Your eCommerce Optimization checklist

    • Use a mobile-friendly, responsive website design. With more and more online traffic coming from mobile and tablet devices, it’s a must to use a mobile-friendly, responsive design for your website. It provides a better experience for users, and it also helps your website rank higher in search. You can use many tools here:
      • Hotjar for  heatmaps – checking how people navigate your site;
      • Responsinator – the tool for checking how your shop looks like on different devices.
      • your web browser which has Developer tools – Chrome or MS Edge
    • Install an SSL certificate.  An SSL certificate is also a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, making it an important detail for both user security and helping your site show up in search results. It is must-to-have in any eCommerce site.
    • Check your site loading speed. Users are quick to leave a website if it takes too long to load. It is the basic eCommerce Optimization element. Search engines are also more likely to give better rankings to a website that loads quickly, so ensure that your site is set up and optimized to load quickly. You can check it on:
    • Install Google Analytics. Understanding how users engage with your site will help you create more strategic plans for improvements related to site design, keyword use, content, and site structure. Install Google Analytics so you can start collecting data and getting insights right away.
    • Create a Google Webmaster account. A Google Webmaster account will give you access to tools that help you learn about your site as well as manage things such as crawler access, sitemaps, and URL preferences. Create a Google Webmaster account as soon as you set up your site so you can configure these settings.
    • Create a sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing. A sitemap is an outline of your website. Its primary purpose is to help search engines review and understand the content on your site. Create a sitemap and submit it to Bing and Google so the search engines can view and begin to rank your site.

    Marketing elements in eCommerce optimization

    • Create a buyer persona. Begin to get to know your audience by creating a buyer persona that dives deep into the demographic and psychographic details of your ideal audience. Knowing these details will help you identify the keywords most likely to attract your target buyers. Here is a guidance from Alexa team
    • Outline the buyer’s journey. Once you create a detailed description of your ideal buyer, outline the path they take on their way to buy from your ecommerce shop. When you understand what your ideal buyer is going through during the awareness, consideration, and decision phases, you’ll be able to identify the keywords they use at each step of the journey. You’ll also have a clear understanding of their questions, aspirations, and needs.
    • Create a list of competitors. Assessing your competitive landscape helps you get insights to create a better ecommerce SEO When you know your competitors, you can perform better keyword research. You can see how competitors attract audiences and discover where you can compete, where you can’t, and where there are opportunities to outperform others in your industry. This tool can help with it.
    • Track your most important eCommerce metrics on regular basis.
    • Identify Your Full Competitive Set – Search with keywords from your organic set to uncover new competitors, use referral traffic to identify cross-shopping behaviors to see true competitors, leverage Compete PRO Related Sites to see similar sites to yours
    • Generate More Referral Traffic – Create a referral traffic baseline using local analytics, discover which sites and categories of sites drive traffic to your competitors, learn from the online behaviors of your target customers, research potential opportunities and partnerships
    • Optimize Your Search Marketing – analyze your current natural keyword set, discover which keywords are working for your competitors, research your competitors’ landing pages, set Compete PRO Saved Groups or Custom Categories to keep tabs on competitors
    • Improve Your Affiliate Marketing – Use referral traffic to help identify potential opportunities, use basic site traffic and engagement metrics to vet those opportunities, set benchmarks for your performance so you can revisit regularly
    • Maximize Your Ecommerce Potential – Find more potential customers when they’re looking to make a purchase, anticipate sales funnel holes and patch them to capture lost conversions, stay up on industry ecommerce trends to adjust your strategy accordingly