There’s a simple housekeeping task that could have a major impact on your bottom line, according to ecommerce expert and Executive Vice President at MivaMerchant Rick Wilson.
Giving business sales tips and web strategy advice on this new business TV show, Wilson suggests ecommerce businesses ask themselves whether they are really sure what their customers see when they go to their website?
Wilson says that, typically, a business will test its website after changes are made by going to the homepage, clicking on the links, and checking that they all work. However, a more sophisticated internet strategy is required if businesses are to avoid seeing their best online business ideas going to waste.
The problem, according to Wilson, is that businesses often forget that Google, Yahoo, and the other major search engines all have their own memories. In his business development tips on the show, Wilson stresses that you must adjust your web strategy to take account of this fact.
“If the search engines have crawled your website before, the odds are that if you’ve changed the name of your pages, some people will still see the old pages when they come to your site via a search engine,” says Wilson.
In other words, instead of coming to your spanking new site packed with up-to-date content and deals, they will be confronted with an error message telling them that the page or product doesn’t exist.
You could be spilling thousands of dollars worth of sales out of the side of your website without realising it, says Wilson. Worst of all, online customers won’t contact you to inform you about the problem, they’ll just take their business elsewhere.
The rest of Wilson’s business development tips focus on how to get around this problem. Fortunately, the issue can be addressed fairly simply using tools like Google Analytics.
Watch the free show to hear Wilson’s
web strategy and sales advice on making the most of your business website.
