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How to optimise your ecommerce store for the year ahead
In this article,
xneelo
looks at the importance of reviewing your ecommerce store to prepare for the year ahead.
The end of the year is the perfect time to review your website’s performance so you can make the necessary optimisations to start the new year with a bang.
Here are some tips to get you started.
Do a thorough content review
Our first tip is to take some time to go over the content you published over the past twelve months and to eliminate any content that is no longer relevant. This includes outdated blog posts, as well as products or services that are no longer offered. Do a thorough audit to find any mentions of discontinued products, old pricing, images and even names of team members who may have left. Next, optimise your images and media for the web. Large images can slow down your website.
Use this opportunity to locate and fix broken links. Pages or posts that can’t be found are frustrating for your visitors and can negatively affect your search rankings.
Finally, make sure your contact information is still correct and update if necessary.
Check your analytics settings
Analytics are essential for figuring out which content and products are popular, and how well your marketing campaigns are running. Checking that you’ve set up Google Analytics correctly is important so that you get the most accurate visitor activity data in the new year. Use a free tool like
Google Tag Assistant
to test that your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager installations are working correctly, and make any necessary adjustments.
Test your website’s performance
A seamless and efficient online shopping experience is crucial for customer satisfaction and retention. To achieve this, you need to ensure your website is user-friendly, mobile-responsive and optimised for speed.
If you’re unsure how fast your website loads, you can use a speed test tool like
Google Page Speed Insights
. It will also give suggestions on how to improve your website speed.
You can improve page loading times with a
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
. It works by utilising caching to decrease the loading speed of your website, ensuring visitors enjoy consistent and reliable load times no matter where they are in the world. For small business websites competing for the attention of customers, the importance of this cannot be overstated.
Ramp up security
Your ecommerce website should be using a number of ongoing security measures.
There are a few ways to ensure your website remains secure:
Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) like
Cloudbric WAF
to stop malicious traffic before it hits your website.
If you have a WordPress site, install the
WordFence plugin
to make it more difficult for hackers to get into your website.
Keep your CMS and plugins up-to-date with the latest versions.
Delete unused plugins. These can bloat up your system and leave vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit.
Enable website monitoring or logging that tracks suspicious activity.
Enable two-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security when logging in to applications.
Back up your website
We highly recommend consistently backing up your website as part of your maintenance routine. In the event that something happens to your website, you’ll want to have a recent version of your files to restore. Backing up your website is a proactive measure that safeguards your data, protects against various risks, and ensures the continuity of your online presence.
Optimising and growing your ecommerce store for the new year requires a combination of efforts, but one of the most important actions you can take is to ask for customer feedback. No one knows what your customers want or think about your store more than they do.
Useful resources:
xneelo offers web hosting and business enablement to more than 500 000 South African websites.
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