Before jumping to the steps let us first understand the following things:
What is Online Store Checkup?
An Online Store Checkup helps you to analyze important elements of your online store and identify gaps, so that you can take corrective measures. These small elements if missed can result in lost traffic, revenue and sales opportunities.
Look at what?
These things will help you find issues to resolve before they become problem:
- Store Policies
- Store Pages (About, Contact, FAQs, etc.)
- Product listing pages
- Product images
- Coupon codes
What to look for?
The motive behind store checkup is the betterment of various things.
- Your search engine visibility: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is considered to be the most important factor for the success of your online store. But trying to get your stores set up and products listed, they fail to make proper use of it.
- Content Gaps: Content gaps means the missing content or information from your website which may prove to very important towards goals conversions.
- Outdated information: With time things change, like the shipping prices, store policies, answer to FAQs. So an online store checkup can bring into focus these changes, so that you can update it as and when required.
Now let us go to the steps to help you understand how you can you optimize your Shopify store:
- Store Health Overview
Start your store checkup by using Shopify Ecommerce Store Grader. This tool helps you to map the important elements of your business that require more attention. The elements include:
- SEO
- Usability
- Content & Social
- Technical
- Review Store Policies
It is very important to review your store policies before going to the store pages and products. The policies should be updated from time to time. It should also be user-friendly and aligned with the goal conversions.
These are the policies which should be reviewed from time to time:
- Shipping Policy
- Refund Policy
- Return Policy
- Exchange Policy
- Privacy Policy
- Optimize Pages
Pages like About, Contact are FAQs are very important to review as these makes a big difference in your conversion rates. You should look for the following things in these pages:
- Clarity & Copy: Each page should have a clear and specific focus, the message should be clear and precise, the title should match the content, and the visitor should get the answer they have been looking for.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization): There are many stores has missing titles and meta tag information. And these play a very important role in search engine visibility. So filling this information helps Google to understand your store better.
Each page should have unique titles; the title should be between 50-60 characters, the meta descriptions should contain keywords and should be less than 160 characters, the URL should be short and should contain keywords.
- Missing Information: You should check each page to ensure that no information is missing. Review customer emails and look for the questions asked commonly and update the FAQs with these questions.
You should also check and update the shipping rates and other shipping information.
- Optimize Product Page
Once you have optimized you site page, you need to review you Product page, as it is important not only for generating traffic but also for converting the traffic.
Review the following elements:
- Images: The image should have a latest version of your product, the images should have an ALT tag, all the product descriptions should be original, it should contain all important and detailed information of the product.
- Product Description: The product description should be original and not copied from suppliers, it should contain all the important and technical information, and also it should be attractive enough
- SEO ( Search Engine Optimization): There are many stores has missing titles and meta tag information. And these play a very important role in search engine visibility. So filling this information helps Google to understand your store better.
Each page should have unique titles; the title should be between 50-60 characters, the meta descriptions should contain keywords and should be less than 160 characters, the URL should be short and should contain keywords.
- Missing Information: You should check each page to ensure that no information is missing. Review customer emails and look for the questions asked commonly and update the FAQs with these questions.
You should also check and update the shipping rates and other shipping information.
- Review coupons/ Discount Codes
All the coupon codes should be active. You should also see if there any discount codes with no expiry dates, because it may let anyone use it even if promotion has ended.
