With the holiday season just around the corner, there’s still time prepare. Here are 3 simple tips to make sure your ecommerce site is ready for the surge.
1) Can your customers find you on the web?
- Update and augment all your directory listings and local search profiles. You should do this regularly, so you might want to schedule it as a quarterly task.
- Go to your Google Webmaster Central account and check out all the available tools and analytics. If you don’t have an account, get one at http://www.google.com/webmasters/
- If you’ve never done so, consider testing a small pay per click (PPC) campaign. The process of evaluating keywords and competitive campaigns is a great exercise for thinking about how your customers look for the products and services you offer.
- Make sure you have Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for all your pages for Search Engine Optimization. Consider revising them to include more relevant keywords identified during your keyword discovery for the PPC campaign.
2) Can buyers easily and intuitively find what they’re looking for and complete a purchase on your site?
- Are product descriptions and photos totally up to date?
- Are there any broken links or dead pages?
- Do you have onsite search capability? If not, consider integrating one of the many plug ins available.
- Audit your own purchase funnel. Better yet, have someone else do it and watch them while they do it. This means having someone make a purchase on your website while you observe. Have them walk through it “out loud,” by literally articulating the process: “okay, so I want to buy this, but where’s the ‘purchase’ button?” Make sure it works the way it’s supposed to. And also see if there are ways to make it simpler or more intuitive.
3) Is your website able to support increased traffic? Is it sluggish and slow to load?
This is where AppliedI can really help you out. Check out these recent articles for a little more info: Upgrading from Shared to VPS is Painless at AppliedI and Case Study: How Hats Plus Upgraded Their Site for Growth. Another article that might be of interest is in our Newsletter Archive, titled 10 Reasons You Need a VPS . Or, just call our experienced sales team at 866-706-8691 and we’ll help you figure out if a fully-managed Server Concierge VPS is the right next step for your ecommerce site.