Website Tips From an eCommerce Pro
If you sometimes wonder what advice an eCommerce pro would give about your website, you’re in the right place! I got to thinking the other day about the biggest things I would suggest to people about eCommerce, web design, and websites in general and I came up with this list. It’s certainly not comprehensive but I would say if you paid attention to just these 7 things you could take your site from novice to pro-level! Some are simple fixes, others are a little more abstract but I think all are totally doable!
When In Doubt, Cut It Out
I talk about this idea a bit more in this post about 3 Mistakes New Online Sellers Make but I think it bears repeating. And the good news is that it lightens your load as well! Overall, I think one of the things that really sets beginner websites apart from more professional ones is editing.
Over-explaining and providing too much information can be just as harmful as not providing enough so the key is to trim down copy and cut out the clutter. You want to inform but you also want people to be able to skim. (If you feel like you have a lot to say or tons of technical details you want to include, just make sure you have a great FAQ page to put all that info on so you can keep your main pages lean and mean.)
Keep Categories & Tags in Check
I talk about tags and categories as they pertain to shops in this post but this could also apply to your blog as well! Remember back in the day when blogs all had a ginormous sidebar with a crazy tag cloud that looked like this:
Hahahaha. Those were the days. To me, all this says is that this person had too many tags/categories! Take my blog, for example. I have only 5 major blog categories: eCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, Web Design, and Marketing. I have one bonus category called “Kristine Neil Studio” that I use sparingly for posts that are more personal or “behind-the-scenes” type posts. I have just over a dozen tags. That’s it. Keeping things minimal has a couple of benefits: 1) it keeps me focused on creating just the content that I know works and 2) it makes it easy for readers like you 👋 to find what they are looking for!
The same principle applies to shops as blogs - in fact, it’s probably even more important there. I sometimes see shops where some products have been tagged “blue” and others “Blue”. Well, that’s not helpful (tags are case sensitive) because if I’m looking for some blue suede shoes I may miss what I’m looking for because you’ve called them Blue suede shoes. So, just keep a really refined list, don’t add tags/categories at every whim, and make sure you’re not making a ginormous tag cloud mess of things by paying attention to spelling and case.
Learn to Love (or at Least Not Loathe) a Spreadsheet
If you have a store on Squarespace (and if you’re reading this, I’m betting you do!) the fact that you can view, edit, import, and export your products via CSV file is ✨magic✨. Want to update the prices of all the products in one particular category in bulk? Spreadsheet. Need to hide everything with a certain tag? Spreadsheet. Want to adjust inventory levels without needing to open every.single.product? Spreadsheet. Check out this post for more info on CSV product imports on Squarespace.
While you’re playing with spreadsheets you can also export customer profiles and order info to a sheet which is great for creating reports or extracting data to help in your marketing or advertising efforts.
Enable & Customize Your Abandoned Cart Emails
Cart abandonment causes eCommerce businesses to lose up to $18 Billion annually so it just makes sense to enable this built-in feature of your Squarespace website and yet so many people aren’t using it! This is such a simple way to bring back some lost revenue and even if a small percentage re-convert, it can still be a nice little boost to the bottom line.
You can check out this post for more about customizing your store’s email notifications, which includes everything you need to know about how to style and update all the emails your site sends (which includes cart abandonment emails).
If you’re looking for where to turn to enable Abandoned Cart Recovery on your own Squarespace website, it’s super easy! From your home screen just go to COMMERCE > CHECKOUT > enable ABANDONED CART EMAILS > hit save! That’s it! You’re in business!
Keep Your Header Navigation Simple
Your header navigation is the links that appear at the top of your site and contrary to popular belief, it’s not actually helpful to include links to everything there. You know that saying that says “if everything is important, nothing is”... well, it definitely applies here! If you have lots of important content, it’s better to organize it strategically into folders or by linking to it from your home page or other landing pages instead of trying to include links to everything in your header.
A popular trend that I am really liking these days is a mega footer instead! People are now used to seeing just the most important links at the top of the page but love being able to scroll to the bottom of a site to see more info. This is helpful because when you first land on a site a minimalist header allows you to quickly get an understanding of where to start or how to dig deeper. Keeping your header navigation simple is also much more mobile-friendly and is just another way you can make your small business look big.
White Space is Your Friend
A couple of items above refer to keeping things minimalistic in terms of content but some of the same principles should apply to the design of your site itself. In design terms, white space is the negative space where nothing is really happening (it doesn’t have to be white) and it’s an important tool you can use to help people take in and digest the information you’re presenting in a meaningful way.
Fun fact: did you know that when I was an undergrad I spent a couple of years teaching public speaking? I found it so rewarding and it’s funny: even though a lot of people say they have a fear of public speaking, I think the more frustrating thing is feeling like you’re just not being understood. The goal was always really to help students learn to better express themselves or communicate their ideas more clearly and effectively. Some of the techniques are just learning how to breathe when speaking and using pauses to create buffers around certain content to help it stand out or make a point.
White space in design is the visual representation of the same thing. It’s the design equivalent of not speaking in onelongrunonsentence and nevertakingabreath and makingeverythingruntogether. White space is just creating room for each point to live on its own and giving some things more prominence than others with hierarchy. It’s just slowing things down a bit so it doesn’t feel frantic. Something I love about Squarespace is that it’s just naturally going to help you create sections that have nice, even borders but don’t be afraid to use things like spacer blocks or padding to give things the space they deserve. (Looking for more on this topic? Check out my Minimalist’s Guide to Branding!)
Don’t Be Afraid to Be Real!
One of the last website tips I have for you regardless of which industry you’re in or what you sell or what your website goals are: don’t be afraid to be yourself! Even if you’re a big company, letting a little personality show through is way more alluring than being too poised and polished. Of course, you’ll need to determine what level of “raw” fits with your brand voice but with so many brands online competing for limited attention, the last thing you want to do is blend into the background.
I’ve mentioned this before but I used to be a perfectionist when it came to writing blog content. I would spend DAYS writing, re-writing, and scrutinizing every post. And while I certainly don’t advocate for any deliberate typos or misspelled words, once I stopped worrying about being perfect and just writing, blogging became one of my favorite things to do. It was great that it was no longer the log jam in my business but the unintended side effect: I realized that people liked my voice. If there are some mistakes here or there, it’s a reminder that a real human is on the other side of the screen. So, just being real helped me be able to create more content but also to create content that people actually liked. Win-win!
For you, being real may be using an appropriate dash of humor or writing some really witty copy. Maybe being real is telling people what you honestly think of one product over another or not being afraid to show your face every now and again. Letting people see what’s happening behind the scenes can also help you create a more empathetic brand. Whatever it is, the most engaging brands are the ones where we can see and feel the humans behind them.
