What are the top website optimization mistakes you’re making in 2021?

With ecommerce swiftly becoming the preferred way to both browse and purchase, what with approximately 2.14 billion global buyers that is only expected to continue growing in coming years, to be making common website optimization errors means leaving money on the table.

Here are the common pitfalls you may be falling prey to (and what to be doing instead):

#1: Duplicating Your Website Content

While not a direct penalty against your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts, duplicating your website content does negatively impact a search engine’s ability to index your content.

Why does this matter? Well, indexing decrees how easily findable your business is online. When the search engine cannot easily index your pages, which is the case when content is duplicated across multiple pages, it will be forced to pick one page to link to versus dividing its efforts. This results in damaged SEO rankings and losses in website traffic due to one page being indexed and linked versus all of your website’s pages being indexed and linked.

What to do instead: Ensure that each of your website’s pages do not have the same information copy-pasted, especially if you are looking to have your website rank for specific keywords. A blog is a popular way of doing this; even we here at Time2getonline.com utilize blogs to add variety to our pages’ content!

#2: Not Optimizing For Mobile

Mobile e-commerce sales have been projected to reach a staggering $3.56 trillion by the end of 2021, which is 22.3% more than the $2.91 trillion recorded earlier in the year.

This means that not optimizing for mobile equals leaving money on the table. With the bulk of consumers and potential clients accessing websites through their mobile devices, not approaching your business’s website with the mindset of “mobile-first” is a common pitfall that can lead to increased bounce rates and lower traffic rates than your competitors.

What to do instead: Optimizing for mobile can look like:

  • Redefining or refreshing your website’s aesthetic to play nice on small screens
  • Creating a consistent user experience across all platforms, mobile and desktop alike
  • Testing your website’s mobile-friendliness using online tools
  • Using visitor surveys to pinpoint their likes and dislikes concerning your existing site
  • Improving your website’s mobile loading speed by implementing caching, using a Content Delivery Network, minifying your code, compressing all available images, and, of course, keeping your business’s website up-to-date

#3: Having Cluttered Category Pages

Ease of use is, undoubtedly, one of the #1 factors that determine whether or not your business is bought from online.

Having cluttered category pages that are difficult for consumers to navigate is a sure-way way to have them abandon their cart. This could include not having a search feature for your site, not having the categories appropriately labelled, or having too many category sub-sections that, in turn, unwittingly turn your website’s online store into a maze.

What to do instead: As with most things e-commerce related, simplicity is key. Ensure that your product and category pages are conversion-oriented by clearly organizing and labelling your categories, having a search feature, and being conservative with the number of sub-categories to avoid potential client overwhelm.

Time2GetOnline.com Can Help

While the Time2GetOnline.com headquarters is located here in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, we proudly service clients around the globe.

Contact us today to optimize your website today.