How to sell more online – optimisation for eCommerce

Article last updated in October 2025.

For a long time now, simply ‘being online’ has not been enough. Likewise, being easy to find in a search engine and delivering a fantastic user experience are fundamental to today’s buyers, who expect convenience, speed and accessibility across every channel

As more and more shopping shifts online, it’s the retailers who keep an eye on emerging trends and the strategies of their peers and rivals who are reaping the biggest eCommerce rewards.

Our award-winning work with an extensive range of eCommerce clients means we know that to maintain success and achieve growth, you need to be testing ways to optimise conversion rates, offering convenience across a variety of devices, and maximising every opportunity to engage with your customers.

Below, we’ve structured the most important areas of eCommerce optimisation around the customer journey – from search visibility through to checkout and retention.

1. Driving traffic: Search visibility & paid promotion

Organic search traffic remains one of the most valuable sources for eCommerce. By designing with both users and search engines in mind, you can improve visibility and rankings simultaneously. A fast, mobile-friendly site with clear navigation not only creates a better user experience but also ensures your site is crawlable.

Keyword research is particularly powerful here. Meaningful, relevant terms should run through your headers, product descriptions, image alt tags and meta titles. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends are a good starting point, but competitor analysis can also reveal gaps worth filling. Beyond general SEO, optimising for local search ensures your business appears for relevant queries in your area, helping drive both online traffic and footfall to physical locations.

Alongside organic efforts, paid promotion offers another lever. Shopping Campaigns are now a crucial part of most eCommerce strategies, allowing you to showcase product images, titles and prices above organic results. Remarketing campaigns are a powerful way to re-engage users who have left your site without completing a purchase, helping to recover potential lost revenue from cart abandonment. Their visual nature typically delivers stronger conversion rates than text-only ads.

You might also test display advertising, where banners and videos appear on relevant third-party websites, or remarketing campaigns, which re-engage visitors who left without converting. Tailored discounts or reminders can be enough to bring them back.

2. Browsing stage: Category & search pages

Once customers arrive on your site, the focus shifts to helping them find products quickly. A prominent search bar, ideally with autocomplete suggestions, can dramatically improve conversions. Printerland.co.uk found that customers were six times more likely to buy when autocomplete included product photos and prices, for example.

Making it easy for customers to find what they need quickly and address common pain points, such as difficulty locating products or filtering by size, colour, or price is another essential. Retailers like ASOS allow users to filter results by product type, size, colour, price and style, creating a smoother browsing experience.

Beyond search and filters, consider personalised cross-sell and up-sell suggestions. Showing alternatives when a product is out of stock, or recommending complementary items, helps maintain momentum towards a purchase.

3. Decision stage: Product pages

Product pages often make or break the sale. As a rule of thumb, they should be no more than three clicks away from your homepage.

To perform well, each product page needs more than technical accuracy. Compelling, unique descriptions paired with high-quality imagery and video help bring products to life. Adding customer reviews can boost trust significantly – research suggests conversion rates can increase by as much as 76% with reviews in place.

Another factor is semantic markup. By embedding structured data for pricing, availability and ratings, you make listings more eye-catching in search results, while also boosting their relevance in the eyes of search engines.

4. Checkout stage

A seamless checkout is essential. Calls-to-action should be clear, shopping baskets visible across the site, and the payment process kept short and simple. Since every customer must pass through checkout, it’s one of the first places to test for conversion rate improvements.

Supporting details also matter. Transparent shipping costs, easy-to-find returns information, and visible contact details all reassure customers at a critical moment. Fast load speeds and mobile-friendly forms reduce friction further.

5. Retention & loyalty

Winning the first sale is only part of the challenge. Retaining customers often delivers the best long-term ROI.

Reviews are a powerful lever here. Shoppers trust peers more than brands, so encouraging customer feedback – on your own site or platforms like TrustPilot – builds confidence. Short reviews in exchange for discounts on future purchases can help kickstart the process.

Email marketing is another proven channel. A well-crafted campaign with a compelling subject line, engaging imagery and a clear call to action can drive repeat visits. The key is consistency: email should form an ongoing dialogue, not just one-off promotions.

Social media, meanwhile, provides both inspiration and community. Platforms like Pinterest allow retailers such as Ikea to showcase aspirational ideas and how-to guides, while encouraging user-generated content. Visual content resonates deeply, with studies showing people respond far more strongly to images than text alone.

6. Mobile commerce

Mobile has overtaken desktop as the primary browsing and buying device, yet many retailers still underperform here. Google’s studies show that only five of the UK’s top 20 retail sites load in under two seconds – a major barrier to conversion.

Mobile shoppers tend to behave differently: they want information quickly, purchase impulsively and often spend more per transaction. Ensuring your site is responsive, streamlined and fast-loading is now essential. Simplified checkouts and larger, touch-friendly buttons are particularly important for removing friction.

7. Content & outreach

Great content sits at the heart of both customer experience and SEO. Every page – from detailed product descriptions and buyer guides to FAQs and lifestyle blogs – is an opportunity to inform, engage and persuade.

AO.com provides a strong example, with detailed product copy, in-depth buyer guides, and a lifestyle hub featuring reviews and video content. Investing in content like this builds trust and encourages repeat visits.

New/amended content: Outreach and relationship-building extend the value of your content beyond your own site. Collaborating with relevant bloggers, influencers, and publishers can:

• Amplify your content to new audiences
• Generate high-quality backlinks to strengthen SEO
• Enhance brand credibility and authority

These partnerships are long-term assets. By providing unique, high-value content that their audiences will find useful or inspiring, you not only drive referral traffic but also build lasting relationships with customers and industry peers.

Relationship-building also includes engaging directly with your customers through social media, reviews, and email campaigns. Encouraging user-generated content, responding to reviews, and maintaining ongoing dialogue via email all reinforce trust and loyalty, complementing your outreach efforts.

Final thoughts

Selling more online isn’t just about increasing traffic. It’s about guiding users smoothly from discovery through to purchase, then nurturing loyalty afterwards. By optimising each stage of the journey – visibility, browsing, product pages, checkout, retention and mobile – you not only increase conversions but also set your business up for long-term growth.

At Click Consult, we continually review our eCommerce clients’ performance and use these insights to shape future strategies. If you’d like to know how we can help optimise your eCommerce journey, get in touch with our team today.