A very large portion of online activity is done daily that is commerce. Start-ups, small, and large enterprise size companies compete online for consumers with e-commerce websites. Some have larger budgets and others smaller, but all have websites with shopping pages and carts.
To get the best results from marketing and advertising efforts, e-commerce websites should have well optimized and properly designed and setup shopping pages. In addition, online stores should have a very simple and short checkout process.
Shopping pages are basically individual landing pages for each product a company has to sell. Yet, most have just a single often not professionally taken photo. Pages of e-commerce websites have to be properly created to produce the desired results. To help out, here are 5 common mistakes e-commerce websites make with shopping pages.
5 Common Mistakes E-Commerce Websites Make With Shopping Pages
1. Product description content is not original.
Marketing professionals know it these days as the golden rule due to Google, but many others do not. Under all circumstance, product descriptions and website content (text) must Not be a copy. All content of the website, especially the product descriptions of an e-commerce website should be original and well written.
Often entrepreneurs resell products online and use the same product descriptions. Or some retailers sell multiple versions of the same product and use the same content across multiple website pages. In either case, major search engines such as Google will punish those websites.
2. Product and customer reviews are missing.
Product reviews are so important for online sales and yet many e-commerce websites do not display them. One of the easiest methods to increase online sales is through product and customer reviews. Each product sold through e-commerce websites should have reviews, clearly visible for site visitors.
Customers can be given incentives to submit reviews. Those reviews can be collected and than properly displayed on key pages such as the individual e-commerce shopping pages. For best results, video reviews are highly effective for increasing e-commerce sales.
3. Lack of product photos and poor quality.
It is not always easy to get quality photographs and multiple shots of products. This is especially true when reselling products that one does not own. For e-commerce websites to produce sales, consumers and website visitors expect to see what they are considering buying. Many are visual and want images to make a decision.
Websites that lack product photos or have poor quality images will suffer sales from it. To increase chances at success, e-commerce websites should display high quality photographs of products sold and multiple photos per product.
4. Use of search-unfriendly URL structures.
One mistake that is still very common amongst e-commerce websites is within the URL structure. Often the URL structures are not search friendly and therefore cause poor search results, indexing by search engines, and loss in sales.
URL structures should be clean and search friendly such as yourdomain.com/shop/product. This would be an example of a good URL for e-commerce sites. A bad URL would look like something of this sort yourdomain.com/prodcut=?productid_8755589.asp. For best results, the URLs must be search friendly.
5. Not properly displaying guarantees and support.
Often e-commerce websites are not professionally designed but put together through leased solutions by someone who does not have the proper experience. With the lack of quality, lack of results is guaranteed. Shopping pages and key e-commerce web pages should clearly display any guarantees, certifications, and memberships to support online sales and conversion rates.
E-commerce websites should clearly display customer service options and features. Even though it is an online shopping environment, consumers feel there is more trust with a brand that clearly displays toll free customer service phone numbers, email, forms, chat, and other methods.
To increase online sales and get more results driven e-commerce websites, businesses can get a consultation by professionals or launch a new websites that is properly setup and optimized to produce the desired results. Website design by experts comes with all the necessary call to action elements and conversion tools to drive online sales.
