The holiday shopping season is fast approaching, is your retail website ready to rise to the occasion? NRF reports that shoppers spent $658.3b in holiday shopping between November and December 2016.

A poorly done website can sell your online retail business short, deliver poor UX and leave you poorer. For online businesses, especially e-tailers, website user experience is a key indicator of ease of doing business with you.

For online businesses, especially e-tailers, website user experience is a key indicator of ease of doing business with you.

Source: Pixabay

Reports indicate there are currently over one billion websites worldwide with 3.74 billion internet users as of March 2017, 1.66 billion of whom will shop online delivering $2,290 trillion global online retail sales in 2017.

NUMBER OF WEBSITES WORLDWIDE (2000-2015)

The chart below shows number of websites from 2000-2015.

Source: Internet Live Stats

Year-on-year (on average) more and more people are shopping online in more and more ways across different channels and devices.

A BUSINESS CASE FOR BUSINESS WEBSITES

So, what’s my business with your business (website) you ask? Here,

Source: Internet World Stats            

The chart above shows number of internet users by geography.

If your primary market is Asia, there are over 1.9 billion internet users, many browsing and buying online. See why you should care about your AliExpress dropshipping business website?

  3 OTHER REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
 

  Source: hireme2writeit

So what should you do?
 

5 STEP ACTION PLAN FOR BETTER WEBSITES

1. Conduct Site Audit :

                                                                Source: Pixabay

There could be problems with your

-Site title
-Meta descriptions
-HTML tags
-Images
-Link structure etc.

An audit will help you assess your online assets, find and fix on-site issues that may be affecting your store and boost SEO. Tools like SEMrush Site Audit are useful for this purpose.

2. Track Key Site Performance Metrics

Source: Pixabay

                                                                                        

Site metrics give actionable insight into how websites perform. Some key metrics you should be tracking include:

-Website traffic
-Traffic sources
-Bounce rate
-Dwell time
-Top pages
-Conversion rate
-Conversion by traffic source
-Customer’s lifetime value

Google Analytics and Alexa are great tools for this purpose.

3. Identify Business Model

                                                                               Source: Pixabay

If you own a dropshipping business on Shopify, apps like Oberlo simplify dropshipping.

It allows you import products directly into your store with few clicks and even helps with shipping and order fulfillment so you can focus on your core business-dropshipping.

4. Implement Goal Based Website Design

                                                                                             Source: Pixabay

What do you want your site to achieve, more traffic, clicks, conversion, conversation?  Aligning your business goals with web design creates great user experience.

5. Understand Your Customer Journey

Knowing customer expectation shapes brand performance and improves customer experience.

                                                                                 Source: hireme2writeit

Understanding online shopper journey leads to better ecommerce website design and conversion.

RETAIL WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION CHECKLIST

Below is a list of things to optimize for

1. Site Title

Also known as meta title/title page/title tag is what displays in

         a. search engine results (blue clickable link)

b. your browser’s title bar
c. your bookmarks
d. social media sites as link anchor text

How to find It

For WordPress,
-Go to general settings
-Type title into “Tagline” section beneath “SEO Title”

If using Yoast SEO plugin,
-Title tag goes into “SEO title” section beneath “Edit snippet”

                                                                                         

To Do:

1. Use 9-60 characters, 70 max (more will truncate)
2. Use <title> tag as first element in <head> section of page
3. Insert keywords at head of title
4. Use unique title for every page, no repetition
5. Insert primary keyword phrase in every title page
6. Insert company name if popular, at end of title
7. Insert company name in homepage title

8. Insert keywords no more than 2-3 times in title
9. use words optimized for search engine and humans
10. Include calls to action (CTA)
 

2. Speed

                                                                                          Source: Pixabay

Your site had better be fast or customers will be furious. 73% of mobile internet users have encountered a website that was too slow to load, another 47% expect your site to load in 2s or less.

Below is a chart showing mobile shoppers patience levels.

Data Source: Kissmetrics

30% expect your site to load in 6-10s failing which they bounce. Faster loading pages rank and perform better, the need for speed cannot be overstated.

How to measure site speed using Alexa:

-Go to Alexa.com
-Scroll down to “Browse Top Sites”
-Type in site url
-Click “Find”
 

To do:

1. Compress CSS, HTML and JavaScript files

2. Compress images using Photoshop
3. Minify JavaScript, HTML, CSS etc
4. Implement browser caching
5. Improve server response time
6. Use CSS sprites to cut number of requests
7. Cut bad CSS, write amazing code
8. Enable Keep-Alive
9. Use a 302 redirect with cache lifetime of one day, but cut redirects
10. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
 

3. Landing Pages

                                                                                                Source: Pixabay

Landing pages are designed for lead capture/conversion. Optimizing landing pages can lower CAC and maximize ad spend.

To do:
1. Identify traffic source
2. Create ideal customer persona
3. Be active on social media
4. Ensure your website is responsive
5. Limit number of actions
6. State clearly what’s on offer in context
7. Show social proof

8. Include solid CTA
9. A/B test
 

4. UX

                                                                                                 Source: Pixabay

Emerging web design trends place emphasis on user experience. Is your site user friendly?

Society of Digital Agencies reports that 77% of agencies say poor website UX is a weakness for their clients.

Poorly designed websites = Poor UX = Poor conversion = Poorer businesses.

We cannot take the user out of user experience. Who is your ideal user and what is their typical customer journey like, how do they interact with your website, what are their expectations?
 

To do:

1. Define customer persona

2. Identify customer search behavior

3. Note traffic sources (origin, destination)

4. Note pages visited, dwell times, bounce rates

5. Conduct behavioral UX data analysis

6. Usability testing (moderated, unmoderated)

7. 5 second test

8. Click test

9. A/B tests

10. Align process flow with user’s mental maps

5. Navigation

                                                                                                 Source: Pixabay

Navigation should be smooth, menus should be where they ought to be. You don’t want visitors stranded on your site.

                                 To Do:

1. Conduct keyword research

2. Identify customer persona

3. Create your business persona

4. Create an about them (customers) page that answers all customer search questions

5. Create an about us page

6. Conduct real world tests

7. Analyze

8. User tests

9. A/B and multi-variate tests
10. Organize link structure with clear CTA’s

6. Responsiveness

Recent reports indicate that mobile may have overtaken PC in terms of usage and online shopping.

                                                                                             Source: Pixabay

Is your site responsive, mobile friendly, able to scale on different devices?

To do:

You can use these tools to ascertain your site’s responsiveness. Google Mobile Friendly Test, Responsive Design Checker, Responsinator.

How to use Google Mobile Friendly Test:

-Go to www.search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

-Enter a url to test
-Run test

If you use WordPress and your site is non-responsive, you may need to activate a new responsive theme.

7. Copy/Content

                                                                   Source: Pixabay
 

Content marketing is an effective inbound and SEO strategy. 73% of marketers say they plan to implement content marketing as an ongoing business process.

Similarly, 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles than via advert.

Connecting via content is a great way to build customer trust, drive conversation and conversion for your dropshipping business.

To do:

1. Know your customers
2. Learn their search behavior
3. Assess your current content assets
4. Create a content marketing budget
5. Assemble a team of content creators
6. Hire freelancers
7. Create editorial guidelines/calendar
8. Create content marketing strategy including distribution
9. Call for guest posts
10. Create targeted content

8. CTAs
 

                                                                                            Source: Pixabay
 

It’s pointless to drive traffic, create great landing pages and amazing SEO content if there’s no call to action. They’ll simply come, see and leave.

-More than 90% of visitors who read headlines also read CTA copy (Unbounce)

-Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks 371% and sales 1617% (WordStream)

-Adding CTAs to your Facebook page can increase click through rate by 285% (AdRoll)
 

To do:

1. Know your customer
2. Know their search terms
3. Study your competitor’s CTA style and structure
4. Write different CTAs (short and sharp)
5. Use effective trigger words plus anchor text
6. A/B test
7. Redesign CTA buttons
8. Keep design clean and simple

9. About Us Page

                                                                                                Source: Pixabay

KoMarketing reports that once on a company’s homepage, 52% of visitors want to see “about us” information.

Analytics reveal that the About Us page is one of the most visited on any website.  

So how do you write one that is effective? Depending on your business and customer personae, here are some tips

To do:

1. Know your customers
2. Make it first about them
3. Answer their search queries
4. Insert social proof
5. State facts and figures
6. Add trust seals if applicable
7. Include testimonials
8. Use mixed media
9. Background could be your company colors
10. Tell a story

10. Footer Area

                                                                        Source: Pixabay

This is an often underutilized area of your website. Links here usually lead to non-landing pages.

Your footer is home to sections like about us, services, contact information, privacy policy,message us etc.

To do:

-Understand your customer
-What information do they seek having come that far?
-Include a thank you line
-Use neat layout
-Carefully insert relevant crosslinks
-Organize links intelligently and naturally

CONCLUSION

These tips will help you optimize your retail website and improve conversion this coming season and always.