Improve your E-Commerce Store by Fixing 3 Common Issues

There are simply dozens of E-commerce mistakes and issues that negatively affect online retailers every day. To list all of these would require a very long post!  

Three mistakes that I commonly see and think ‘if only they did this or fixed that’ include: lack of helpful product information, a confusing shopping cart check out process, and the presence of product page content duplication. 

1. Lack of Helpful Product Information

The product information you provide on your site and how you display it are of vital importance when it comes to conversion optimisation. Online shoppers need to be able to make an informed decision about purchasing your products based on the information you give them.  Do your product pages include an image gallery/video options to view a product, delivery/return policy information, the price of the product and links to other recommended products? These features should be readily available and easily identifiable on every product page. Online fashion retailer ASOS.com provides an excellent example of how an information rich product page can look. ASOS.com includes all the features noted above plus many more.

2. Confusing Shopping Cart Checkout Process

Online shoppers like to know how far through the shopping cart process they are at all times. If your shopping cart process is a long and drawn out process you may like to consider making it more succinct and user-friendly. The last thing you want after getting visitors this far into your checkout process is to scare them off due to what they perceive as ‘too hard’ and/or ‘confusing’.

Gift Barn’s shopping cart summary page clearly present the steps required along the top of the page. They also utilise a drop down arrow to highlight what step the buyer is at.

Check out these helpful resources about how to create a user-friendly shopping cart process with the aim of increasing online conversions and a positive user experience:

• 10 Ways to Create the Best Shopping Cart written by Zfort Group
• Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design written by Christian Holst of Baymard Institute

3. Presence of Product Page Content Duplication

A common problem encountered by Search Engines is the presence of duplicate product pages found on a website. That is when two or more pages that are near duplicates can be found on the same site. This makes it hard for Search Engines to decide which page is the most relevant to a searchers query and can dilute the page authority and trust values that are given to your product pages. When product page duplication exists Search Engines have to decide which page they should return and which page they should exclude from their search results pages.   This commonly occurs when you can access certain products from more than one category on your site or you have the option to view a product in various colours which creates a new URL for each colour option. 

There are many helpful resources online about how you can find and deal with product page duplication – we have listed a few of these for you below:

• What is Duplicate Content from SEOmoz
• An article about various ways to fix duplication of content from Benj Arriola of SEOmoz
• Tools for finding internal and external duplicate content that I wrote last month 

Correcting product page duplication will require assistance from your website developer to implement. The benefits in doing so include increased traffic levels to your website and ensuring link value metrics such as page authority and trust signals are given to the correct product page you want appearing in the Search Results. 

Improving your E-commerce site

Online retail stores depend heavily upon being viewed as relevant by the top Search Engines to shoppers search queries.  Of equal importance, following a click through to your website or product page from a search results page, is retaining an online shopper’s attention and guiding them through the various steps of your shopping cart process.  Addressing these three E-commerce issues outlined above will help improve you sites presence in the Search Results, plus assist with retaining shoppers on your site for that valuable sale.