Joomla is a fantastic open-source software platform that is perfect for an eCommerce project. With its ease of use and extensive security features, you’d be hard pushed to find a better alternative. Once you've chosen your platform there are a number of best practice activities you can put in place to make sure you’re maximizing sales through your online store.
Choosing the Right Joomla Website Template
Choosing the right template is vital for SEO and for user experience. At the very least your template should be mobile friendly and quick to load. You should also consider how easy it is to navigate around the website, what category options are available and if you can include filters in product searches.
For example, the Shoes template is responsive Joomla template powered by VirtueMart e-commerce component. As its name says, it's primarily developed for companies that are selling shoes and accessories online. There are many other Joomla e-commerce templates available, so you should definitely take some time to make a selection..
Depending on your products you may also need space to upload warranty certificates or user manuals, so incorporating a downloadable media library is something you should consider too.
Getting Your SEO Right
If your website can’t be found by customers on search engines, then you are going to be spending a lot of money on marketing. There are some simple ecommerce SEO principles that you can follow including making sure pictures are optimized for websites and not blurry, creating SEO friendly product names based on what people are likely to search for and including at least 300 words on every page to help with search engine rankings. Getting backlinks to your site is also a great way to drive referral traffic from external sources.
Building a Focused Team
With the right systems and SEO in place, you need to turn to the team you have built to run the online store. If you have transitioned to new software or have a new team you could consider implementing a change management process to get everyone involved and open up vital lines of communication between the new team members. As a manager, it is down to you to deliver on the objectives and, having a motivated and communicative team behind you will help with the success of the site. Defining clear roles for each team member and setting personal, as well as team, targets will hold everyone accountable and will help to keep focus.
Implementing a Strong Product Information Management Process
Once you have a team in place that is motivated and are clear on their key responsibilities you can really begin to focus on driving more sales with better website content. Product Information Management is vital because it ensures every product on your website has the correct and most up to date information, including product specs and pictures.
Research has shown that 15-40% of online purchases are returned, a lot of which can be down to incorrect or incomplete product information on the website from which they were purchased. To easily manage high volumes of product information you can implement product information management software (PIM). There are a number of PIMs that can be connected to the Joomla open-source CMS, this makes catalog management much easier and more efficient and will help to boost those online sales.