10 Magento optimisation tips to drive more sales to your online store
The eCommerce platform Magento is an easy to use complete solution that enables new online retailers to grow and manage their business. With the increase of online businesses however, how do you make your website stand out from the crowd in a burgeoning market? Here are our top 10 Magento optimisation tips.
1. Get your software working for you
The Magento eCommerce software offers users a flexible online shopping cart system. It gives users control over the look, content and functionality of their online retail presence, enabling you to make your online sales channels unique. It also provides essential and valuable marketing tools, such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and catalogue marketing tools.
2. Make your home page appealing
How many times have you clicked on the home page of a website and just come straight back out? If your home page doesn’t make a visitor to your website want to click through to further pages, you are going to lose sales.
The trick is to make it engaging – informative without filling the page with irrelevant content, high quality photographs, and not too fussy.
3. Don’t skimp on SEO
Unless you have an entirely unique product that no-one else has, you need to ensure that your website is high on search engines rankings. One way to increase traffic to your site, and therefore increase sales, is to use SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Magento offers a range of great tools to help you build your website, including SEO.
The answer to great SEO is to use the perfect keywords. Therefore, before writing the product information for your website, research the keywords that your target audience are likely to use. Incorporate the keywords and phrases in your website text, ensuring that you use them in titles, headings, meta descriptions and within the descriptive paragraphs.
Finally, ensure that the content is regularly refreshed, or you could find you are slipping back down the rankings after all that hard work getting the keywords right.
4. Create a blog
One way to keep the content fresh and your website updated is to regularly post a blog on a variety of subjects surrounding your products. They can take the form of ‘how to’, ‘hints and tips’, or news story – all of which should neatly link to a product(s) at the end.
5. Content is more than words
Videos and images also help you improve your search engine rankings and should be part of your SEO strategy. Video content also engages your potential customer – the more time they spend on your website, the more likely they are to purchase.
6. Call your customers to action
At the end of the text on each page/product description, add a ‘call to action’ which encourages shoppers to purchase. This could be ‘buy now and save money’ or ‘sign up to our newsletter and receive a free gift with your order’.
7. Make your business social
Social media – what would we do without it? Across the world, Facebook has 2.5 billion users, Instagram has over 1 billion users, and X (Twitter) 350 million users. That’s without mentioning LinkedIn, Pinterest etc.
With this amount of users, it’s no wonder companies are looking to reach their target audience through social media platforms. The Magento eCommerce platform makes it easy to convert social media engagement into website hits, and therefore sales – with just a few clicks customers can purchase during a commercial break during their favourite TV show.
8. Share your expertise
Why not create a YouTube channel where you can upload vlogs sharing your expertise on a subject where you can include some of your products. Viewers who see your products being used will be inspired to buy.
9. Everybody loves a bargain
Don’t rule out gimmicks such as 10% off your first order, or buy one get one free. There are lots of ways you can encourage more sales by offering discounts, loyalty rewards, free gift with purchase etc. If you have a social media presence, run a competition – for every like, retweet and follow, enter that person into a draw. The more followers on social media, the more likely you are to drive up sales.
10. Lastly, make sure you can handle the increased orders
Importantly, the last of our top 10 Magento optimisation tips.
Once you have achieved your goal and you have driven more sales to your online store, have you thought about how you are going to keep up with fulfilling the orders? Not being able to deliver on time may mean that your new customer won’t be a returning one. Outsourcing your order fulfilment to a company which specialises in eCommerce order fulfilment will save you time, and best of all, money.
Find out more about Adstral’s Magento eCommerce order fulfilment service.
