color contrast, or, more specifically, the lack thereof, on your site can have a significant impact on customer experience. Not having strong color contrast can go as far as affecting one’s decision-making for people who have limited viewing or difficulty reading web text.
Check the mobile view
A mobile-friendly website should always be a priority for your online store. Test it out for yourself to see what customers experience. From mobile video best-practices to mobile-capability tools, there are easy ways to equip your site with great mobile views that help with navigation, functionality and sales.
Count the steps to your cart
Is your site preventing visitors from converting to buyers? Hidden “blocks” might be the reason visitors (at a rate of 69.8%) are abandoning their carts on your site.
A few reasons people abandon carts are:
Expensive shipping costs
Requiring visitors to create profiles
One too many clicks to get to the “buy” button
Not enough payment options
Go through the steps yourself, or have friends and family test it out and get their feedback. Would they say it’s a seamless process? Make sure you don’t have too many steps, or unnecessary prompts or requests that are creating barriers to the end goal.
Upcycle old content
Upcycle great blogs that either have great metrics or have super useful or timely information. The key here is to work smarter, not harder. If you have annual content pieces, or true evergreen (always in fashion) pieces, then don’t delete or forget about them! For holiday pieces, review and update them to keep them current. For other annual pieces or hot topics (for ex. “How to Optimize Your Online Store”) review and update it with the latest news, best-practices, and info as well whether you re-publish it on the same month and day each year, or decide to change the publish date.
Pro Tip: If the editing platform you use won’t allow you to change the original publish date without deleting it, then add a line at the top of the content that states when the piece was last updated. This shows that the content is still relevant and timely.
Out with the old Javascript
As one of the most popular programming languages, Javascript (JS) is essential to developing sites. However, file size and delivery of JS can affect load time for sites. Slow-loading sites is one of the reasons visitors abandon carts, or the site itself altogether. Ways to increase loading speed is to get rid of old, unused JS, optimize JS processing, reduce the amount of JS used to build your page, and load JS only when necessary.
TL;DR
Optimizing your online store is crucial to being “seen” by search engines as well as being a website online users enjoy visiting. A few ways of making your site more discoverable are the following:
Accessibility - Keep in mind that people have varying abilities, preferences, and limitations. Considering things like keyboard-only options, video captions, and alt text for images are great ways to bridge the accessibility gap.
Mobile-Friendly - Increase viewership and visit time by making your site more mobile best practices.
Conversion - Convert site visitors into buyers faster and more consistently by eliminating hidden “blocks” that cause visitors to abandon their cart.
Upcycle Content - In with old, just update it! For evergreen content, it’s important not to toss it once it’s old, but update it to keep it relevant.
Javascript - Javascript is the most popular programming language that websites use, but if not updated and optimized regularly, it can cause your site to load slowly, which can cause visitors to leave your site. Reducing the amount of JS used to build your page is one of the ways to avoid that.
