This is a comprehensive guide on how to optimize your eCommerce pet products site in 2022.
In this in-depth guide you’ll learn:
- An explanation of what eCommerce optimization is
- Why eCommerce optimization is essential
- 10 ways to optimize your eCommerce pet store
So if you’re ready to boost your store’s conversions with our expert strategies, this guide is for you.
Let’s jump right in.
What is eCommerce Optimization?
Before we begin, it’s important to define eCommerce optimization and its purpose. This way, you’ll have a better framework and understanding as you read our 10 optimization strategies.
In essence, eCommerce optimization is the process of improving your website to increase your conversion rate, revenue, and customer loyalty.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to optimize your eCommerce pet store. There’s always room for improvement, from simple actions such as creating new banner images to more complex tasks like re-designing your entire homepage.
That’s the key to eCommerce optimization.
It’s to realize that your website always has potential for improvement. Therefore, eCommerce optimization is an ongoing process of brainstorming new ideas and testing them to analyze their effectiveness.
Next, let’s discuss why eCommerce optimization is so crucial for eCommerce pet stores in 2022.
Why You Need to Optimize Your eCommerce Pet Products Website
The best way to explain why eCommerce optimization is essential is to walk through an example.
In this example, let’s say your eCommerce pet products site has a conversion rate of 2%. If your website has 5,000 visitors per day, you will average 100 sales per day.
Let’s further say that your average order value is $50. This means your daily revenue averages to be about $5,000.
Now, imagine you implemented some of the eCommerce optimization strategies in this guide and improved your conversion rate to 4%.
If your website continues to receive 5,000 visitors per day, your store will average 200 sales per day. With the same average order value of $50, your daily revenue would be $10,000.
Based on this example, you doubled your store’s average daily revenue just by implementing optimization tactics.
The goal of eCommerce optimization is to extract as much value from your current visitors as possible. Whether you’re spending ad dollars on website traffic or not, each visitor is a potential goldmine.
eCommerce optimization aims to make your website more attractive for each visitor, increasing the chances of the visitor making a purchase.
Therefore, eCommerce optimization is a completely different monetization strategy than advertisements and paid marketing. It’s all about making your website, products, and brands more appealing to every visitor who comes into your pet products store.
In the eCommerce pet products space, you compete with massive brands like Petco, PetSmart, and Chewy. There are also dozens of niche and specialty brands. For this reason, it’s crucial to make your website stand out above the others through well-crafted eCommerce optimization strategies.
10 Optimization Tactics to Improve Your eCommerce Pet Store
At this point, you should have a clear understanding of why eCommerce optimization is so powerful. It allows you to increase your store’s revenue and conversion rate without needing to modify your paid advertisements.
Finally, let’s dive into the list of 10 optimization tactics to improve your eCommerce pet store.
1. Create Detailed Product Pages
The first eCommerce optimization tactic is to create detailed product pages. Pet owners treat their pets just like their children. For this reason, you must give them all the information they need to confidently make a purchase.
If the pet owner has a question not answered in your product description, they may abandon your website and never return.
So let’s discuss the key sections you need to include on your product pages.
Product Details
Here’s an example of a highly elaborate product detail section from Chewy. This is the product detail section from a dog food product.
As you can see, this product description includes key product highlights and a detailed overview of the product. This section also includes the product benefits such as ‘support healthy skin and a lustrous coat’ and ‘highly digestible to help support optimal nutrient absorption’.
Rather than only describing the product, you must clearly explain the product’s benefits in your product descriptions. Pet owners want the best lives for their pets. For this reason, they want to know how your product can improve their pet’s life.
Nutritional Information
For food products, it’s essential to include nutritional information on the product page. Some pets have particular diets given by a veterinarian, so pet owners will need to know this information.
Here’s an example from Chewy.
As you can see, the nutritional information section lists the product’s ingredients, caloric content, and guaranteed analysis. This way, pet owners can see if there are any ingredients their pet is allergic to before purchasing the product. Showing the calorie count is also important because overweight pets may be on restrictive diets.
Feeding Instructions
You also need to include feeding instructions for pet food products.
Take a look at this example from Chewy:
The chart displays how much the pet owner needs to feed their dog based on how much the dog ways. It also recommends slowly transitioning the dog to the new food to avoid digestive issues.
Product Videos
For non-pet food products, you can also include a product video that showcases how the product works.
Here’s an example:
This video is for a cat tree product. The video shows cats playing on the cat tree, and the narrator explains how the product works and what the product variants are. Product videos are outstanding because they answer most questions a potential customer wants to know about the product. Plus, they get a first-hand look at what the product is like in real life.
2. Design a Warm and Friendly Homepage
Your next task is to design a warm and friendly homepage that showcases your pet product site’s best offers.
Here’s a lovely example from Downtown Pet Supply:
As you can see, the homepage banner showcases a high-quality image of a happy and playful dog. Additionally, the banner uses the wording ‘Happy Pets Shop Here‘. Happiness, joy, and love are the first emotions that come up when people think about their pets.
By showcasing these emotions on your website’s homepage, your pet products brand is more relatable and charismatic to new website visitors.
The homepage also showcases Downtown Pet Supply’s best promotion, their free shipping. You can see that the free shipping promotion is in the announcement banner and header image. This way, visitors will clearly understand that they receive free shipping on all orders.
Make sure to clearly display your eCommerce pet products store’s best promotions on your website’s homepage.
Here’s another example of a well-designed home page from Chewy:
Chewy uses a friendly and cheerful banner image that expresses happy emotions. Furthermore, Chewy displays the best promotion, ‘35% off your first order with Autoship’.
You can also see that Chewy offers free 1 to 3 day shipping on orders over $49.
3. Showcase Your Best Products
You can optimize your eCommerce website by showcasing your best selling products. Best seller sections are effective because people naturally want to buy what others are buying. This is because people assume if a product has a lot of sales, it’s an excellent product.
Let’s take a look at an example:
As you can see, this eCommerce pet products site has a ‘Trending This Week’ and ‘Top Selling Products’ sections. The ‘Trending This Week’ section shows the best selling products of the current week. The ‘Top Selling Products’ section shows the best selling products of all time.
Here’s another example from Petco:
Rather than showing the individual best selling products, Petco displays the top rated products from different product categories. This way, website visitors can find the best products for the exact product they’re searching for.
4. Use Clear Category Icons
Depending on how many pets your store offers products for, it’s crucial to use clear category icons. Through clear category icons, pet owners can easily find products for their specific.
Without clear category icons, your website visitors may have difficulty locating their pet’s products, causing them to leave your website.
Here’s an outstanding example from Petco:
This category section is displayed directly under the homepage banner. Therefore, website visitors will instantly see it when they land on the website.
Petco does a great job with their product category section because they use authentic animal images instead of only text. As such, the buttons are easier to click. It’s also easier for visitors to find products for their pets.
This is also beneficial for mobile browsers because they can find the product category they need without going into the website’s navigation menu.
In addition to clear category icons for pets, you can offer unique category icons.
Here’s an example:
As you can see, the ‘New & Trending’ section shows products for pharmacy, pride, vital care, flea & tick, and many more.
These are unique product categories that may be useful to certain pet owners. For example, if the pet owner is worried about the mental health of their pet, they can click the ‘Mental Health’ category to find valuable products.
You can also add animal specific categories directly on your homepage, as seen here:
Since this section is on Petco’s homepage, pet owners can easily find the product category they’re searching for without even touching the website’s navigation menu.
In summary, you need to make it as effortless as possible for your website visitors to find what they’re searching for. If your visitors have trouble navigating your website, there’s a low chance of making the conversion.
5. Write Actionable and Helpful Blog Posts
The best way to build a loyal customer base is to impact their lives beyond just selling products to them. For this reason, we recommend writing actionable and helpful blog posts.
Pet owners want the best for their pets, so they are willing to learn all sorts of different information to accommodate their adorable pets.
Example Blog Content for eCommerce Pet Stores
Here’s an example of some great eCommerce pet products site blog content:
You should create content on the information you’re an expert on. For example, if you have a wealth of experience training dogs, write articles about dog training advice and tips. If you don’t have any pet expertise, we recommend hiring a specialist to create your content.
The key to creating excellent content that actually gets read is to offer handy advice on topics people are curious about.
For this reason, you may need to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist. SEO is the process of improving your website’s visibility on Google through the use of certain keywords.
Search Engine Optimization
For example, if you write a blog post titled ‘Best 11 Dog Training Tips in 2022’, the goal of SEO is to make your article appear on the first page of the Google search results page when somebody searches for ‘dog training tips’.
You can also ask your previous customers if they have any suggestions on what topics to write about. If one person is interested in a particular topic, many others are probably interested too.
Furthermore, the articles should be highly-detailed and action-oriented. Rather than giving a vague overview of the topic, you need to provide real examples, pictures, and step-by-step advice. The goal of your blog posts is for people actually to follow your advice.
Suppose somebody follows the advice in your guide and it has a positive impact on their relationship with their pet. In that case, there’s a high chance the person will become a lifelong supporter of your eCommerce pet products brand.
Here’s another example of blog content from Heads Up For Tails:
As you can see, Heads Up For Tails creates a lot of content about dog health and maintenance. These are practical guides for dog owners who want to learn how to care for their dogs properly.
6. Create High-Quality Banner Images
Your website likely has multiple banner images. Images are the most essential aspect of your website because people will look at images before reading any text.
Therefore, you must create high-quality banner images. This way, your website appears more legitimate, professional, and trustworthy. Every element on your website dictates what people assume about your brand. Therefore, the higher quality images your use, the higher quality your brand will be perceived.
These banner images include your main banner images as well as the additional ones on your homepage and across your website. Each banner image needs to be eye-catching.
Here are some great examples of banner images for eCommerce pet product stores:
This image does four things well:
- It shows a happy image of a dog about to eat a treat
- There are five different products on display
- The image announces the 25% off promotion
- There is an actionable CTA through the ‘Shop Now’ button
Even though the image includes all these elements, it isn’t cluttered or distracting. In fact, the image is simple to understand and easy to look at.
Here’s another banner image that includes the four crucial elements:
And another one:
And one more:
As you can see, all of these banner images display happy emotions and are incredibly well-designed. Moreover, it’s easy to understand what type of products the website will show when you click on the banner.
We recommend you take inspiration from these designs to create your own banner images.
7. Create a Detailed FAQ Page
Our next eCommerce optimization tactic is to create a detailed FAQ page. Since you have many new visitors viewing your website every day, they may have questions about your brand and products.
For this reason, the FAQ page aims to answer any question a potential customer has. This way, they don’t need to go through the process of contacting customer support to get the help they need.
Most people are hesitant to reach out to customer support unless they really want to purchase something. As such, an FAQ page is there to offer the help they need.
Here’s an example of a well-made FAQ page:
As you can see, this FAQ page has different sections for:
- Generally asked questions
- Size chart instructions
- Shipping and order tracking
- and much more
You can write your own FAQ section based on common questions you receive from customers. However, we recommend offering clear information on your shipping and returns processes. Many online shoppers may be unwilling to make a purchase unless you have a no-hassle returns policy.
8. Increase Your Average Order Value
You can increase your eCommerce pet store’s average order value through well-curated upsells and cross-sells. If you don’t know what these terms mean, upselling and cross-selling are when you display complementary and related products to each visitor.
Here’s an example:
The ‘Frequently Bought Together’ section, as shown above, is directly under the product description of a product page. This section includes complementary products to the product on the product page.
A ‘Frequently Bought Together’ section is effective because it displays high-potential products to the website viewer. For example, if you didn’t include this section on the product page, the customer may go to the checkout page with only a single item in their cart.
With this section included, you have the potential to get the customer to purchase more items. Thus, increasing your store’s average order value.
However, it’s crucial only to display complementary products and not a slew of random products.
Here is another example of a cross-sell section:
Finally, here’s an example of the perfect upsell section:
This is another section that should be included near the bottom of each product page. As you can see, this table is extremely helpful because it compares the ingredients, dietary restrictions, and much more. This way, pet owners can easily find the best product for their pets.
You can also include product add-ons in your visitor’s shopping cart, as seen here:
To learn more, check out part one and part two of our eCommerce average order value masterclass.
9. Create Product FAQ and Product Review Sections
If you don’t have product FAQ and review sections on each of your product pages, we recommend adding them immediately.
Here’s an example of a product FAQ section:
The product FAQ section allows visitors to ask questions about specific products. Then, you can answer their query, and they’ll receive a notification from their email. Furthermore, the questions and answers are permanently displayed on the product page, helping future customers who have the same question.
You also need product review sections that include pictures.
Here’s a great example:
Product review sections are vital nowadays because the modern online shopper always looks at reviews before buying something. First-time visitors may not have the confidence to make a purchase unless they see the product has great reviews.
Check out part one and part two of our eCommerce product review masterclass to learn more.
10. Implement Autoship for Recurring Orders
Our last optimization strategy is to implement Autoship. This is a program that acts as a subscription service for your products. For example, with Aftership, customers can choose to have the product automatically sent out every month.
Here’s an example of how Autoship works:
You should clearly showcase the savings provided if the customer uses Autoship:
Here is another example of how to promote Aftership on your eCommerce pet products store’s homepage:
And another detailed overview of Autoship, explaining all of its features to your customers:
Now It’s Your Turn
I hope you enjoyed our guide on the 10 ways to optimize your eCommerce pet products site. With help from this guide, you learned actionable advice that can impact your store’s conversion rate and revenue.
We recommend implementing each optimization strategy individually rather than implementing them all at once. This way, you have time to innovate and add fresh ideas to each optimization tactic.
Now I’d love to hear from you:
Which strategy from today’s eCommerce pet products guide is your favorite?
Are there any optimization strategies we forgot to mention?
Do you have any additional questions about eCommerce optimization?
Let me know your thoughts by leaving a quick comment down below!