Introduction
The eCommerce market size is forecasted to touch USD 18.81 trillion by 2029. It translates to a CAGR of 15.80% during the forecast period of 2024-2029. These figures show the promising future of eCommerce businesses. However, with the enormous scope of business growth comes intense competition. There are so many eCommerce websites that it is difficult to survive if you end up being just a mediocre “seller.” You have to deliver value through your business and offer something unique to the customers. You can certainly make the most of the ever-expanding customer base, provided you STAND OUT.
Answer this honestly. Do you get your eCommerce website audited at regular intervals?
If yes, read through it to understand more about eCommerce audits and how they drive better business growth.
If not, this article will tell you what you are missing and why you should invest in an eCommerce audit service immediately.
First, let’s discuss what an eCommerce website audit is, especially for the uninitiated.
What is an eCommerce Website Audit?
An eCommerce website audit is a detailed evaluation of how an online store is performing. Right from the layout of the website, its navigation, and the checkout process to the overall customer experience, an eCommerce audit will let you know of all the weak points and help you optimize it. eCommerce audit also considers search engine optimization parameters and technical issues along with the content quality. An eCommerce website audit professional will check whether the store follows the latest trends and advanced technologies.
End Goal of eCommerce Audit
The main objective of eCommerce site audit is to boost the site’s performance and give the business owners an edge over the competitors.
We have discussed how to hire an eCommerce audit service and website mistakes in our previous blogs. You would surely want to give them a read…
What Does an eCommerce Website Audit Cover?
In the eCommerce website audit checklist, there are several aspects to be considered. They are as follows:
- Content
- Site Performance
- SEO: Technical, on-page, and off-page
- Security
- Overall Customer Experience
Let’s discuss each factor one by one.
1. Content
Unless your website content is up to the mark, it won’t impress the target audience. In an eCommerce site audit, the expert will evaluate the content quality and relevance. It encompasses blogs, videos, images, and all other content pieces on their site. The primary goal is to detect inaccurate, outdated, or duplicate content that hampers the brand’s reputation.
The content you post should be in sync with the target audience’s expectations — what they are looking for. A content audit helps pave new avenues in crafting engaging and relevant content that grabs the visitor’s eyeballs and compels them to purchase.
2. Site Performance
Page load speed, rendering on different browsers and devices, and many such aspects fall under the factors influencing site performance. Time to first byte (TTFB) is an important parameter that influences the website performance. It refers to the time a user’s browser takes to receive the first piece of information or byte from a server after they log on to the website. An optimum TTFB is 0.8 seconds or less. The shorter the wait time, the better the user experience, which will lead to higher search engine rankings.
3. SEO: Technical, On-page, and Off-page
While technical SEO enhances your website’s structure and code, on-page SEO is all about content optimization and checking the links with other on-page elements. Through a technical and on-page SEO audit, you can recognize missing alt attributes, pages with duplicate content or low word count, broken internal/external links, and many such issues. If they persist, they can ruin your search engine rankings and conversion rates.
For example: Broken links, both internal and external lead to negative user experience. As the users are unable to access the content they are looking for, it leads to lost sales due to frustration.
There’s another type of SEO audit known as off-page SEO. It includes evaluation of the backlinks, whether they are from a reputed website, and how much they are contributing to your business growth.
4. Security
Outdated SSL certificates, inaccurately configured permissions, inactive user accounts, weak passwords, etc., simply poor website security. If your website lacks HTTPS, it will mean that your website is not secure. As a result, it will damage your SEO rankings. Make sure all your payment gateways are secure.
The customers should feel safe while sharing their personal information and card details on your eCommerce site. In case they don’t, they would abandon the cart without completing the purchase. As a best practice, add disclaimers that advise the customers to use strong passwords and not share their passwords, OTP, or ATM card pin with anyone.
5. Overall Customer Experience
The overall customer experience involves several things. They are:
- The website navigation across different devices
- Sign-in and checkout process
- Product pages
- CTA buttons
- Security features
- Comparison against competitors
Your eCommerce website should impart a pleasant shopping experience to the customers. A combination of all the four points shared above will contribute to the overall customer experience. The audit professional will curate a final report after studying all the parameters that impact your eCommerce website performance. Accordingly, they will suggest solutions that need to be implemented to optimize it.
Top Benefits of eCommerce Website Audit Checklist
Having an eCommerce audit checklist can improve your business in several ways, like:
1. Better Accessibility:
By incorporating accessibility best practices, you can increase your reach and improve search engine optimization. It leads to higher customer retention and better profitability. Websites with better accessibility exude a sense of consideration and inclusivity for the audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversions.
2. Delightful User Experience:
Implementing an eCommerce website audit helps in recognizing usability issues and resolving them. As a result, it will make the buyer’s journey smoother and enhance the conversion rates. It will propel the prospect in the sales funnel and get closer to conversions.
3. Increase in Website Traffic:
After detecting the issues in the eCommerce website, the audit professional will recommend solutions that will help increase the website traffic. They will let you formulate better marketing strategies that lead to higher traffic and conversions.
4. Higher Search Engine Rankings:
With the help of an audit, you can identify issues pertaining to on-page SEO, backlinks or off-page SEO, and technical SEO. After identification, you can employ strategies to fix these issues. Eventually, it will lead to higher search engine rankings.
5. A Cut Above the Competitors:
Researching the competitors is an important step of eCommerce audit. It helps in recognizing areas for improvement by benchmarking against the competitors. An eCommerce audit will let you know how you can do things differently and better than other brands in your industry.
6. Better Understanding of User Behavior:
An eCommerce website audit gives you an idea of the customer behavior and how they make purchase decisions. Through the analytics, you will be able to understand whether the customer is a discount shopper or a heavy spender. The audit report will let you know about the user behavior in greater detail and make necessary changes to your website.
Conclusion
In an eCommerce website audit, the professional evaluates each and every aspect of your store so that nothing remains amiss. Based on the final report, they recommend solutions for the things that are out of place. Most importantly, an eCommerce audit is a cost-effective way to keep your webstore relevant and high-converting despite the intense competition.
As a bonus, here’s a downloadable checklist for your eCommerce site audit that includes all the major points that can make or break your store performance.
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As Director - Marketing, Zenul leads the marketing and branding at Krish. He brings with him an in-depth understanding of the evolving digital ecosystem and has a proven expertise and experience in strategic planning, market and competition analysis, creating and implementing client-centered, lead-gen and brand marketing campaigns. He has a heart for technology innovation and has been a keynote speaker on various platforms.
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