For those who own businesses, an e-commerce website is like a digital visiting card cum store. It speaks of the products and services that the business provides while also allowing users to examine and interact with the various offerings of the company in one digital place. If well optimized, on the web, there is no limitation of location; the entire world wide web can become a marketplace! E-commerce websites aim to reach out to as many customers/clients as possible and increase sales.
However, having a presence on the internet does not mean that your business is doing great. All your products and services may be available on your website. But what’s the point if your website does not rank higher on search engines? So, to make your website more accessible to users on the internet, it is necessary to optimize the content and images on your e-commerce website.
To begin with, let’s understand:
What is WordPress?
Used by over 75 million websites, WordPress is the most popular open source Content Management System. When one uses WordPress for the development of its website, it can freely install, deploy manage, and upgrade its website at will. There are numerous plugins and templates made available by WordPress for flexible and simple interface management and customization, which in turn, not only reduces time but also development costs.
What can a Good E-commerce Website do to your Business?
- A good e-commerce website can turn a sleepy and dull digital space into a fully operational online store.
- The users do not like web pages that take forever to load. Hence, you can optimize the website to ensure that it loads under one second. Also, you can run a test of the Page Speed score on Google to check the speed. 98% is a good page speed for any e-commerce website.
- Proper E-commerce SEO will make your website a powerful competitor in your respective field as it will allow you to attract more traffic and sales.
- Last but not least, SEO will help in on-page optimization for your WordPress website and eventually reach the top spot on the search engines. Content is one of the main ways in which you can make customers comfortable with your website.
How Can You Optimize Your WordPress Website?
Optimize the content on your website for SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the need of the hour if you want your business to grow with leaps and bounds. SEO functions largely through the usage of appropriate keywords and through the proper structuring of user experience, both within an article and within the website as a whole. Make sure you use exceptionally relevant keywords while designing the content of your website. Also, make sure that the content you create is unique and self-generated, rather than being plagiarized (lifted from other sources).
You can segregate your keywords into different sections to make the process of optimization more systematic, thereby boosting your ranking on the search engines to a great extent:
- Focus keyword
- Secondary keyword
- Long-tail keyword
To select unique keywords, you need to research what and how users search on the engines. If possible, search for a unique string of keywords through Google Adwords, and you will get a better idea of how you can make a large enough impact in the market in which you want to establish yourself. Promote your e-commerce website and business through unique SEO content.
Optimize the Titles
Be it the main heading or the sub-heading, integrating keywords in the right space has its benefits. Think hard and put in a little extra effort to formulate these so that they are more relevant according to the users. However, the titles can certainly help in boosting up your SEO rankings.
Besides titles, here are some other areas you can optimize on WordPress to see the largest impact:
- Main content or description
- Meta descriptions
- Title tags of the image
- Short product descriptions
- Image Alt Text
- Image captions
Optimize the Short Description of the Products or the Services
The product or the service description is an important aspect to consider while optimizing your e-commerce website because this is the last thing that can influence a user’s decision to purchase or leave the website. Also, follow a uniform pattern while mentioning the description of each product or service on your website. This will make the experience hassle-free for the users and increase conversion by almost 20%.
Optimize IMAGES through WordPress
Believe us when we say that you cannot only optimize the content on your web pages and wait for the results to appear. The optimization process should also include the images, which is as much a part of your content as the textual element. The better the images of your products appear, the more chances you have to attract customers. Moreover, naming your images can have SEO advantages of its own, as it diverts more traffic to your website from Google.
is not only crucial to upload images that are great looking, high-quality, and perfectly sized, but also to name those images by giving their titles. Here are the benefits:
- Give a suitable title to your image. Yes, you heard it right. Just the way you give a title to your blog, article, or story, it is important to name each image that goes on your e-commerce site. Use the keywords while naming your file, and describe the image properly to gain optimum benefits.
- It is important to inform the user about the image – what the image is. Use the image alt attribute to tag the image properly.
- The quicker the images load, the better for your site. Hence, decrease the sizes of your images so they do not hamper the speed of your website.
- Create different alt texts for thumbnails and larger images for wide search results.
Optimize the Loading Speed of the Pages
Waiting, waiting, and still waiting for all the images and the content on the website to get loaded can get boring and time-consuming for the users. Believe us when we say it can be one of the major hurdles that can come between you and your customers. The more time the webpage takes to load, the less likely are the customers to stay on the website and go through your series of products. So, even though you have decorated your website with the best content and photographs, a bad loading speed can destroy all of it. Hence, you need to check the loading speed of your website to make it more effective and efficient. Checking of loading speed comes after you have uploaded the content and the images.
Optimize your Content through Social Media
You are lucky to be in the business during the most lucrative times of the era. Yes, social media can be a great promotional tool if you leverage it the right way. Go all out, publish your content, and promote your products on social media to attract more attention and customers. The Jetpack plugin helps you to include social media share buttons on all the product pages on your website. Users can now instantly share the content and images that you post on your WordPress website to your Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts.
Optimize your Content through Blogging
Blogging as an idea may be at a very ancient stage, however, it can do a great deal to your e-commerce website if its potential is tapped in the right way. Creating a blog and updating it regularly can enhance the SEO of your website. Write and post blogs on ideas revolving around your products or services. This will give a chance to the readers to go through your website not only for the sole purpose of buying products but also to update their knowledge bank. This definitely will attract more traffic to your e-commerce websites.
Review and Rate your Website
For any business, word of mouth is the best way of publicity. Today, on the digital platform, reviews and ratings are treated as the virtual medium of word-of-mouth and can go a long way in terms of publicity. Also, visibility and self-publicity are something you should often indulge in if you have an e-commerce website. If you do not find enough customers to rate your products and services, be your savior. Write reviews and give suitable ratings to your products to let the positive reviews and ratings reach far and wide. This will help in building visibility through healthy promotions.
Mobile-friendly is the Way to Be
Last but not least, making your e-commerce website a mobile-friendly one can give you profitable returns. Today, shopping malls are just a click away. None offers online shopping experiences as Amazon and Flipkart do! These websites are mobile-friendly and one can order their favorite commodity with a click on the go! Today, all that a shopper needs is a shopping experience that is convenient, hassle-free, and time-saving, and smartphones can do just that. According to a finding in 2015, more and more people are buying products on mobile devices, with many industries approaching almost 100% in mobile sales during the previous year.
Shopping Cart Optimization
The last but arguably most effective way to ensure that your e-commerce website is properly optimized is to ensure that the checkout experience is well-integrated and designed. One of the first things that come into the picture as far as the development of proper checkout experiences is to ensure that users are not asked to give unnecessary and lengthy information during this part of the process.
During a time when the user is extremely excited and looking forward to finally breathing a sigh of anticipation, the last thing you want them to do is to subject them to a load of formal tasks. You can also make the process of checkout more interesting by focusing on the inherent reward factor that every single user has imbibed within themselves. By offering a small discount during the checkout process, you can add a lot of value to the experience of the user. Other techniques for bettering the checkout experience of the users include adding shipping options that can allow them to feel more at ease and creating specific content pitstops during the checkout process that can reassure them they are doing the right thing, amongst other things.
