Online Shop Optimization - Bring your store up to date with these 13 tips

In this article, we will give you useful tips to optimize your online store and thus bring it up to speed. The store optimization also helps newcomers, as it also provides a good guide on how to properly maintain your store from the beginning and thus optimize conversions.

This is why store optimization makes sense

There are more than enough good reasons to stick to optimizing your own online store. A key component is customer satisfaction. Customers appreciate high-performance, well-organized online stores in which they can find the items they are looking for as quickly as possible. When it comes to user-friendliness, customers and search engines are very similar. Stores with short loading times and an impeccable link structure are rewarded by Google & Co. with a better ranking overall. Since the algorithm update in May 2021, there is a new ranking factor at Google: the so-called Page Experience. The page performance plays an essential role in this. In addition to search engines, social networks are a good source of traffic. It therefore makes sense to also take a close look at your own social media strategy during optimization, so that even more followers become customers.

Tips with which you can optimize your online store

#1 Clean up link structure

A good store is well-stocked: This is true for local stores as well as for online stores. To ensure that your products are also found by potential buyers, you need clever linking. A tree structure that guides users from the home page to the products via categories has proven successful. The URL of a product should always contain the category in question. An absolute no-go are links that lead nowhere and cause the well-known 404 error. Tip: You can use tools such as Siteliner or Screaming Frog to check your page for broken links.

#2 Optimize category and product texts

Content is king, even in online retail. Since customers cannot inspect their products in detail before buying, meaningful category and product texts are necessary. A common mistake when creating such content is that store operators focus primarily on the features of their items. This is only understandable, after all, as a merchant you are convinced of what you are selling. However, you should also put yourself in your customer's shoes when writing: He has a problem and that's why he comes to you. Therefore, you should explain how the respective product can solve this problem and enrich his life. You can also stimulate the imagination of your visitors. Search engines, for all the improvements they have undergone in the past, are still text-based. Therefore, you should research topic-relevant keywords before creating your texts and include them in your texts.

#3 Customize meta description and title

And another SEO topic! Meta titles and descriptions are what searchers see first in the results, the so-called SERPs, when they enter a term. Their importance is therefore immense when it comes to leading users to your online store. One of the most common mistakes is that metas are too long. If this is the case, Google cuts them off and ends them with an ellipsis ("..."). Therefore, do not exceed 70 characters for the meta title and 160 characters for the meta description. It does not hurt if the meta title differs from your H1 heading. A good meta description ends with a call to action, e.g.: "➤ Shop now".

#4 Compress product images

The eye eats (buys) with you. Therefore, the same applies to high-resolution product images as to product texts: Their presence is mandatory so that your items have a chance of landing in the shopping cart in the first place. However, you should not overdo it in terms of resolution, because with the resolution the amount of data of the product images also increases, which in turn directly affects the loading times. Depending on the store system used, there are numerous tools that sometimes completely automate the compression of images, which can often save 40 percent or more of the data volume.

#5 Reduce fonts

Not only from a design point of view, too many fonts are a problem for online stores. Some of them, this concerns especially the Google Fonts Roboto, Helvetica & Co. These are in fact loaded via external sources, which can noticeably delay the response time of your own online store. It is therefore advisable to reduce the number of fonts to one, or at most two, which are then used consistently throughout the entire store.

#6 Remove unbuilt JavaScript and CSS

From here on it gets technical, because of course an online store can also be optimized on this level. For the creation of online stores, more and more content management systems, CMS for short, are being used instead of in-house programming. These naturally deliver a high level of unused JavaScript and CSS. With tools like Google Pagespeed Insights, you can see where unused resources are slowing down your store.

#7 Enable CSS, JavaScript and HTML compression

At point #7 of our optimization tips for online stores, some store systems, including e.g. the cloud-based Shopify, already anticipate. If this is the case with your store, you have no to-do at this point and can move on to the next point. CSS, JavaScript and HTML compression provides for the removal of whitespace from program codes, this can sometimes save you several 100 kilobytes per page of data. This doesn't sound like a quantum leap, but viewed over the entire domain, code compression does make a difference. Tip: You can check whether compression is active on the server side of your store using the free online service gtmetrix, for example.

#8 Refresh social media channels

Let's take a look beyond your actual online store with this point: Your social media channels also deserve a fresh coat of paint. In addition to editorial or action plans to be planned for the next few weeks, you can also update your accounts with new cover images or story highlight icons. When was the last time you checked the info on Facebook or your bio on Instagram? Now is the time to do so and replace outdated information.

#9 Send newsletter

The newsletter is by no means one of the dusty tools in online marketing. On the contrary, it is one of the best tools in remarketing. People who subscribe to your newsletter already know your brand and are happy to buy from you again. That's why you should publish newsletters at regular intervals. Similar to social media channels, discount promotions, novelties or news about your online business can be the topics. Now, at the beginning of the new year, think about which newsletter content your customers will find particularly helpful and pre-plan the next newsletters before the next stressful period (e.g. Valentine's Day and Easter).

#10 Get feedback

Who can give better feedback on the online store than the customers themselves? When it comes to online store optimization, it is always a good choice to involve your own customers. After all, they know what bothers them about your online store and can therefore give you optimal feedback. For example, you can collect feedback directly in the online store with apps (e.g. as a pop-up), after the purchase on the thank you page, or at a later time via e-mail.

#11 Customer reviews

Today, customer reviews are an important factor when it comes to purchase decisions and conversion rate optimization. It is therefore advisable to offer ratings for products and services and to map them accordingly in the store.

#12 Seal of approval

Quality seals also convince customers of your store and gain their trust. Therefore, you should integrate them on your product pages and can thus draw attention to sustainability or social commitment, for example.

#13 FAQ pages

FAQ pages not only help you with search engine optimization, but also help customers get an immediate answer to questions that arise.

Conclusion

You don't have to be a programmer to optimize your Internet presence. However, some measures require technical know-how. At Latori, we specialize in the in-house development of Shopify applications and are happy to help you with technical questions with the system.