2020 and 2021 will go down in history as global retail e-commerce has reached sales of almost a trillion USD dollars annually since 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic was the one that triggered the e-commerce turning point in Singapore and other countries. Many businesses successfully moved online and expanded their operation to e-commerce.
The problem, however, is that customers have become smarter with their purchases. The competition to make sales grow fiercer, and cart abandonment becomes more common.
Statistics show that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69.99%. As an e-commerce business owner, you would not want that to happen in your e-commerce website shopping cart.
Make your shopping cart SEO friendly to prevent that from happening by enhancing your customers’ shopping experience. Adapting the best e-commerce SEO strategies can improve your shopping cart and persuade your customers to take conversion action.
Take note of the following pointers to get you started.
10 E-Commerce SEO Strategies To Make Shopping Cart SEO Friendly
1. Provide Multiple Shipping Options
More customers will value your e-commerce website more if you provide them with more shopping options and multiple payments.
If you place yourself in your potential customer’s shoes, you will understand that some customers need the product immediately, making urgent delivery an excellent shipping option. Below are some of the shipping options to add to your check out cart page on your e-commerce website:
- Standard local delivery – customers will have to pay standard shipping for local delivery
- Urgent delivery – customers will have to pay more shipping fees for urgent delivery, both local and international
- Free shipping – payment is not required , whether for local or international delivery
- Local pickup – payment is not required since customers have opted to pick up the item at the agreed pickup point
2. Offer Multiple Payments Options
Most consumers find online shopping easy, but not everyone shares this opinion. Some customers want a variety of payment options, and if their favourite one is not accessible, they might leave the e-commerce store despite how good the website design is.
Acknowledge that you cannot satisfy everyone as an e-commerce store owner and that the only way to get these customers to shop is by offering multiple ways to pay.
Here are some other payments you can provide on your e-commerce website in addition to credit and debit cards:
- Bank transfer
- Buy now, pay later
- Cash on delivery
- Digital wallet
- Prepaid cards
Retrieved this image from Sephora Help Desk.
Keep the e-commerce web design as minimalist as Sephora so customers will notice the different payment methods you offer on your e-commerce store.
3. Automatic Account Creation via Email/Social Media
Even if it is simple to register and set up an account on an e-commerce website, not everyone has the time to complete their account profile. Consumers want quick checkout rather than wasting time filling out personal information on an e-commerce website for every purchase.
Baynard Institute’s Cart Abandonment survey, 24% of potential customers abandon their online shopping cart on an e-commerce website because it requires them to create an account before being able to purchase.
To address this issue, enable visitors to shop as guests by allowing automatic signing up with their Gmail or Facebook accounts. This will extract customers’ basic information from the respective service providers upon authorisation Doing so provides an easy and convenient account creation option while they shop.
Consider adding an automatic account creation via email or social media during your e-commerce website development. Your future potential customers will be prompted to use this whenever they are in a rush while shopping online.
4. Include Product Reviews
Since product reviews are equivalent to word-of-mouth, customers will trust the product reviews left by customers who have purchased the product.
The more product reviews, the better. 95% of customers will read product reviews first before they add the product to their shopping cart on an e-commerce website and proceed with their purchase.
The more positive comments the product reviews have, more potential customers will become more convinced to add it to their shopping cart. If they also have an excellent experience, they will most likely leave a comment as well.
5. Send An Email Reminder on Abandoned Shopping Cart
Window shopping also exists in online shopping. Customers will add the product to their shopping cart and leave them for days before making a purchase.
Customers often forget the item they have added to their shopping cart and ultimately tend to not complete their pending purchases. Prevent that from happening by keeping your customers posted through abandoned cart emails.
Abandoned cart emails refer to personalised messages that inform customers about the item they have left in their shopping cart. With this, they will get notified and prompted to check the products out.
If you are using WooCommerce for your e-commerce website in Singapore, it has a setting that allows you to automatically send abandoned cart emails.
The traffic coming from emails can also help to contribute to a website’s overall traffic. To gain recurring traffic, the email reminder with a link to your website will help in SEO as it contributes to the overall traffic figures.
DISCOVER: 6 Key WooCommerce Features That Benefit Your Business
6. Keep The Shopping Cart Organised With WooCommerce Product Table
The online shopping cart of your website can be more SEO and user-friendly if shoppers can keep their shopping list organised. Luckily, WooCommerce now has a plugin called WooCommerce Product Table that lets customers arrange the products they have added to the shopping cart by category.
This quick overview also allows customers to change the number of quantities per product without leaving the shopping cart and going to the product’s respective page.
7. Promote The Use Of Coupons
Another e-commerce SEO strategy to make a shopping cart SEO friendly is to add a section where you can promote the use of coupons. Since everyone loves promotion, they would not miss the chance to redeem the coupons they need to get a discount on their purchase.
For example, UNIQLO promotes the use of coupons by adding them after the order’s total price. The customers will be prompted to add the coupon code before they click on the checkout button.
Retrieved this image from the UNIQLO FAQ page.
8. Optimise For Mobile Access
The next SEO strategy to make a shopping cart SEO friendly is to optimise it for mobile access. Now that 45% of global consumers use their smartphones for their online purchases, you can expect your potential customers to do the same.
Optimising your website and a shopping cart for mobile access allows your customers to browse and check out the products more easily.
Consider testing the mobile responsiveness of your e-commerce during the initial stage of web development. It will help you pinpoint and correct the flaws so your e-commerce store and its web design will adapt to the user’s various devices.
9. Improve Page Speed
Besides optimising mobile access, your shopping cart should also load faster. ThinkWithGoogle found that 53% of potential customers leave an e-commerce website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
You can use the following tools to determine how quickly your e-commerce website in Singapore loads:
10. Set Up A Custom 404 Error Page
Having a 404 error page will prevent customer traffic from coming to a dead end and visitors from finding nothing when the product has been discontinued or they type the incorrect URL link into the address bar.
Potential clients who visit your e-commerce website would not get confused and will know what transpired. Here is an example of a custom 404 error page from M&M.
To make it more SEO friendly and convince customers to add more products to their online shopping cart on an e-commerce website, suggest relevant products based on their preferences, interests, and shopping behaviour.
Conclusion
Making a shopping cart SEO friendly is easier said than done. It can be more challenging if you are new to the e-commerce industry and recently implementing SEO. Consider applying for PSG ecommerce web development and use your approved grant to let a pre-approved PSG vendor create the best SEO friendly shopping cart!
Get in touch with an e-commerce SEO agency for more tips and tricks about e-commerce SEO. Contact OOm at +65 6690 4049 or leave a message on our website.
