UX Audit | WordPress | Heavenly Smooth
I had some great volunteers in the Running In Heels Bidness Tips & Tricks Facebook Group offering for me to ruthlessly critique their website - don't worry, I always try to be kind!
Pam has developed a range of delicious body scrubs and lip balms, and has recently launched her WordPress site. I took a quick look and here is my feedback:
SEO Audit
I ran a quick report using this great (free) tool, and there were a few things I noticed straight off that I would be changing ASAP:
The website's Google preview is really important (I've got some great simple SEO tips on the blog), ensure that the Meta Title and Meta Description includes some great keywords, and ideally a call to action:
I would look at changing the Meta Title to something like:
"Heavenly Smooth Body Scrubs & Lip Balms | Handmade in NZ"
And adding a Meta Description something along the lines of:
"Heavenly Smooth specialise in affordable body scrubs and lip balms in delicious flavours like Island Bliss, Hawaiian Blue and Mandarin Mimosa. Hand blended in NZ and packaged in recyclable glass. Shop online for a tropical treat your skin will thank you for."
Adding alt text to images on a website is another simple way to improve the site's SEO. Use the keywords that the target market will be typing into Google to find products or services like those on the site.
Google Analytics allows site owners to get information about the visitors to the site - where they are visiting from, what pages they are visiting, how long they are staying for etc.
A Favicon is what shows up on a browser tab for visitors to the site - this is a nice aesthetic.
Word on the street is that a website with a secure connection will rank better than a non-secure site. Some users will receive a warning when visiting the site (or more important, attempting to purchase), advising them that the site isn't secure - for obvious reasons, this isn't ideal.
Side note: The above "issues" are usually part of a website build when working with a web designer or developer - these are good things to confirm that they will be doing on your behalf when building your site.
Home Page
This popup shows pretty much instantly when a visitor hits the homepage. The recommended wait time is 30-60 seconds so that potential customers have had time to engage with the brand and the products before asking for personal information. It is also recommended to incentivise this collection of email addresses.
Side note: I personally don't use pop-ups (because I find them annoying when I visit a site, and find that a lot of EDM's don't add value either), I would prefer to re-target web visitors with a Facebook or Instagram ad, but I know there is a lot of material that encourages "list building" so I get it!
I would change "Products" to "Shop" on the menu, and have this as the first thing on the menu, followed by About Us and Contact Us.
I would move the "Our Products" tiles above the large graphic on the home page (the flavour sensations could be displayed on the banners instead), and possibly consider refining the content on the tile below - it's quite a long paragraph.
It's also good to consider whether content is being duplicated across the site or if it's fresh content using keywords and synonyms. The Google Bots are pretty clever and have been known to penalise duplicated content.
About Us Page
I would add some links within the content below. Link "Heavenly Smooth body scrubs" to the body scrubs collection, and link each of the flavours to the individual products. Not only does this help SEO, it encourages your customers to go to the products. I'd also fix the "amp" issue
Product Collections
I would add some keyword rich content to each collection page, as well as a link to any other collections available in the store:
I would change "...Body Scrubs" (plural) to "...Body Scrub" (singular) on each of the product listing titles.
For me, as a potential customer, these styled product pics:
Are more enticing than these more standard product pics:
Are more enticing than these more standard product pics:
I would still leave those images in the gallery in the product listing, but consider changing the "cover photo" for each product, so that the more enticing styled pic shows up in the collection page:
Product Listings
It's important to make sure that the product descriptions include keyword rich content to help with on page SEO. Make sure that the keywords (and synonyms) being used are the same as those that the target market is using to try and find the products or services offered (I wrote a blog about that here).
I would add information within the product listing about how many "uses" in each size. Eg: The 100g body scrub includes approximately 10 scrubs, the 250g body scrub includes approximately 25 scrubs.
I would also link to each of the other body scrub flavours from each product listing, again for SEO purposes as well as to encourage web visitors to spend more time on the site.
I would consider adding some additional information to this section that is genuinely additional information, or removing this section from the product listing.
I am not a web designer (but I know people who are), but I can help with on page SEO and content writing for websites, don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like a UX audit performed on your site.
