5 Tips for Optimizing and Promoting Your E-Commerce Website

Whether you’re setting up your first e-commerce website or your web store has been in business for years already, getting more people to visit your online shop is an important element when it comes to growing your sales.

Your website is the first thing a visitor sees when they come to your digital store, and having an optimized site that is easy to navigate is really crucial. Many consumers believe that the design of a website is important to a company’s brand.

Thankfully, there are many website builders and hosting platforms that make it easy to create an online store in a matter of minutes, such as Shopify, Squarespace or Wordpress. You can choose the visual look of your site from existing templates, and design your pages according to your needs and those of your brand. If your site is not well built, it could turn off customers and they might not return as a result.

But once your web shop is up and running, you need to actually get some customers to visit and make some purchases. An increase in website traffic could mean more customers and lead to more sales of products. Word-of-mouth referrals, social media marketing and sales promotions are all ways to generate site traffic. Some brands even try to create campaigns with the intention of going viral on TikTok or Twitter. But you don’t have to resort to gimmicks to get customers to notice you. Below, we have five simple tips for creating an effective e-commerce store and how to get customers to visit.

Make it mobile-friendly

An e-commerce site that is easy to read, navigate and shop should be a priority for every brand, especially on a mobile browser. With more shoppers making purchases from their phones or tablets, your website should also be optimized for small screens. Most website builders and hosts offer site templates that can be adjusted according to the browser, but there are still some steps you can take to ensure mobile-friendly views. Words and images may look fine on a desktop, but check the size of the fonts in your website copy, and crop any images accordingly so that they do not get distorted across different views.

Tell your brand story

When a customer visits your website, they want to know all about your brand – who you are, the values you stand for and your origin story. Create a detailed “About Us” page that tells customers what makes your brand special, from the history of the business and when it was founded to the mission statement. The story of your business is part of your branding, and it is key to expressing yourself and communicating your brand identity to potential customers or clients.

Boost your SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of driving traffic to your website by improving the visibility or ranking of a web page on a search engine. The higher up your site or page appears in a search on Google, for example, the more likely you’ll get more visits to your site. SEO has increasingly become an essential process for increasing visibility online, and getting products in front of the right eyes. To improve the SEO of your web pages, you should include strategic keywords or specific phrases about your brand or products in your website copy that your customers are likely to search. If you create handmade bags from calf leather, for example, you should include those exact words in your product page description. This will help the search engines match your products with what potential customers are searching for.
 

Encourage sharing

Including social share buttons on your site is a good way to expand the network of people who see your products. Ensure the buttons of the popular social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter are easy for users to find. With one click, your site visitors are able to show their friends the products, designs, or blog posts that they enjoy from your website, with the potential to drive traffic, increase your reach and potentially boost sales.

Use reviews and testimonials

Reviews of your products and testimonials from customers are a great tool to both create trust with consumers and also gain insights into your brand. Encourage customers to leave a review when they make a purchase – many customers like to know what other users think of a product before they buy it for themselves. If your product is really good, they will have no problem letting everyone else know. Link your social media channels to your e-commerce site so you can directly share great feedback with your followers.