Top Ecommerce Website Mistakes That Are Sabotaging Your Business

For ecommerce sites, the success of your site and search engine traffic is key to sales and revenue. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is key to getting your ecommerce site to the top of search results and driving traffic and conversions. But many ecommerce businesses fall into common traps that hurt their online performance. In this post we’ll explore the most common ecommerce mistakes you should avoid to get your site thriving and your business to full potential.

Choosing The Wrong Ecommerce Platform

Choosing the right ecommerce platform is key to your ecommerce business. The ecommerce platform or content management system (CMS) you choose can impact your online store, its SEO and overall functionality. Many businesses make the mistake of choosing a platform without considering its SEO features or compatibility with their needs and end up with suboptimal performance.

When choosing an ecommerce platform consider its built in SEO features, customisation options and ability to integrate with other third party tools. Consider the customer support options also, many owners may not have great IT skills so getting help when needed could be a big factor and nobody enjoys poor customer service. Does the platform allow you to build a blog? This could be a massive traffic driver if content marketing and creating content is part of your online strategy. Also look for platforms that offer a wide range of shipping and payment options to give your customers a seamless and convenient shopping experience. By considering these factors you can choose an ecommerce platform that supports your business and helps you avoid many common ecommerce mistakes and SEO pitfalls.

Using Manufacturers’ Default Images and Product Descriptions

Using manufacturers’ product descriptions and images is a common mistake that can hurt your SEO. It may seem convenient and time saving but using the default content provided by manufacturers can cause duplicate content issues as the same descriptions and images are used by multiple retailers selling the same products. This makes it hard for ecommerce brands to stand out as you’re not offering anything different and unique to your target audience.

Using manufacturers’ default images can also lack uniqueness and visual appeal on your product pages. Invest in high quality, professional product photography to make your products shine. Unique and visually appealing images will attract customers and improve your website’s SEO. This may sound expensive but many apps can help you create great, unique, professional product images at home so your online business stands out.

Not Doing Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important parts of SEO. Many ecommerce businesses don’t do keyword research or target the wrong keywords. This can mean missing out on organic traffic to your site. Invest time and resources into finding relevant and high traffic keywords for your target audience and avoid this mistake. Make sure you have all this data so you understand the intent of these keywords and how they fit with entities across your products and business offerings. Use these keywords throughout your website’s content, meta tags, product titles and URLs.

Poor Site Structure And Navigation

A well structured and easy to navigate website is key to user experience and SEO. Search engines like Google favour websites that are easy to crawl and index. A confusing site structure with broken links or hard to find pages can hurt your SEO. Make sure your ecommerce website has a clear and logical hierarchy, with categories and subcategories that match your products and services. Exploring entity SEO here can help you build out categories and services and drive valuable customers to these pages.

Duplicate Or Thin Content

Search engines love unique, high quality content and view duplicate or poor content as a low quality rating. Duplicate content or content that’s too thin can hurt your SEO big time. Make sure each product page on your ecommerce website has unique, detailed and well written description that provides value to a potential or existing customer.

Not Optimising Product Images

Images are key to an ecommerce site as they help customers visualise the products they want to buy. But many businesses don’t optimise their product images for SEO and miss out on organic traffic. To avoid this mistake make sure your images are compressed to minimal load times and have descriptive filenames and alt tags. This will help search engines understand and index your images and boost your website’s SEO.

Not Mobile Optimised

With more and more people shopping online with their mobile devices, making sure your ecommerce website is mobile friendly is key. Not optimising for mobile users can mean poor user experience and lower rankings on search engine results pages. Invest in a responsive website design that adapts to different screen sizes and devices so all visitors have an optimal experience.

Not Meeting Customer Expectations

In the competitive world of ecommerce meeting and exceeding customer expectations is critical to retaining customers and building a loyal customer base. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not meeting customer expectations especially around shipping times and fast delivery. Many business owners underestimate how fast an online business grows and gets overwhelmed with deliveries.

Customers expect quick and reliable checkout and shipping options from online retailers. If your ecommerce website doesn’t offer a fast checkout and delivery options you’ll lose customers to competitors who can meet those expectations. To avoid this make sure you have a reliable and efficient shipping process. Communicate shipping times to customers and consider offering expedited shipping options for those who need faster delivery.

By meeting customer expectations and having a smooth shopping experience online stores can build trust and loyalty with your target audience, resulting in repeat purchases and word of mouth marketing and ultimately growth and success for your ecommerce business.

Conclusion

As a business owner fix these ecommerce mistakes and you’ll see your website’s search engine rankings improve, get more organic traffic and more sales. Choose the right platform, do keyword research, structure and navigate your site, create unique and valuable content, optimise product images and mobile optimise to maximise your business in ecommerce.