How eCommerce Web Design and SEO are Linked

In the eCommerce space, perhaps the two most talked about areas of any website are eCommerce web design and SEO. It is certainly no secret that each is important in its own individual way. An SEO campaign is necessary to help boost organic traffic and search engine rankings so that your website has more visibility. Many eCommerce business owners know this is important, but require the help of an agency to execute a structured plan.

In the same way, web design is important because the world focuses so much on aesthetics. Any business owner wants a professional website that looks good and will resonate with customers in order to attract them to stay. 

It may sound like these two items are complete opposites. Web design is a completely visual aspect and SEO is much less tangible and helps to bring people to a website. While SEO and web design have different tasks within the process, they are absolutely related. 

An area where these worlds collide is in customer experience. When customers shop online, they are taking a journey through a website to find the products they need or a solution to their problem and make a purchase based on that. SEO focuses on building up better rankings on result pages, building links that are appropriate and web design focuses on creating a website with more appeal visually, but both have the same end goal. The desired result is to lead the customer on that journey and have it end with a purchase. 

User experience, eCommerce web design, and SEO all share the common goal of pleasing the customer. The common thread is in the typical SEO journey. A prospective customer searches a term on a search engine and comes across your website. The first goal of SEO has been achieved. You have gained new traffic by doing keyword research and building content that reflects what is on youreCommerce site. But if your design and user experience are poor, there is nothing to offer the customer. When a user arrives at your website, they need to see that the questions they want answered can be answered within a few seconds, or at least provide guidance to the next step to get that answer. The faster you can address their questions and lead them to the end destination of getting what they need, all while giving a professional presentation and showcasing your brand, you are more likely to earn business.

So what can you do to make your eCommerce web design and SEO work together so that you have success? From the beginning, you need your design and SEO to go hand in hand and not be separate aspects of the website. There are a few common practices you should take to improve this.

Improve Page Loading Time – Even the slightest delay can drive away customers. You may be able to get people to your website with your search engine optimization efforts, but poor user experience will chase them away before you ever get the chance to even have them reach checkout or see the product. To get better site loading speeds, review your hosting plan and make sure you are on a reliable host. Make sure your website has high-quality images, but also decrease the size of these image files through cropping and compressing. 

Choose Responsive Design – If you want your eCommerce website to be successful, you have to make sure users can access it and easily use it no matter where they are. It is much more common today to see people browsing the web and completing online shopping on their mobile devices like tablets and phones than on a desktop. You certainly want to have a great website design for desktop computers and laptops, but you have to consider the design on tablets and phones. Having the design fit the device is what is known as responsive design, and you should absolutely make sure that your website is built using responsive design.

Use Good SEO Practices – Your SEO practices can also affect the way people experience your website. People are going to find your website based on the type of content you prepare. If your content is not of quality or misleading, this breaks trust with the reader and they are more likely to bounce from your website than stay because they were presented with different expectations in your content. When you write content, it should reflect the brand of the website. You should write longer blog posts that offer informative and engaging content that answers the questions readers have. You also want to fully optimize your content with meta tags, page title tags, and meta descriptions so it is recognized by search engines and drives traffic to your website.

At 1Digital Agency, we have the capability to help you with every aspect of your project from eCommerce web design to development to digital marketing and SEO. We have experts in all of these areas that have been helping clients like you since our inception in 2012.

The user experience you provide can determine what the visitor thinks of you and how they perceive you moving forward. The right design and SEO plan could help you build relationships with a number of visitors and turn them into regular customers or it could push them away. You obviously would prefer the former. So get the help you need to have an effective eCommerce website with quality design and a strategic SEO campaign. Contact 1Digital Agency for more information by calling 215-809-1567 or sending an email to info@1digitalagency.com.