How to kill your online retail store in 6 easy steps
Posted by Katia Pereria on 01 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy
Recently, E-Consultancy posted a few articles regarding the state of play of some of the UKs biggest retail brands and their online performance. Upon closer scrutiny it appears as though many of these retailers are making the same mistakes, and although these brands are paying a lot of money for PPC campaigns, they are completely ignoring organic traffic. PPC is not the be all and end all of online marketing, and if you can`t find the Boots website in the top organic listings for the search phrase “Boots”, then you know there is a problem.
Here, in my opinion, are 6 of the biggest mistakes that many of these very well known online retail stores are currently making:
1. Redirects
Home page redirects are sweet and simple to implement and they are very important. Painfully long unusable, unstructured URLs are not the way to go. You can use 301 redirects, but you must use them properly. According to webmaster central, not only do multiple URLs dilute link popularity, but when search results display user-unfriendly URLs, they decrease the chances of users selecting the listing, which upsets your branding efforts.
2. Title Tags
Title tagging is a quick tweak, so why do some websites that spend thousands on PPC (Pay Per Click) and that have good landing pages use the same “welcome to our site” title tag on each page? Only a small amount of extra effort is required to ensure that titling is product and service related and to identify each page. I mean, this is very basic SEO 101.
3. Duplicate content
Duplicate content is another issue. Many online retailers cut and paste information across different URLs (their own and others), especially when it comes to product pages. It is, however, problematic when internal links point to both versions of the same page on separate URLs. This practice will affect your sites performance
4. Multiple URLs
Multiple URLs are not a bad thing, but you need to be careful when you use them. If you own them, you should always redirect them into the site. If you don’t, then you can end up with duplicate content issues as outlined above.
5. Structure and navigation
Website usability and the information architecture are forgotten all too often. Website navigation and enabling users to find what they are looking for easily is critical when you are a retailer. It`s essential to ensure that visitors can browse through all the product and pricing options to make a decision. Flash-based sites are tricky. If it`s flash, make sure it`s not so complicated that users don`t know what is going on. SEO your site and all your product pages and ensure that your products are searchable with adequate and relevant content and descriptions. Most importantly, don`t forget your navigation, if it`s difficult to navigate and get from A to B, the user will never get to where they want to get to and nor will the search engines.
IA (information architecture) needs careful consideration or you are going to lose people at the home page. No contact details, no “calls to action” and no pricing? What`s the point of spending so much money on a beautiful flash website that serves no purpose? Waste of space is what that is, as well as a waste of your customers` time, so put some thought into it and consider your customers` user experience. If you can`t find what you`re looking for, no one else will be able to either.
6. Call to action
So, you found your item and you`re ready to buy; now what? Where is the “Call to action”? No clear, concise and easy to convert calls to action is retail murder. Making registration compulsory is also a good way to make your visitors run in the opposite direction and never return. Do you want people to buy your product or not? Not only is it good for your customers` user experience but it`s beneficial to your brand image too.
From all of the above points I can conclude that online retailers in the UK are ignoring the very basics of SEO and online marketing. Although they are spending great amounts of hard cash on PPC, they will never get the organic listings that they probably expect unless they make some very essential and fundamental changes to their websites.
You`d expect these big brands and their marketers to be more clued up about marketing their products online, so it`s sad to see that this is not the case. They come up for branded searches but what about product searches, where do they stand then?
They`re missing out on so many conversions and wasting a lot of money in the wrong places. It`s about time they joined the internet age and realised that online marketing is not rocket science, it`s the future.
Tags: call to action, dupliacte content, multiple URLs, redirects, structure and navigation, title tags
One Response to “How to kill your online retail store in 6 easy steps”
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
Nicely done Katia. Some easy to follow pointers for those big brands out there that are relying too much on their name and, ultimately, missing out on a whole other target market by not ranking for product searches in their industry sector.