Ecommerce and online selling continue to grow despite the challenges of the pandemic, unemployment, and inflation. In fact, according to Statista, online retail sales is predicted to reach $6.51 trillion by 2023 wherein ecommerce websites will cover about 22.3% of total retail sales. That growth is expected to increase even further in the US in the next couple of years, jumping from $907.9 billion in 2022 to $1.4 trillion in 2025.
In fact, here are a couple of other important ecommerce statistics every business owner should take note of.
– About 230.5 million US shoppers have purchased goods & services online in 2022 (Tidio)
– In the second quarter of the US alone, retail ecommerce sales increased by 2.7% from the previous quarter, arriving at $257 billion.
– Roughly 63% of shopping journeys start online
– 61% of online consumers in the US made purchase based on a blog’s recommendation.
That said, it’s important that small ecommerce businesses continue to work hard at optimizing their digital marketing efforts to capture that growth in sales and revenue as well.
For situations like these, it’s especially important to take on a long-term approach in your marketing efforts. Thankfully, that’s exactly what SEO offers.
The benefits of ecommerce SEO are great and many (not to mention relatively free and organic). Building a website that’s able to capture a substantial amount of traffic is important for every online business. In fact, here are a few of those benefits you may be missing out on if you haven’t yet set an SEO plan or strategy in place.
1. Increase in the Quality of Your Traffic
Building a proper SEO strategy requires keyword research, which requires that marketing and entrepreneurs dig into the mindset and behaviors of their ideal customers. Because of this, marketers are bound to seek out keywords that are highly relevant to their products and services.
Some keywords like, “cheap sweatshirts for sale” for example have higher buying intent than others. This means that the people that click through to your website after searching that keyword are far more likely to make a purchase than someone who simply typed in “sweatshirts”.
2. Generate Consistent, Sustainable Traffic
One of the biggest benefits of search engine optimization is the fact that a bit of investment of your time and efforts at the start can yield you quality results for years and years. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving, a gift you’d certainly want to give to your ecommerce business.
Yes, there are other ways to drive traffic to your website, such as pay-per-click ads or organic and paid social media posts. However, all these require you to consistently put out money in order to maintain the level of traffic you’re receiving. SEO cuts through that payment wall and simply delivers you the traffic you need without you having to pay an exorbitant amount in advertising.
3. It Encourages You to Create a Better Customer Experience
SEO doesn’t stop on the first page of Google. It continues on in how users interact with your website.
Does it load quickly? Are the menus confusing? Does your home page look too cluttered and overwhelming? These are some questions every ecommerce business must take into account when building and optimizing their website. And because of this, you’re virtually forced to prioritize customer experience above everything else to make sure that visitors go from clicking a link to checking out their purchases.
There are far more benefits of ecommerce SEO than just these three. This is merely scratching at the surface. Nevertheless, these three are the biggest, most important and most impactful benefits that you’ll be giving your business once you start pursuing search engine optimization.
If you’re looking to get started, then, optimizing your website for organic traffic, check out Genius Ecommerce for all the latest tips, tricks, strategies, and news.
