Here is our list from landing page to the back-of-house of tasks you need to be checking off for your eCommerce business.

Security/verification 

Your website needs to be trusted and verified. These website safety standards are the golden checkmark or "tick" beside your business name.

• HTTPS is more secure for users and website owners and is the standard today. Its means data is being transferred and encrypted both ways securely. If you have not moved your site over to HTTPS, Google will be penalising your website site in Search rankings as its deemed unsafe or suspicious, preventing your website from being easily viewed.
• W3C validation. Checking your website’s code to determine if it follows formatting standards. If you fail to validate the pages of your website based on W3C standards, your website will most likely suffer from errors or poor traffic owing to poor formatting and readability. This also means Search penalties.
• Captcha. Protecting websites against bots is a neverending process. Captcha is a grading process that humans can see and pass but robots cannot see and process, virtually eliminating spamming from your website enquiry forms.
  
• 2FA - 2-factor verification/identification process simply means that your ID is checked 2 times in different steps. Multiple layers make it more difficult for security attacks on both sides and ensure that your data is as safe as possible.
• WCAG 2.0 - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with all disabilities with perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust compliance - a must for sites catering for those users with disabilities, like vision impairment.
  

Know your audience, buyer personas and customers

Knowing your user demographics is just one part of this big puzzle. Other considerations include intent (where users are in their customer lifecycle), where they are located geographically, when they shop, their language patterns (SEO phrases) and behaviour (how they compare and choose products). You can derive an abundance of data from Google Analytics but using additional tools such as surveys, social media listening,  and public conversations like Quora, Reddit, and other niche forums can provide rich detailed information about what people are saying about your products and services.

 See more about the inbound digital marketing tools we recommend for 2020.

Home/Landing Page Optimisation

Optimising your homepage is obvious but where to begin? The old cliche of “first impressions” leads us down many paths to look, feel, and functionality but what should you start with your eCommerce site?

• UX - User experience is the best summed up as how we provide a useful and relevant experience to a customer on our website. This is obviously not limited to the home page but it will give a good indication of expected experience throughout your site based on this first experience. You need to provide the experience they have been promised in an easy, delightful way.
• Products - Featuring your top products or categories is the most effective way to capture their attention. Accurate and relevant images, videos, explanations and information that either drives them to another site or further down your sales funnel.

• On-page optimisation - Your page should be optimised for keywords, and organic search metadata descriptions.
• Content - Google values highly relevant content and the more relevant, the longer they will spend on the page.  Providing relevant content and descriptions will definitely better  SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
• Design - An eye-catching modern design always helps from a visual perspective. This backs up your brand and commitment and can help the audience experience the ‘feeling’ of your brand and products. Think very carefully about how you implement your design elements so they help draw the audience in and move on to their next step more intuitively.

Navigation Optimisation

Your top page navigation should provide everything within one step. Navigation menus that are complex, have lots of pop-outs, symbols and levels mean a potential bounce. Make it as easy and simple to find what they want. Complicated navigation is hazardous to your ranking as much as it is to your bottom line.

• Permalinks should be easy to understand and as simple as possible. This will help with metadata and search results.
• Keep the clutter to a minimum. One to Two words at most for any menu item. 
• Judicious use of Junction or CTA (Call-To-Action) boxes at relevant points will help assist traffic to flow and take next steps.

Product Search Optimisation

• Search Option Bar - This should be prominently displayed if users need to search for products.
• Categories - Keep them as simple as possible. Categories should be broad and break down further into next level pages and then products specifically.
• Tags will help you get very specific with product groups and use identifications. While Categories are broad, tags are specific descriptions and use.
• Metadata. Make sure to use relevant keywords and descriptions. This will help not only with a quick identifier in an on-page search query but in search engines as well. Images should have accurate, relevant metadata as well for Google Shop and search engines.
• Images - Your images should be simple and feature the product by itself or at the very least as the main feature. Relevant location images are great as a hero image but isolated, background removed help with identification, angles, and any other information the customer may need to make a decision.
• Descriptions - Should include important Specs, technical information, product details, options, should be included. Keep it well organised in tabs if required.

Read our Ultimate Guide to Building Your ECommerce Business