Do you find your routine life to be thrilling? And how eager are you ready for a change? Extend that thought a bit more if you are business owner. Once your business is stable and profitable, what next could be done to attract new customers? Are you still executing the same strategy, what was set up for a startup business?

Are you ready to revisit your startup strategy and look out for low priority issues [which were dumped under the carpet because of their priority] and rebuild your brand?

If answer to any of the above question is yes, your store needs to schedule a health check up. You don’t need to see a doctor; we would provide you with all symptoms and their remedies.

What does e-commerce Store Health check up means?

For a lucky person who has been staying in the same house since his childhood, if you blindfold him and ask to get stuff [condition that is kept that its original place] he could easily fetch the stuff, because we are so much used to our home and its stuff. Same thing applies to business as well, same dealers, same logistics crew, same timings, same budget that we could sometimes ignore the most trivial issue we could sort out and increase our revenue. The irony is that we know the issue exist [just right in front of us] but we keep it aside always and with time it gets amplified.

So an e-commerce store health checkup basically means revisiting the issue list across all departments on periodic basis, propose the solution, based on the solution revisit the strategy to tackle it and finally implement it.

What All could undergo a scanner for health check up in your e-commerce store

1. Products Listed images

2. Product Description

3. Website Policies

4. Website Pages

5. Offered Coupons

The Review Check List

So you know what is to be checked, but in the list above what are the other comprehensive things you need to take care –

1. Identify the gaps – You started something and even though you finished it, are there some items missed. Identify those gaps.
2. Obsolete Data – Get the redundant data out of your website. The offer which was just valid till last month, the products which are out of stock since last one year and many more like this.
3. SEO Health – How is your website performing against Search Engine optimization? Does it uses the right keywords, is it properly linked in Google ranking. Jot down these questions and evaluate your website performance

Operating Steps

So we know, what are the target areas we know what needs to be evaluated so let’s hit the operation table in a step by step process –

1. Check your report card - There are couple of tools available to rate your grade against different categories like SEO, Content Value, serviceability, Applicability, performance etc. One of the tools is provided by shopify termed as Shopify Ecommerce Store Grader. You can get a clear picture of where you stand in these categories.
Policy Review – For an e-commerce platform the major policies[are listed below], review them and find the loopholes. Also as an owner you can look at previous complaints registered by the customer and revise the policies accordingly. Many a times the customer complaints can provide a better insight to the policies made by the company. If needed, get legal aid , also you can check with other e-commerce platforms on how a particular problem is being resolved.

a. Purchase Policy

b. Return Policy

c. Shipping Policy

d. Exchange Policy

e. Privacy Policy

f. Account Creation Policy

g. Transaction Policy

2. Images Review – pictures speaks a thousand words and hence images are the crucial for your website. Many a times I have noticed that couple of e-commerce website doesn’t have the images of the product. That’s a big TURN OFF to the customer. If they are not able to see what they are about to buy, a big NO-NO is for sure. Also, make sure to have your images linked properly so that Google can tag and those can displayed in Google search. It would lead to optimization of web page and also increase your Google ranking
3. Review Product Description – The description provided to support your product should be crisp and helpful to the customer. Do not simply copy and paste it from what manufacturer has provided. It shouldn’t be gibberish and should make sense. Make sure to restrict the word count for each product description. The description should list all important information about the product and also should be persuasive that customer purchases it.
4. SEO Optimization – For webpage and also for product page and each product make sure to review and have a clean Title, meta description and URL on your webpage. This would in turn help in getting more visibility and also optimize your webpage so that it could result in more Google searches.
5. Redundant Data – Review the data present on your webpage. Is it all needed by customer? Could be removed or enhanced or need more details to it. Questions these when you are reviewing the data on your webpage
6. Missing Information – Check your contact pages, FAQ’s , Policies documentation . Is all up to date? Or there are missing links which need an update?
7. Offered Coupons – This is one of key point, where we miss to add an expiry date to the coupon and many website promote it, offering unnecessary discount on our products. So with clear mind, review the discounts offered, their validity and conditions to use them Delete the old coupons or mark an expiry date on them.

So once you are done with above steps the operation is complete for now. Book a reminder on your calendar to again conduct a health check up may be monthly, quarterly or half-yearly.

If you have decided for monthly check up, you can cut down on some of the operating steps so you can plan it like a monthly health check up [with fewer steps] and an yearly one [with all steps]

Finally

A health check up of your e-commerce store will ensure that the business owned by you works effectively and gives a hard hit to your competitors.