1 – Load Quickly
When did you last check the speed of your website? According to Google’s guide for webmasters, a good ecommerce website should load fully in under 2 seconds - much longer than that and users become impatient, and you risk them leaving your site before they’ve even seen it - This particularly important for websites that have lots of mobile visitors. If you’re not happy with the loading speed of your website, there are lots of things you can do to improve it. These are just a few ideas to get you started:- Check your hosting - ensure your host offers a good speed and space for your needs
- Optimise images - reduce the file size of your images without losing quality using a compression plugin
- Reduce your redirects - make sure your site automatically loads the correct version of every page without redirecting or broken links
- Prioritise content ‘above the fold’ - the part of the page that the user sees first without scrolling should load quickly and be engaging and compelling. Ensure your website code loads this content first before sidebars, menus and non-essential images.
2 – Have Unique Meta Data For Every Page
Meta data is used to describe what each page on your website contains, helping search engines decide whether the page is relevant enough to be displayed for particular search results. Your page title and page description meta tags are also what will show to users in their search results, and therefore have an influence on whether or not a user decides to click through and view your website - Here is an example of good meta data.
When writing your meta tags, you should make sure they are unique, optimised for keywords, and that your title and description read well, highlighting your key selling points and including a call to action for the user.