In general, during the coronavirus, ecommerce seems to be in a pretty good spot. After all, shoppers that can’t go to a brick-and-mortar may turn instead to online shopping. But of course, it’s not that simple. Some markets are performing much better than others, so for those who have been quiet or see a quiet phase until circumstances change, why not plan for the future and be ready to hit the ground running when Covid-19 has disappeared. Working on website optimisation today will carry benefit for your online business tomorrow.
Below are some areas that you could be working on if you are going through this slow period, or else if you are trying to keep some staff members busy.
1. Analyse and compare your competitors
Analysing your competitors is always a good idea to find ways to improve your business. Take a look at what your competitors are doing differently to you and how you may win over some new customers from them in the future. Benchmarking against your strongest competition will help shape and steer your website optimisation ventures.
Aspects of competitors that you could look at include:
- Prices
- Delivery
- Website Design
- Newsletter Subscription (do they offer a % discount on sign-up?)
- Marketing (Social Media / PPC)
After finding out what they are doing, brainstorm what changes you would like to make to your website and make a plan on how you are going to implement them.
2. Review your SEO
SEO doesn’t have a shelf life of weeks or months. Reviewing your SEO is a long-term investment that will help you grow your business. It is critical for helping customers find you and is a cost-effective way to grow your business.
A few tips are below:
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- Use a tool such as SEMrush to see where you rank for specific keywords, especially those related to your largest brands and/or categories. Keywords where you rank in position 4-20 will be difficult to improve but will likely have the most monetary impact to your business in the long term.
- Select your top products and work on their individual SEO per product page.
- Split up the work! Rome wasn’t built in a day so take this piece by piece to ensure you are thorough (and preserve your own sanity!).
Resources:
- Definitive Guide to On Page SEO by Backlinko
- Complete Guide to Content Marketing by Backlinko
- 10 Keyword Research Tools Put to the Test by Backlinko
- Getting the Most Out of SEO on the IRP
- 17 Ways to Improve Your SEO in 2020
3. Update your product pages
When was the last time you checked and reviewed your product pictures and descriptions? Product data is a critical aspect of website optimisation. Updating the content of your products will not only help to improve its SEO but also provide customers a fresh first look when visiting your ecommerce store. If your products require size guides why not try to refresh this content or ensure that a high level of information is available for your customers. The easier you make it for a client to find what they are looking for the more likely you will get a conversion.
4. Prepare fresh content for your blog
If you haven’t started blogging about your products or market, it is a great time to start doing so. If you already have, then now is a great time to plan in advance and prepare content for the upcoming months. Your posts can tackle a huge variety of topics: from facts about your products, gifts, seasonal topics about the upcoming shopping promotions: Back-to-School, Halloween, Christmas, etc.
5. Learn a new skill
During a period of downtime take time to learn a new skill or upskill on a dependency you require for your business. What area of your business needs a little TLC? Have you an interest in understanding your Digital Marketing better such as Google PPC or Facebook Marketing? Maybe you would like to develop some photoshop or HTML / CSS skills to improve on your email marketing campaigns.
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