The small online store checklist: product pages, checkout and getting found
Getting an online store live has never been easier. Getting it to sell is a different story. We’ve helped stores selling everything from jewelry to vegan products to food franchises, and the same handful of issues tend to hold sales back.
Here’s a checklist to work through.
Product pages
Your product page has to do the job a good shop assistant would do in person. That means:
- Great photos. Several angles, a close-up of details, and the product in use. Let people zoom. Photos are your biggest sales tool online
- A description written for humans. Not just specs. Who it’s for, what problem it solves, how it feels to use. Then the specs
- Answers to the usual questions. Size, materials, care, compatibility, what’s in the box
- Clear price and delivery info. Including shipping costs and delivery times before checkout, not as a surprise at the end
- Reviews. Real customer reviews on the product page, including the occasional less glowing one. A wall of perfect five-star reviews can look fake
Avoid copying manufacturer descriptions word for word. Hundreds of other stores use the same text, and search engines have no reason to rank yours.
Checkout
This is where a lot of money gets left on the table.
- Allow guest checkout. Forcing account creation loses buyers
- Offer the payment methods your customers expect: cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, PayPal, and buy-now-pay-later where it suits your products
- Keep forms short. Only ask for what you need
- Show trust signals: secure checkout, returns policy, contact details
- Test the whole thing on a phone, start to finish, every few months
Speed
Online stores tend to get heavy over time. Big images, lots of apps, tracking scripts. Every extra second of loading costs sales, especially on mobile. Compress images, remove apps you don’t use and check your speed regularly with Google PageSpeed Insights.
Getting found
Ecommerce SEO is its own skill, but the basics go a long way:
- Well-organized categories with a short, helpful intro on each category page
- Unique product titles and descriptions that use the words people actually search for
- Product schema so Google can show price, availability and ratings
- A product feed in Google Merchant Center, which lets your products show up in Google Shopping, often for free
- Helpful guides and blog posts that answer buying questions and link to products
Bringing people back
Winning a customer is expensive. Keeping one is cheap. Set up a few simple automated emails: a welcome series for new subscribers, an abandoned cart reminder, and a thank you with care tips or related products after purchase. These run in the background and often pay for themselves quickly.
Measure the right things
Make sure your analytics tracks sales properly, including which channels and products bring in revenue. Watch your conversion rate, average order value and how many people abandon their cart. Small improvements to each add up fast.
Where to start
If you only fix three things: improve the photos and descriptions on your ten best-selling products, test your checkout on a phone, and set up an abandoned cart email. Those usually show results quickest.
See our e-commerce solutions, or book a free call and we’ll take a look at your store with you.
