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Your online store can be a real money maker. Unfortunately, stiff competition, poor site performance, and weak SEO can get in the way. If you are struggling to find a solution that will help you enhance the performance of your e-commerce business, take a look at the following tools. They will help you improve search engine ranking, and increase customer engagement.
1. WebPageTest
Online shoppers are impatient. In fact, it doesn’t take them very long to ditch a page that’s loading slowly. You have a few seconds to make something happen. E-commerce sites that perform well have a measurable advantage. In fact, an online beauty supply store increased sales by more than 16% by boosting page load time.
WebPageTest is designed just for this purpose. It analyzes your website’s loading speed from multiple locations using real browsers. Then, it identifies the issues that could be causing slowdowns. Use this to improve customer experience, and to reduce performance related bounces.
2. iLoveIMG
Naturally, your WooCommerce store is full of images. This is a good thing. Images allow you to present your products in a way that text simply cannot. The only problem is that without optimization, images can slow down your website and cause mobile performance issues. If you try to manually optimize your images, one at a time, you could be facing an enormous task.
iLoveIMG can help. This online image editing tool is perfect for compressing, cropping, resizing, and editing your image files all in one place. Betty Myers, a copywriter for Flash Essay, shares, “I’m often approached by clients who understand that image optimization plays an important role in page performance. The problem is they lack the graphic design background to handle this task solo. I gladly recommend ‘I love Image’ as a solution designed for the layperson.”
3. Yoast WooCommerce SEO Plugin
Yoast is considered as the premier developer for SEO plugins. Its WooCommerce SEO plugin is no exception. Brands that use it can expect improved SERP in Google and other search engines, faster and easier access to product pages from search engines, and improved search engine displays. In fact, the WooCommerce SEO plugin by Yoast is one of the ten most frequently downloaded plugins active today.
You can also use the tool to increase social engagement with your products. With the Yoast plugin, you can create Twitter product cards to gain product exposure directly on your Twitter account. Not only that, when people share your products on Facebook, you can control the information and attributes that people see.
4. Online Writers Rating, Grammarly, Hemingway App
In addition to having a visually attractive store, your content matters as well. Online Writers Rating, Grammarly, and Hemingway are all resources you can use for content writing assistance. Use these to ensure that your content is SEO friendly, engaging, and of the highest quality.
You need high-quality blog posts, clear and informative product descriptions, web content, and more to get customers interested in your products. By hiring a professional to help for these writing tasks, you are making a worthwhile investment in your e-commerce store.
5. Order Delivery Date
Logistics is something that isn’t often considered enough in small e-commerce. Order Delivery Date can take much of the complexity out of managing deliveries and due dates. This tool allows customers to select the delivery date and time that’s convenient for them. Then, it coordinates all of these dates and times within the Google calendar.
Christopher K. Mercer, a digital marketer and founder of Citatior says, “I have gotten great feedback from small business clients who appreciate having the ability to charge different rates for different delivery dates. They are able to accommodate rushed or special requests, while still being compensated for doing so.”
6. Blog Vault
Over 400K WordPress sites use BlogVault to ensure their websites are fully backed up. It is the most reliable backup service available, and should anything go wrong with your WooCommerce store, you can be at peace. You’ll have a backup of up to 90 days of posts, product information, even your database.
Gwen Miller, a web developer at Resumes Centre states, “There is no such thing as a bulletproof website. Even if you take every precaution, there is a chance your WooCommerce site can crash or be targeted by hackers. With BlogVault, you can get back online quickly. That can make all of the difference.”
Final Thoughts
The difference between a WooCommerce site that creates plenty of sales, and one that doesn’t can depend largely on the tools you use. Try some of the tools listed here to boost sales, SEO, site security, and engagement.
This is a guest post by Jessica Fender, an independent blogger, and marketing consultant. She is a comb-shaped marketer, keen on creating innovative and customer-friendly strategies for business growth. She has been featured on Freelancer.com and Addicted2Success. You can follow Jessica on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
