10 Tips for a Great eCommerce Site

Working in website development, one sees a lot of awful eCommerce websites. They have terrible structures so that they will have a really hard time ranking in search engines and they have a really off putting shopping basket process that will deter potential customers. Here is my checklist of things to look for in an eCommerce site
URLs – Ensure you can have clear URLs which reflect product and category name rather than dynamic URLs with little meaning to users or search engines. Make sure each product is only available via one URL rather than appearing as duplicate content on several URLs
Titles & Meta Data – It is handy if the title defaults to something sensible and the meta description defaults to the first paragraph of text, however it is also important that you can update this if you need to.
H1s – A lot of eCommerce and CMS packages neglect the H1 tag. There should be a single h1 tag on each page and it should reflect what that page is about.
Easy conversions funnel – If the SEO of a website is spot on, and the traffic is high, it may still not be reflected in lots of conversions. Ensure that the conversion process is clear and that the potential buyer can easily find the shopping basket and add and remove products. Allow users to buy things without creating a user account.
eCommerce tracking – Install eCommerce tracking so you can follow accurately the average transaction prices and work out what your best selling items are.
HTTPS – if you are processing the financial transactions on your site, ensure that the customer can see the https part of the address in their URL bar and see the secure padlock in the corner of their browser. If you are taking the customer off site to complete the payment, make sure they know what is going on and what site they are being redirected to.
Google Merchant Center – ideally the eCommerce package will automatically create a feed for Google Merchant Center so that the website manager does not need to undertake this task themselves.
Sitemap.xml – Similarly, the XML sitemap should also be automatically generated and updated when new products are added or removed from stock.
Clear P & P – make your postage and packing policy clear on the website along with information about returns
Unique text – the one thing that ecommerce sites most regularly neglect, is writing their own unique product description. This is fundamental, not only in getting the pages to rank, but also in persuading the buyer to complete the transaction.

For more information on eCommerce website, Hannah recommends that you visit Sumac, a Digital Agency in London.