Introduction to eCommerce Website Audit
An eCommerce website audit refers to a comprehensive (holistic) analysis of your online store. It helps evaluate the store’s performance from an SEO point of view. Through this exhaustive audit, you get a clear picture of all the web pages, such as the homepage, category pages, product pages, cart page, checkout page, their technical performance, and off-page SEO aspects such as backlinks.
It is an elaborate process that involves several steps, such as checking and optimizing the site’s content and technical aspects as well. Hence, it’s a good idea to keep an eCommerce website audit checklist handy. It will not only help you discover the shortcomings in your eCommerce store but also drive the optimization process while skyrocketing sales.
Before moving on to the steps, let’s first discuss the advantages of conducting an eCommerce audit.
Advantages of Carrying Out an eCommerce Audit
1. Attracting More Website Visitors:
By auditing your website, you get an idea of how your website store is ranking in the search results. Accordingly, you can optimize the eCommerce store and attract more visitors by enhancing the search engine rankings.
2. Boosting the Conversion Rate:
eCommerce store optimization will increase the website visibility, thereby boosting the chances of conversions.
3. Standing Out From the Competition:
Auditing and optimizing your eCommerce website helps you stand out so that your customers don’t bounce to your competitors.
4. Reducing the Marketing Expenses:
With the help of eCommerce SEO, you can cut down on marketing expenses when you are on a shoestring budget. As your website ranks higher in the search results, it gives you better exposure, even if you need more money to afford paid ads and marketing campaigns.
5. Propelling the Business ROI:
eCommerce store audits will help you with keyword optimization and off-site content marketing. In turn, it will increase your business revenue by refining the SEO parameters.
Step-by-Step Guide For An eCommerce Website Audit
Fifteen steps make up a comprehensive eCommerce website audit. Through this blog, we have discussed them at length.
Let’s start…
1. Determine Your Website Crawlability:
Better site crawlability means search engine crawlers can browse your website more effectively. If the eCommerce store is easier to crawl, search engines will index your content faster, and you will rank for more keywords. Google Search Console is a great tool to evaluate your website’s crawlability.
Make note of all the major spikes or drops in the crawl requests. This will help you detect issues like rogue robots.txt files. In addition, the grouped crawl data report should be checked to prevent 404 and 500 errors.
2. Measure the Core Web Vitals:
Google utilizes certain performance metrics to evaluate your store’s speed and user experience. They are known as core web vitals.
There are three core web vitals as follows:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The speed of landing page content rendering
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): The time taken for the browser to respond to the visitor’s first input
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The extent of the page’s layout shifts while loading
PageSpeed Insights by Google is a powerful tool that helps retrieve these details.
Take a look at this screenshot to understand what the report looks like.
Source: Core Web Vitals Report for wikipedia.org
3. Go Through the Indexation Analysis:
An indexation analysis can help you determine the website pages indexed by the search engines. Not indexing the search engines implies that the search results don’t show your website pages. As a result, your search engine ranking gets affected, and you are not able to rank for some keywords. Google Search Console helps you track your indexation in the Index Coverage Report.
4. Examine the Sitemap:
Search engine crawlers use sitemaps to navigate through websites. A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the pages on the website and depicts the store structure. Of course, almost all CMS and eCommerce platforms automatically formulate the store’s XML sitemaps. Just check whether they are correctly generated.
If it’s not there, upload the sitemap to Google Search Console and click Sitemap in the left-hand menu bar. Then, click SUBMIT to mention the store’s sitemap URL in the “Add a new sitemap” bar.
5. Check the Store’s Security Settings:
Employ HTTPS for your website without fail. It encrypts the messages exchanged between the visitor’s web browser and the website. Hence, it prevents the security breach of confidential information such as user passwords and card details. It will also build trust with users and facilitate the decision-making process. Not having a secure website will mark the Google Chrome browser as ‘Not Secure.’ HTTPS encryption drives more organic traffic to your website, thereby bringing more conversions.
Here’s what the URL bar of a secure website looks like.
Source: Amazon
6. Have a Mobile Responsive Store:
According to Google algorithms, mobile responsiveness is an important parameter for search engine rankings. Having a slow website or non-responsive store will interfere with your search engine rankings. If you are looking for actionable insights into how to create a mobile-friendly store, read on…
- Compress the image size.
- Keep the font size easily readable on small screens
- Make sure you make minimal usage of JavaScript or disable it
- Design responsive eCommerce stores that automatically resize according to the screen size
- Test the loading speed and rendering of your store on different devices
7. Check for Broken Links:
If the page linked to the URL gets moved or deleted, it leads to broken links. This ruins the entire customer experience, as visitors are unable to find the content they are looking for. Several tools, like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog, check broken links. According to the report, you can correct the link or redirect it.
8. Delete Duplicate Content or Canonicalize It:
Google is quite forgiving of duplicate content. However, for eCommerce stores, item descriptions and user guides often have similar content. As a result, search engines will get confused and end up indexing the wrong page. You can use tools like Siteliner to make sure that there’s no duplicate content on your site. In addition, you can add canonical tags to let the search engines know which pages should be indexed.
9. Check the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions:
An eCommerce site audit involves evaluation of the title tags and meta descriptions of every page. Make sure that the title tags are accurate and descriptive. Your meta descriptions should be clear, concise, and pertinent to the users’ search keywords. Screaming Frog will show you the page titles and meta descriptions of all pages at a go.
10. Assess the Existing Category Pages:
Overlooking the category pages is a grave mistake. They are as important as product pages because they let the search engine crawlers know the website’s hierarchy. Check whether the URLs follow your category pages.
If you want to optimize the on-page SEO, just follow these simple tips:
- Incorporate all the target keywords in the page title tags and meta descriptions.
- Utilize breadcrumbs so that customers can easily browse through product pages and category pages.
- Add attractive, high-resolution product images that compel the visitors to complete the purchase.
11. Check the Product Pages:
High-converting eCommerce websites have product pages ranking high in the search engines. They attract more organic traffic and drive maximum sales. Check the rankings of your product pages and see their performance over time. In case you see dwindling SEO rankings, here are some tips to help you out.
- Optimize the images by adding Alt-text so that the pages can be easily indexed. It also makes the pages more accessible.
- Draft keyword-rich and accurate page titles and meta descriptions.
- Incorporate keywords naturally so that they don’t look forced.
- Include structured data for better crawlability and indexability.
- Leverage discounts, coupon codes, and free shipping to attract visitors to your website.
- Add FAQs, customer testimonials, and success stories to increase conversions through your product pages.
12. Check the Internal Links:
A hyperlink connecting two pages on a website is called an internal link. It enhances the crawlability of your website while letting the search engines get a clear picture of your website structure. As it spreads significant link juice throughout your eCommerce website, it increases the search engine rankings of individual pages.
13. Go Through Your Backlinks:
Unless you have high-quality backlinks, you won’t be able to boost your search engine rankings. As a best practice, you must check your competitors’ backlinks and build links already being used by them. Moreover, you must publish high-quality articles with good keyword opportunities. Write guest posts to get backlinks and increase your store visibility.
14. Carry Out a Content Gap Analysis:
Over time, your existing content becomes outdated, and you must update it with the latest information. You also have to publish new content according to current trends and customer demands. By conducting a content gap analysis, you can figure out what to write about and the content pieces that need to be elaborated on or updated.
15. Check the Website Navigation:
An eCommerce website has to be user-friendly, with a quick login, convenient checkout process, and secure payment gateway. Make sure your store offers a pleasant shopping experience with multiple payment options. For mobile stores, you must have a hamburger menu so visitors can easily browse the website, even on smaller screens. After all, you wouldn’t want your visitors to abandon the carts and leave without making the purchase.
Wrapping Up
eCommerce audit service is an indispensable aspect of business growth. Without audits, you won’t be able to detect the flaws in your eCommerce store and correct them. Despite being an exhausting and somewhat costly process, eCommerce audit is totally worth the effort and money. And the step-by-step points discussed here will surely make things easier for you. As a pro tip, ask the right questions before hiring an eCommerce audit professional so that you can make an informed decision.
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Disha works as a Sr. Content Writer at Krish TechnoLabs. She is a dentist, who has found her calling in words & technical subjects. She loves to pen down travelogues and romantic short stories in her free time.
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