If you want to substantially increase revenue from your online store and ultimately become successful in ecommerce, then there are a number of tasks  you’ll need to focus on. The most important things are having good SEO, enticing product descriptions and clever ecommerce features that encourage purchases.

Some people still think that if they rank higher in search engines like Google, then they will automatically make more money. This isn’t always the case though; you need to offer high-quality products and ensure a great conversion rate too!

We’ve curated below over 100 of the best tips for ecommerce success including some SEO Quick Wins and tricks on how to boost the performance of your online store and generate more sales.

Proven Ecommerce Tips to Achieving More Online Sales

These are a list of top ecommerce tips that we have successfully implemented with client’s ecommerce sites over the past few year. Adopt some of these yourself and there’s no doubt your site will sell even more!

  1. Showcase your best sellers on your home page – don’t hide them away, make it easy for people to see them and take advantage.
  2. Create a ‘product finder’ tab on your site where visitors can type in the product they’re looking for.
  3. It is not always about the cheapest price, as prices too low can seem suspicious to site visitors. Keep a close eye on your competitors’ pricing.
  4. Make sure you clearly show the badges of the payment processing sites you use to further enhance a user’s trust.
  5. Add social sharing buttons on each page so visitors can easily share your content on their favourite social networks to friends and family.
  6. For a professional look, we recommend renting out the studio space of a pro photographer and use controlled lighting for your product photography.
  7. Find an interesting angle that shows off your items in a better light and stand out.
  8. If you want more people to buy your product, wear it or show it in use.
  9. You should always use videos on your site to showcase key products when possible.
  10. Make sure you list the number of people who have viewed, purchased, or reviewed the items that you are selling.
  11. Whenever possible offer free next day delivery as standard on online orders over a certain value.
  12. A great way to keep in contact with customers is by keeping an eye on your Google reviews and responding to them, be they are good or bad.
  13. Send an email newsletter to customers who have signed up as a way of communicating extra discounts so they are tempted to purchase again.
  14. Keep your content fresh with new products or promotions on a regular basis. Adding new content regularly will keep visitors coming back for more.
  15. Feature customer testimonials and reviews that you garner from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp!
  16. Don’t forget to update your website’s design periodically with the latest styles. If your design is over 5 years old it’s a really good idea to update it, people’s tastes change.
  17. Ecommerce sites must present their products in a visually appealing way at all times. The more attractive the layout, the better chance of increasing sales online.
  18. Ensure your website features a prominently placed email sign-up form allowing visitors to sign up for news of upcoming sales or promotions. This will help you increase both current and future sales.
  19. Ensure that you provide a live chat function on your website to answer customer questions without delay. If this is not possible, set up an automated chatbot for customers to help them begin a conversation.
  20. Positioning your add-to-basket or buy button in the wrong place may reduce the functionality of your ecommerce site and lower conversions.
  21. If your store offers cross-border shopping, then set up a language selector on the site navigation bar to help international shoppers.
  22. Consider creating a sense of urgency to your site’s visitors with limited-time discounts for popular items.
  23. Provide clear contact information either at the top or bottom of your page so that customers can easily reach you.
  24. Implement excellent customer service practices when it comes to order errors and returns; this will increase customer satisfaction.
  25. Always look to add reviews of products received to your relevant key product pages or/and best selling products.
  26. Try to provide more than one call to action at the top of any given page, such as an email opt-in form next to a sign up button or social media buttons. Consider adding call to actions for discount newsletters for increasing blog or email news subscribers too.
  27. To increase traffic and sales, get in touch with journalists, influencers or bloggers to ask for help reviewing and promoting your products.
  28. Create a unique logo for your company’s website, this will create far higher brand recognition among potential customers rather than buying a generic one.
  29. Include a favicon in your site’s design that you can use on both the browser and search engine results page. This helps users locate your website more quickly if they have multiple tabs open in their browser.
  30. If you have physical stores, make sure to use both location keywords as well as “shop” and “store” in your SEO strategy.
  31. Keep track of what’s changing with the major SEO factors that affects how a website ranks on Google. Not bothering to keep up to date could cost you money!
  32. To find the best day and time for posting to social media, consider your company’s audience, what type of content they prefer and when they consume content. Posting your blogs randomly doesn’t typically work, try to stick to the same time in the week.
  33. Have friends and family test your site and any new changes you’ve planned to ensure it works well and doesn’t put users off. Solicit additional feedback from sites like usertesting.com.
  34. Don’t ignore feedback from friends and family about products you sell. They will give you honest opinions that are important to act on.
  35. Avoid thin content on your ecommerce site product pages. Content should always to be detailed to give the user as much product detail as possible.
  36. Provide a detailed FAQs page on your ecommerce site to answer any questions that readers may have. Listen to customers who may phone in with questions and note those down for your FAQ’s too.
  37. Build links to other relevant external sites, such as manufacturers, that will help users find additional content on your products. Outbound links to other (quality) sites won’t typically hurt your SEO either.
  38. When starting your ecommerce business, you’ll need to decide what platform is best for you. Decide if you want something simple or more advanced and be as self-sufficient as possible so that you don’t have to worry about changes in the future.
  39. Build alliances with other ecommerce traders in your industry and cross promote one another, which can naturally generate valuable backlinks.
  40. Asking customers if they would like to add anything else before they checkout can increase your basket order value.
  41. A customer referral program for your ecommerce store will help you generate more word-of-mouth marketing.
  42. To entice more customers to purchase from your store, offer discounts on bundles of products.
  43. Social Proof should be infused on every page of a website. The most common type of social proof are testimonials, but customer reviews and statistics about your company can also be displayed. Use testimonials from other shoppers to show that your company and its products have a decent track record.
  44. Know exactly which keywords to properly target for your products and use a keyword research tool to help speed up this process. Avoid primary technical/industry terms for products if potential customers are using layman’s terms.
  45. Abandoned cart recovery software may help sales opportunities rather than hinder them. If a customer has put their contact, shipping and billing information into the shopping cart they can be contacted with reminders to purchase the item.
  46. Use a streamlined checkout process to reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts.
  47. When testing new pages, make sure to run an A/B test. This can help you identify what elements are most important in that conversion process.
  48. One way to get your visitors excited about buying from you is by using call-to-actions that make them feel they’re getting great value.
  49. Keep in mind all of your potential costs and include them in the price from day one. Your website users will likely abandon their purchase if you add hidden delivery costs and taxes during the checkout process.
  50. Offer customers low cost shipping options with free no hassle returns in case something goes wrong or isn’t as expected.
  51. Don’t make customers jump through hoops to buy from you. Offer users the option of a Guest account when they want to shop online and respect their privacy.
  52. Offer PayPal as a payment option for customers – there’s a percentage of users who use this service, so don’t forget them.
  53. It can be an irritating experience to force a potential buyer to take your survey before buying something from your site. If the information is needed, ask for a user’s opinion after they make their online purchase.
  54. Use phrases like “Low Stock” or “Last few remaining items!” to create a sense of urgency – but be honest about the details.
  55. Make any guarantees on your products clear and include all contact information so that customers are able to EASILY contact you in order to arrange a refund or exchange.
  56. “Remember to show related products for cross selling (you can automate this or do it manually), if your SEO is working well then potential clients will rarely come through your homepage so remember to showcase other products on a product page.” Thanks to Keiron Skillett over at Geekery as a Service for this one!
  57. “Set up a Merchant Centre account as there is the opportunity to feature their products for free now that Google has opened up Google Shopping.” Great tip from Eddy Gonzalez, SEO & PPC Expert over at Koji Digital :)

BONUS! FREE SEO Tips for Your Ecommerce Website

The SEO processes shown below can help you rank higher and generate more search traffic to your website:

  1. Make sure your title tags, the H tag heading and meta descriptions include these keyword phrases, they remain a vital factor.
  2. Make sure you use variations of your primary targeted keywords in the subheadings, but keep it natural.
  3. One way to stand out in search engine results is to include a well crafted meta description on each product page of your website.
  4. Try not to use the same keyword over and over again in your product description. Repeating the same phrases in a bid for better SEO just annoys users and reduces sales.
  5. Add Schema to your product descriptions to display rich data such as prices and stock availability.
  6. If possible, use your primary keywords just once on each webpage, in order to avoid keyword cannibalization.
  7. Canonical URLs help search engines to distinguish between duplicate web pages. If you have to duplicate product pages then we strongly recommend using canonical tags in your ecommerce site.
  8. To better organize and accentuate content on product pages, divide up the space into sections that are clearly labelled.
  9. Include naturally occurring keyword phrases throughout your product copy whenever possible without coming off as spammy or irrelevant.
  10. Providing detailed, keyword-targeted ALT tags for each of your product photos can give your SEO a boost.
  11. The key is to create original content for your product pages rather than just copying over information from the manufacturer’s page.
  12. Ensure your product descriptions evoke emotions in readers and give the user a sense of what it’s like to use your product.
  13. Create and post blog content related to your niche on a regular basis. This provides valuable insight for your customers and can rank well if it is written well (think content marketing!).
  14. Make your product page URLs keyword-rich and reflective of the content they will each contain.
  15. Clean up 404 pages or redirects where needed to ensure that visitors don’t end up lost in your the site.
  16. Clear and concise product categories for better taxonomy help shoppers find what they’re looking for quickly.
  17. Website owners should ideally avoid installing too many plugins on an ecommerce site. Instead, use plug-ins selectively to optimize load time and ensure the site loads quickly.
  18. Use a free tool like Google Search Console to see what keywords people are using when they reach your site.
  19. Create an About Us page with detailed information on your company history, location and business policies. This enables a personal connection with users.
  20. Include high quality images for products because users trust them more than low quality stock photos.
  21. In this age of smartphones, your ecommerce site needs to be optimised for mobile viewing. Make sure that buttons appear easily on the a mobile and the number of steps a customer has to go through to complete their order is minimal.
  22. On your e-commerce store, be sure to update your featured products regularly in order to keep content engaging for repeat visitors.
  23. Add videos related to your product onto YouTube and link them back to your website so interested people can learn more about your products.
  24. Build trust and engage with your customers by maintaining strong profiles on social media. Regularly putting relevant content and promotions in front of them, and linking back to your website works well.
  25. Write long form blog posts that provide unique insights into your products as well as your company goals and progress!
  26. Regularly solicit and put customer reviews on your product pages to help inform consumers and increase SEO.
  27. Avoid duplicating content – where possible – in your product descriptions. Creating unique product copy pays dividends when it comes to SEO.
  28. Build backlinks to your ecommerce website, including the ones that are relevant to your sector. Tools like Ahrefs can be used for link research and outreach.
  29. You should install an XML sitemap on your website so that Googlebot can more efficiently reach all of your relevant content.
  30. It’s important to note that Google looks at your website’s popularity as an indicator of its relevance. The more pages indexed by Google, the better your chance will be when someone is searching for products like yours.
  31. Keep track over time of the number of inbound links you have been able to acquire. This can substantially affect your site’s SEO rankings for the better (or worse!)
  32. Take advantage of online business directories to improve your website’s search rating. Ignore SEO’s who tell you they don’t work, they do help new sites in need of their first set of backlinks.
  33. Beware duplicate product titles! If two items have identical names in different categories then visitors will likely get confused. Keep it simple.
  34. Include a HTML site map for your site visitors to find what they’re looking for more easily.
  35. Slow loading ecommerce sites with huge images can trigger potential customers to leave in droves. Always optimize your images for the internet and size them correctly to fit on your site and load quickly.
  36. Review Google Analytics every day for traffic sources, visitor behaviour, conversion rates.
  37. Ensure that your product descriptions are optimized for SEO without sacrificing the quality of the content.
  38. Create a glossary of product/industry terms and link to them from your product pages.
  39. Use Google Analytics to track conversion rates for different marketing campaigns or pages you create (you’ll get insights into what’s performing well and what’s not).
  40. Start collecting email addresses through popups, registration forms & product reviews that ask for an email address. You never know when someone might be interested in buying something!
  41. Make sure your product descriptions are well-written promoting the benefits of your products, don’t just include the features.
  42. By monitoring how many visitors come from mobile devices, search engines or even other websites you’ll quickly identify hotspots to maximise your opportunities to sell online.
  43. Use rich keywords when naming internal pages and blog posts.
  45. Use relevant keywords throughout each page of your website as well as within internal links pointing back to any given page.
  46. Be cautious if you decide to “blackhat” your SEO – we certainly don’t recommend this as a strategy. Google will very likely find it and potentially penalise your ecommerce store rankings.

Feel free to get familiar with all the SEO factors we’ve discussed above: it can take years to know them well enough, so never stop learning!

Remember that SEO is generally an ongoing process not just something you do once and forget about.

Final Thoughts

If you’re too busy running your online store and need help then consider hiring an SEO Company experienced in ecommerce. With professional ecommerce and SEO services it’s likely you will reach your targets that much faster!

Feel free to give us a call for help on 01285 50 55 50 or get in touch here.