In US alone ecommerce sales are estimated to top last year’s November-December record of $42 billion this year.

If you’re a retailer, you know it’s a jackpot waiting to be won. And you may have already started your preparations.

But you know what sucks? Not getting found on search engines when people are looking for your products.

What else, you ask? Not being able to convert visitors into customers.

This guide will help you give your website some serious firepower so you can increase not just its traffic but also conversions.

Also Read: Of Course Offer Can Improve Your Conversions, Provided

Throw Out Duplicate Content from the Window Immediately

Often the result of poor information architecture, internationalization, or simply carelessness of the store owner, duplicate content is the most common sight in an ecommerce store.

But, of course, you can fix this problem – better with the help of a professional. The good news is, that almost all your duplicate content problems can be looked after by the proper usage of the canonical tag, pagination tag, robot.txt, and parameter handling.

We’d like to mention the scenario where ecommerce stores copy from the manufacturer’s site. For example, you sell Samsung smartphones. But instead of investing in content to sell them better, you rather copy the content from the official Samsung site. There’re two problems with this: one, Google won’t index your duplicate content pages. Two, people won’t be able to find you.

So it’s better to refrain from this practice and invest in your content.

Speed Up Your Store

There’re many, many reasons why your site may not be performing good – high request latency, too heavy size, poor resource caching, etc.

Now if you’re not worried about it, you should (and must) be, because page speed is important. So important that a 1 second delay can reduce conversions by 7% and decrease customer satisfaction by 16%. In fact, about 50% of consumers expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less and 44% tell their friends about a bad shopping experience.

That means a good page speed doesn’t just get you more conversions – it gets you loyal customers and free branding.

Also Read: Your Page Speed Is More Important Than You Think

Make a Killer Navigation

“People won’t use your Web site if they can’t find their way around it” – Steve Krug

A killer navigation is pivotal getting your products sold. And you know why: it helps people find what they want, in no time.

Here’re some ecommerce navigation best practices:

• Keep it simple, above the fold and consistent
• Leverage category search, search filtration and breadcrumbs
• Use meaningful, keyword-friendly URLs
• Ensure your within-site search gives a great ecommerce user experience (even better, zero in on semantic search)

Make the Most of the Linked-to Pages

Big ecommerce sites often face indexation problems due to an obvious reason: they’ve tens of thousands of pages. The best solution to this problem is to cross link linked-to pages with the weak but important pages. This helps weak pages gain some authority and rank well across search engines. It also helps visitors find what they want (if done smartly).

Optimize Interactive Media

Studies after studies have proved that interactive media (images, videos, etc.) helps boost ecommerce sales. Not just that, it gives you competitive advantage. Attracts even the lazy. Makes people stay longer on your site. Influences them. Increases their loyalty. Betters their shopping experience. And encourages quick buying (especially on mobile devices).

In fact, it also gets you better rankings and more organic traffic, as Google shows up videos in search engine results pages as well.

Did we miss anything? Do you have any questions? Please leave a comment below.