You Have An E-commerce Site But Where Are The Orders

This unfortunately isn’t true! Of course it is very important that you have a good site design as the users of your website will find this an attraction, however there are a lot more important things to consider.

Firstly is your website easy to navigate? By this I mean do customers find it easy to search for the things they want on your site, are the menu buttons in the correct areas, is it easy to add an item to the shopping cart, are the products placed within the correct areas so the customer can find them and most importantly is it easy to checkout and pay. Checking through all of this is not always a simple task but a good way to check if your site is user friendly is to look at what your competitors do, how do their sites compare to yours?

Once you have checked through your design and now feel that things are in place you are going to need customers. Every website should have analytics attached to it so you can see just how many people are using your site, the most popular pages viewed, what part of the world they are from, how long they have spent on your site etc…. Analytics are vital, as without them you just cannot function a good site. A good example is Google Analytics; this is a completely free service, which provides you the site owner with accurate in-depth statistics.

In order to create orders you must have a good level of traffic to your site. It can obviously be a numbers game – For instance if you have 1000 people visiting your site every week then at some point someone is going to order something from you. The important thing is to get as much traffic as possible to your site and this is where SEO (search engine optimisation) comes in. Search Engine Optimisation helps you to rank your website highly on the search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Ask etc…). By working with an experienced SEO company you can dramatically increase the traffic to your site.

SEO companies can offer the following services:

• PR and article releases
• Link building
• Social book marking
• Sitemaps
• Keyword research
• Competitor analysis

And much more………..

All of the above methods can really improve your sites ranking within these search engines and if people can see you then they will use you.

There are usually different packages available to suit your own budget but by using the above methods these companies can increase your traffic in a small amount of time.

So now you have a website that looks good, is easy to navigate and attracts customers surely a winning formula! It can be but you must always keep on top of things as the Internet is forever changing even on a daily basis. You must stick to the following rules:

Monthly analysis of competitors – What are they doing and how is their site changing.

Monthly analysis of your own site – Does it still look good, what can change and are the prices competitive.

Daily analytics – What levels of traffic do you have, what is your order conversion rate like compared to the visits you receive, are there certain things putting customers off? Maybe the content, prices, terms and conditions, lack of stock or just too much hard work to find the product and pay for it.

Constant SEO – If you are going to work with an SEO company then make it a long term commitment, don’t just try it for a couple of months, find it works and then drop it to save costs. Stick with them as they can keep increasing the traffic and suggest new ideas all the time. This is going to increase your orders.

I always think of an e-commerce website which has none of the above as a beautifully engineered car, time and money has been spent designing it, crafting it out of the best materials, painting it the right colour, it looks fantastic on your driveway but someone forgot to include an engine!!! It just doesn’t work!!

By: Clear Web Services

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Ian Spencer works for Clear Web Services, a SEO Web Optimisation and Web Design company serving the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire and South Wales. He has worked in the SEO and Internet Marketing world for many years, and working in partnership with another company has launched the new SEO business. clearwebservices.com/ For More Information, please call 01594 835 857 or email info@clearwebservices.com