Clean Up Your Ecommerce Store for 2021
2020 was a turbulent year for everyone. Whether last year was a bit of a struggle or whether it was personally a great success, most people would agree that they’re glad that whirlwind of year is done with!
With ecommerce activity increasing faster than normal over the past year, you may have been rushing to get things done and neglected to care for your website. On the other hand, if things have been difficult recently and you’ve rightly been worrying about other things, 2021 might be the time to invest a little in the care of your ecommerce store. Here are some of the things you can do to clean things up a bit:
Optimise Images
Ecommerce websites are full of product images and each one adds to the loading time of your webpages. Make sure your images are optimised by reducing the size of your images as much as possible without affecting the quality. When we say reduce the size, we mean both physical size and file size.
Review copy and content
You should regularly review the copy and content on your website. Firstly, to ensure that none of your content appears outdated. New products might no longer be new and any mention of the year 2020 will also need to be removed (thankfully for some!). Reviewing old text can be a great way to breathe a bit of fresh life into your store.
Secondly, review your copy on a deeper level. You need to determine what copy is leading to purchases, and which pages could do with a rework. If you’re not 100% sure on whether new changes are working, you can always try some A/B testing tools. Just make sure you don’t delete or change things that are working perfectly!
Check your links
Alongside checking for old content, you should be checking for old links. If there’s a product that you used to sell but is now gone forever, you’ll want to consider placing a redirect for that page and removing any direct links. Make sure that the text of the link (called ‘anchor text’) is related to the page you’re directing people to.
Clean your email database
When was the last time you checked your email marketing lists? Are people still opening your emails? Do you need to segment audiences differently now following the pandemic? Make sure your lists and data are still well organised, you’ll be thankful later on in the year.
In addition, make sure you are regularly scrubbing your email lists to remove contacts that are no longer useful to you. This includes people that aren’t opening your emails or abandoned email accounts. In the long run, it is worth it as it will increase your open rates and improve your reputation and email deliverability (i.e. less likely to be classed as spam or blocked).
Refresh your knowledge of the competition
Have you checked in on your competition lately? Take a look at how competitors have evolved over the year. What has changed for them, can you use this to your own advantage too?
Come up with some new deals
It’s a bad idea to keep reusing the same deals – people will get bored. Creating new and exciting deals to continue wowing your customers. This will keep them interested in your brand. In addition, make sure you vary the visual way you present your offers. Even if the figures are different, the presentation needs to be fresh and unique too!
Refresh your advertising
Your ads are an extension of your brand, reaching out to potential customers. They’re the glimpse of your brand that people see before reaching the website and are just as important as reviewing the website.
Have you been using the same image for a Facebook Ad since you started? When was the last time you worked on some ad copy? Determine which ads are still working and which ads could do with some TLC.
Repeat regularly
You don’t need to wait until the next new year to clean up your store but you should definitely be checking all these points regularly. If it’s too much to do all in one go you can take it one step at a time. The important thing is to remember to revisit these points as regularly as necessary. Some things will need doing on a monthly basis, others will need doing annually.
