Tag: Ahmedabad

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Ecommerce

Upselling & Cross-selling to increase sales on your Ecommerce website

Ecommerce Website

Indians spend close to 6 hours every day on the internet. And 50% of the overall online traffic is on online shopping websites looking for products and services. While this trend has gotten a lot of small businesses to start selling online too, many still lack the marketing strategy to capitalize on this trend. And to stand out amongst the multitudes selling online.

As a digital agency in Ahmedabad, focusing as an ecommerce website development company in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain, always suggests its clients to start upselling and cross-selling online as a part of their digital sales strategy. In short, this means building features on ecommerce websites that encourage customers to add more products to their cart during or even post checkout. But, what is the difference between upselling and cross-selling? And how can they be used more effectively to increase the size of each transaction and retain customers? Read on…

Upselling and cross-selling are commonly confused, but there is a key difference. While upselling focuses on increasing order value, cross-selling involves making a recommendation adjacent to the original product. So an upsell is more of an upgrade, whereas a cross-sell is a whole other purchase.

Wait, wait… Let’s try it with a more relatable example. When a hungry customer orders a burger at a McDonald’s, the guy on the other side of the counter says, “Would you like some fries to go with it?”

That’s a cross-selling pitch. Now, if the counter guy had said, “You can make this a Big Mac for just X rupees/dollars”. That is an upselling pitch. With the world going digital (yes, we’re not going to stop saying it!), brands can implement the same sales strategy on their websites too… Here’s how!

Shop the look

This technique works well for fashion and lifestyle brands. When a visitor selects a product, say a shirt or a kurta, then the display page will show a small module right below the description, where a high definition picture of a model wearing the said shirt/kurta, along with a jacket, trousers, shoes and sunglasses. Now, this technique should be used when all the products in question are available on the website.

reddress-landing-page

Brands like FabIndia, Ray Ethnic and major ecommerce players like Amazon and Myntra use this method of cross selling heavily to increase the cart value of the visitors on their page. Plus, the customers benefit from this, as they get their desired outfit ready to pick and delivered to them for a flat rate of shipping.

Use side-by-side comparisons

This is a great method of upselling, mostly used by brands that sell electronics and electrical products, where upgrades matter a lot. Let’s take an example of a mobile phone purchase here. When a customer selects a mobile phone model by Samsung, with specific features involving storage, processor speed, camera quality, etc, he/she is shown a module with a slider consisting of similar mobile phones from the same and different brands, but a slightly upgraded version with an increased price.

amazon-compare-list

Since the placement of these products are such that the viewer can immediately compare the look and feel, and the features of the phone with the price difference, there are high chances of him/her picking the upgraded model as they won’t mind shelling out a few extra bucks for a better model.

Frequently bought together

amazon-Q&A

The idea here is to sell supplementary products. Yes, it may sound like the earlier point, but this one applies to almost every type of product, from food, fashion, electronics and even services.

Amazon.in does this the best, even for the smallest product on their website, they will have a suggested product ready to be pitched on their product landing page. For instance, simply try adding peanut butter to the cart. Immediately, you will see the suggestions below, of multi-grain bread and even a butter knife with the title Frequently Bought Together.

Chances are, the customer would add the entire bundle to the cart just like they did for the Shop The Look.

Bundle discounts

Let’s not deny the fact that everyone loves discounts! We’re pretty sure even the richest man in Asia looks for discounts on the peanut butter he orders. Bundle discounts work great when pitched together with the Frequently Bought Together or Shop The Look technique.

discounts on Products

Why does this technique work? Because when a customer buys Product A and Product B separately, he/she might have to pay full price and even separate shipping costs. But when they are offered the main product and the supplementary product for a small yet attractive discount, it forces them to take the deal, since they calculate the discount and the flat shipping rate as savings on the purchase, while the seller gets to increase his/her cart value.

Executing a successful upsell and cross-sell campaign will not only increase the average order value but also improve customer retention. Now that you know how to increase your online sales with such simple tricks, get started!

Or, how about you relax and watch the numbers grow, by hiring ecommerce website developers from the leading software development company, Flora Fountain! Drop us a hello here!

Categories
Social Media

Advertising on Social Media: Why you need a separate game plan

Advertising on Social Media

Who would have thought that the platforms created to let people share stories from their lives through pictures and videos would turn out to be such great tools for audiences to discover new products and services and for brands to find these new audiences. And the pandemic has only made it more so!

It is time to go deeper into the social media rabbit hole.

Social media marketing and social media advertising. Always knew they were different, but didn’t know who to ask? Read below for some insights from Ahmedabad’s best digital marketing agency!

First things first, social media marketing is purely organic activity, which involves posting pictures, publishing stories, responding to comments and inquiries on messages and sharing the posts in various groups and communication channels.

While social media advertising comprises all paid marketing activity on various social media platforms through the means of sponsored posts and boosts, done over and above the usual social media marketing activity such as posting and creating stories.

While there is an overlap between the two in terms of results and goals, advertising on social media is a different ball game altogether, with targeted budgets, a keener understanding of target audiences, and a smart selection of the content that should be boosted.

Because of the difference in strategy and skills required for the two, the top advertising agency in Ahmedabad suggests that a mere social media strategy or calendar does not cut it for a brand. Serious brands must have a separate game plan for the two. Read on to know why and everything else about social media advertising.

WHY ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media advertising is an all-encompassing format of marketing for a brand. Since social media is a place where the people are a bit chilled out, it gives marketers the opportunity to go out of their way with creativity to make their brand stand out.

The regular advertising in the digital world includes the usual suspects, like pay-per-click ads, website display ads, video popup ads, digital billboards, etc. But social media has promotions and boosts, which offers them great flexibility in tweaking the audience, its reach perimeter, the budgets, and putting a pause or restart as per the brands requirements.

Even the best digital marketing agencies in India believe that organic reach is hard to achieve, hence if a brand has the bandwidth and resources to spend, they must consider social media advertising for quick win and turn around.

HOW TO ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Different platforms have different ways to let businesses and individuals promote themselves and their services to a large swathe of potential customers with interests that align with what they sell.

Listed below are the various kinds of paid promotions a brand can run on different platforms.

Twitter Promotions

With Twitter Promote, the Twitter algorithm automatically promotes Tweets to the brand’s specified audience. It promotes the first 10 daily organic Tweets that pass the Twitter quality filter. It also promotes the brand account to attract new followers.

Marketeers can focus on up to 5 interests or metro locations, and let Twitter do the rest. Unfortunately, with this feature, marketers can’t choose which Tweets to promote. (That’s why creating great content on a regular basis for every platform is important).

Facebook Ads


Facebook Ads
With over 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook is popular across many demographics. Just as many teenagers use Facebook as their parents—and seniors are quickly catching up. With ads, brands can direct users to its Facebook Page or the website as a part of the sales funnel. One such great form of advertising is Carousel ads on Facebook timelines.

Carousel ads work well to showcase different features of a product, or to explain a step-by-step process. They’re also a great way to present multiple products or services.


Showcase a Variety of Products
Sometimes, brands can showcase a variety of products in a single carousel chain, and every picture can have a customised purchase or inquiry link. This way, it can not only be a great sales and data collection tool too.

Instagram Promotions

Instagram is most popular with millennials, they say. Well, this platform is popular with people of all generations. Instagram has millions of Gen Z and GenX too, who create and consume content in the form of posts, reels, videos and stories.

Instagram currently has over 1 billion active users, a large majority of them using the app on their mobile phones. What’s interesting is that 71% of their demographic are users who are under the age of 35, who spend an average 53 minutes per day.

And what more, post the pandemic, where online sales have taken off and crossed the stratosphere already, it was found out that 80% of consumers use Instagram to help them decide on a purchase.

Just like Facebook, brands can target their ideal viewers with customised targeting options. Create lookalike audiences, define the audience’s behaviors and activities, interests, and demographics.

Seen above is a great example of a carousel ad on Instagram, that blends in smartly with the other content on the feed of the Instagram users.

Instagram Promotions

YouTube Promotions

Let us start by sharing a startling fact about this video streaming giant. YouTube is the second most visited site on the internet, and netizens consume close to 6 hours of video content every day.

Advertising on YouTube requires a Google Ads account, using which it uniformly helps brands create ads on multiple spots on the YouTube streaming page.


YouTube Promotions
The different types of ads on YouTube include short clips that play before the actual video, banner ads that get displayed on top of the playlist and clickable links that display in the corners of the screen.

Brands can set their budget and target the desired audience on specific YouTube channels. There’s no minimum price to run an ad – and brands can change their ads, targeting and budgets at any time.

LinkedIn Boosts

LinkedIn is much more business-oriented than other social networks in this post. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications like job title and seniority.

Single images, videos, or carousel ads are all different options for sponsored content advertising on LinkedIn.


LinkedIn Boosts
Brands that are looking to target talented individuals to join their workforce, hiring agencies that have a large number of positions to fill, or companies who wish to talk about their achievements and attract more followers whose interests align with their brand, ideally choose LinkedIn Boosts. It has been noted that boosting on LinkedIn costs way more than its peers.

Get started with Flora Fountain

The team of experienced digital advertising and social media marketing experts at Flora Fountain have paved the path to success for many local and national brands to tap into a large swathe of unexplored audiences online, especially on social media.

Drop us a line here and let us invite you over for a cup of coffee and a riveting conversation on your brand’s future online.

Categories
Social Media

The ultimate guide to LAUNCH a product on social media

Social Media

Remember the last time you scrolled through your Instagram feed and thought “Hey, how did they know I was looking for this sneaker/hoodie/blender/fill in the blanks?” More and more people are discovering new products and services online through social media, over traditional methods of discovery like TV ads, newspaper ads, hoardings and billboards. And this is even more true after the pandemic, with an increasing population comfortable spending time and money online.

So it is imperative, when a brand has a new product ready for launch, to create a big buzz online. Brands have to get people curious about the product and the idea behind it. However, with over 3.6 billion people active on various social media platforms, spending an average of 2.5 hours every day scrolling and messaging, there are chances of a brand’s messaging getting lost in the din and noise made by almost everybody online.

So here’s the ultimate cheat sheet (or guide, if you will) created by India’s top social media marketing agency, Flora Fountain, to make some noise, stand out and attract the right eyeballs for a new product or brand launch online.

1. First thing first, Identify the audience

The first thing a brand must do before planning a new product or starting any form of marketing activity for its launch, is to understand “WHAT DOES THE MARKET WANT?” and “WHERE DO WE FIND THIS AUDIENCE”

It starts with market research, where the ideal customer is identified based on various demographic points like age, gender, interests, income, region, etc. It can start from something as simple as a Google search of a product similar to the one about to be launched by the brand. Simply going through the kind of people that the competition brands are addressing through their content, images, and the reviews on their shopping platforms can give a rough idea about the ideal customer.

If the product is targeted towards young people in their 20s who love following trends, then Instagram is the place to find them (well, isn’t everyone on Instagram now!). If the product is more service-based, priced higher and is targeted at a somewhat older audience, Facebook can be the place to target such an audience. If the target is business communities, or art lovers, or musicians, there is a platform for these too. But it all starts with knowing who the product, service, brand or idea is meant for: the OG TG.

2. Plan out the online content calendar

Ray Ethnic Fashion Brand

Having a launch timeline is very important for the brand to chart out every move, every post on the various digital platforms it is active on. While it may sound like a task as easy as taking a picture and posting it on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest with a caption stating check out our newly launched collection, it is way more than that…

Think about it, the product pictures needs to be clicked, they have to be named (if not done), banners and creatives for website pages and posts are to be made, captions as per the platform (hashtag heavy for Instagram, long yet linked for Facebook and short and sweet for Pinterest)

are to be written, promotional email drafts have to be created, SEO work is to be done, special social media promotional content for boosts are to be made… Phew!

Yeah, that’s right… All that, apart from the regular, in-store or outdoor marketing campaigns. Here’s a look at how Ray Ethnic, an Ahmedabad-based ethnic fashion brand recently planned their product launch. Simple, minimalistic & to the point.

Plan out every piece of content that will go online, from the teaser to the launch to the product showcase. Yes, it takes time, but then actual work becomes a piece of cake.

3. Start creating a buzz

Social media is such a powerful tool, it is scalable, cost effective, provides great creative freedom to experiment, and the best part: The people are there, online!

And one of the best ways to get started with the promotions is by generating curiosity among the people online, on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even LinkedIn (if the brand has an audience there).

Start with Coming Soon posts like these:

Give the viewers a sneak peek on how the product is going to look like, what it is for, why it is unique, etc. This is kind of teasing the customer, by showing parts or some element of the product as a preview and why they should look forward to it.

Coming Soon Posts

Next, you can create countdown posts that usually say, ‘2 Days to Go’, ‘1 Day to Go’, etc. These kinds of promotional content create a sense of anticipation among the followers and the customers and they stay tuned with the brand page on social media.

And finally, post the launch, a giveaway or a contest can be run through specially created posts to boost up the engagement on the page. Wondering why? Because when the page gets maximum engagement, the posts are visible on the Explore and Suggestion sections of non-following people online who may have similar tastes in the product.

4. Get creative with hashtags

Another great way to make waves around the social media about an impending launch is by creating a unique hashtag which gives a hint of the product and the brand, while leaving the users and followers guessing on what it could be.

While creating a launch hashtag, these three points should be kept in mind:

  • It should be precise
  • Don’t combine more than 3-4 words together
  • Try to write it in Title case, to make it easy to understand

By creating a hashtag, they instantly highlight the content that’s related to the launch and reinforces the brand identity. Further, it helps followers to tag, share and participate in the launch activities and post pictures of their own which are connected with the brand.

5. Make the splash: The launch

The launch has to be timed in such a manner that the product/s must get revealed on all social media platforms at the same time. This is where the advance content planning as mentioned in the first point, comes of great help.

Since Instagram and Facebook both fall under the same entity, it is easier to plan and schedule posts around a specific time, using custom content, hashtags, CTAs, etc. While Facebook has its own Creator Studio platform to manage Instagram and Facebook pages, there are other third party platforms like Later and Hootsuite for LinkedIn, Google Business and Tweetdeck for Twitter.

Creator Studio platform

Flora Fountain, one of the best social media agencies in Ahmedabad suggests that brands should ideally boost these launch posts for maximum visibility and opportunity to showcase their products to newer audiences. While it is simple to create an Ad Account using Facebook Business or AdSense for Google platforms, it is advised to get the top digital marketing agency on board to share the burden of tracking, analysing and strategising these paid promotions online.

OR

Plan a staggered launch
Unlike the one time big splash launch, a staggered launch is done by revealing the products one after the other or as batches, in stages. The rollout of the products can go on for weeks together instead of putting everything out for sale on the launch day.

Remember how smartphone giant Apple launched the iPhone 12 in two stages? While the original reason behind this exercise was the supply chain disruption due to the global smart-chip shortage, the marketing teams of the brand decided to launch the smaller versions of phone in the first stage, and the bigger and pricier versions along with its upgraded version of accessories just in time for pre-christmas sales.

This way, brands can not only keep the conversation going, but also tap into multiple points of high sales, like the festival and holiday seasons.

6. Have your analytics in place

Instagram Reach

The true success of a launch or really any digital activity lies in the data. A brand should have the tools to identify the right metrics, evaluate the various milestones during the launch at regular intervals and then do a comparative study with its goals.

Before the launch, set up a cross-channel social media analytics dashboard using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot or Sprout Social and connect the various platforms where the launch will take place,

i.e. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Of course, each tool also has the inbuilt insights or metrics for views, clicks, conversions for brands to identify which piece of content and strategy and worked and what didn’t.

It allows tracking of various metrics like hashtag performance, region-wise visitor activity, post reach and engagement, etc. This way, brands can make informed decisions in terms of allocating budgets to campaigns, tweaking the target audience to ensure a successful launch.

Google Analytics Report

7. Keep the conversation going

Post launch, the brand must keep the momentum going through various forms of audience engagement. Because all that buzz generated post the legwork done to get the product launched, must not fizzle out in a week’s time.

Continue publishing content related to the product, the salient features about it, it’s availability online or offline, and how the response is (only if it is positive). Encourage followers and customers to tag the brand with their product and reshare them on the pages, giving the users some free publicity too.
Ray Ethnic Hits

Something again Ray Ethnic hits the nail right on the head with its popular post launch campaign #RayOnYou. Thanks to some smartly planned celebrity endorsement, now even regular customers post regularly with outfits purchased from Ray.

Always keep a close eye on your mentions and customer questions on the comments, respond to them within 24 hours, negative or positive. This will not only give the brand image a boost, but organically push the posts on the explore feeds of social media timelines too.

Now that you have the ultimate guide to the perfect social media launch, get started right away. Or, how about you let the experts do the job for you. Drop us a line on hello@flora.ffteam.in or click here.

Categories
Content Writing

Content Marketing vs Content Writing: It’s different!

Content Marketing vs Content Writing

EVERYTHING is CONTENT!

The 50 billion pictures on Instagram, the 500 hours of videos uploaded on YouTube every minute and the 7.5 million blog posts published on the internet. But many still believe content is just writing, thereby mixing up the ideas of Content Marketing and Content Writing.

As a content marketing agency in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain has had days where their writers and digital marketers had to explain the difference between the two ideas to almost every person (even clients) that they meet.

Frustrated writing writers

So, here’s all the tea, to understand what exactly is content, and the difference between content writing and content marketing.

CONTENT

Content making blog

Content is information, art, ideas and experiences, expressed in the form of words, pictures, speech, graphics or moving visuals published either digitally or on print, for an end user to consume.

Okay, okay… Let’s try putting it in simpler words, shall we?

All kinds of photographs, blogs, articles, captions, ad copies, videos, reels, music, podcasts, graphic design or animated visuals are content.

And the internet is an ever flowing stream of content, good, bad and ugly!

CONTENT WRITING

Content writing is all about putting ideas into words, creatively and in a simpler form. Writing content can be something like an advertisement copy of just 5 words, or a thesis of 5000 words. And in digital marketing, some of the best content writing companies produce written content in the form of captions for social media posts, marketing copies for online promotions, content for websites, blogs like this, articles for newspapers and magazines, copies for print ads in magazines or hoardings, or even scripts for videos.

Content writers include bloggers, brand journalists, copywriters, ghost-writers, SEO writers, technical writers, etc.

CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing is basically marketing to strategically promote a brand or business on a digital platform, using smartly created content like blogs, pictures, creative posters and videos.

IT IS NOT JUST WRITTEN COPY! But yes, written content does play a crucial role in content marketing, as every great marketing idea first comes to life in the form of a copy.

Content marketing is done through blogs, case studies, emailers, social media posts, video, website content, articles, ad copies, infographics and a lot more.

To sum up, Content Writing involves creating various types of written products, which can then be used to produce other forms of content and further implemented into Content Marketing to promote a business or a brand.

So, how does one write content that is ideal for marketing?

1. Put the audience first

The content should address the target audience. It should talk to them about their problems and perhaps possible solutions. If the content cares about its intended audience, it will make the audience care about the messaging too. Readers connect with content that understands them, their needs and provides them some kind of value, either as information, education or entertainment.

2. Tailor the content

A business can never sell its products if the marketing content doesn’t speak the language of their target audience. A local brand can use the local language and sometimes even street slang (where applicable) in addressing their customers, a B2B brand must sound more formal.

3. Links to the brand

The content should create recall for the brand, its services, products or team, in an organic and authentic way. This is to be done to create a form of brand association with certain subjects in the readers’ minds. The end goal is to leave a positive and memorable imprint about the brand on the reader.

4. Draws the reader towards the business

It is important that the content must have more than one call to action prompt, to ensure that the reader is drawn towards the end of the sales funnel and eventually convince them to either purchase the product or provide some information as a valuable lead for the business.

Inform, Educate & Inspire through content, with us

If a brand wants to stand out on the Internet today, there is no space for mediocrity. This is the age of short attention spans and high speed internet. Only crisp, clear and SEO-friendly content that speaks both to a user and to a search engine can propel a business into the visibility of the constantly-scrolling audience on the world wide web.

It is advisable to seek the help of content experts, who have cut their teeth in the market working with the finest brand and have written content for audiences of all kinds.

As a top digital marketing agency, Flora Fountain provides content marketing & writing services in Ahmedabad and all over the country to brands and businesses of all types. Drop us a line, give us a call, and let’s have a chat over a cup of coffee and some mind-blowing ideas for your business.

Categories
Ecommerce

How to turn blog traffic into sales on your ecommerce website

turn blog traffic into sales on your ecommerce website

The first-ever blog on the internet is believed to have appeared in 1994, and as of 2020, the Growth Badger reported that there were over 600 million blogs globally. Over 60% of internet users engage with some of the other kinds of blogs daily and an average person spends up to 37 seconds reading a blog.

Yes, every figure mentioned here is true and shows how important it is to publish blogs regularly to draw traffic to a website. And when the website in question is an ecommerce platform, there are surefire ways to convert this blog traffic into sales. And 86% of companies produce blog content compared to other formats.

Flora Fountain, an ecommerce website development and design company in Ahmedabad, India has compiled a list of to-dos and tips on how to convert the website traffic from the blogs into leads and paying customers.

Plan the sales funnel

A sales funnel the path a visitor on the website takes, from reading the blog to eventually purchasing the product. If there is not sales funnel planned out for every blog being published on the website, then it is nothing but just some reading material for the website visitor.

Ideally, this is how a Sales Funnel Looks like:

Visitors – Blog Post – Call to Action – Landing Page – Thank You page or pop-up

Now, these visitors can be people who directly clicked and reached the blog, or got drawn to it through other means like social media. From these blog posts, the visitors are prompted to engage with the website through strategically placed Call to Action (CTA) links and buttons. These CTAs can be either a data collection module or a link that leads to a product page. Once the customer makes the purchase or provides his/her data, they are greeted with a Thank You page or a pop-up. This link of sales funnel helps the blogs to be utilised to its full potential.

Create valuable content that the customers want

One of the best ways to convert visitors into a regular readers and eventually, paying customers of the business, is by providing them with content that addresses their pain-points, solves their problems and gives something worth the 5 minutes spent reading the blog.

Ahmedabad-based ethnic fashion brand Ray Ethnic writes blogs which provide their readers with tips and styling tricks for various seasons and occasions, and smartly plugs their products within their content.

This way, the chances of their regular blog readers clicking on the call to action links smartly embedded in the images and on the names of their outfits are increased. These links lead to their product pages with an option to buy online. Check out their blogs here.

Ensure that the blog is readable and accessible on all types of devices

According to a Statista report, in the year 2020, close to 4.28 billion people were accessing the internet using their mobile phones. And it will take hardly 2 seconds for any of this user to abandon a website or a link if it doesn’t open properly on their handheld devices.

Hence, it is necessary to have a responsive ecommerce website in the first place, one which opens seamlessly and runs smoothly on all kinds of mobile devices and browsers too. Secondly, the blogs shouldn’t be too long, otherwise the reader will abandon the blog halfway and leave the sales funnel.

Ideally, a blog should be of minimum 800 words. Because it contains enough word-space plus at least 5 products in it, it takes hardly 3 minutes to read a blog of this size, and that it can be optimized for SEO with the right keywords too.

Make them an offer they can’t refuse

Nobody parts ways with their data without getting something in return. Offering the website visitor something valuable in return for his/her contact information like their email address or contact number is an ideal way to capture leads.

Activecare, a UK-based beauty and lifestyle products website offers a flat 5% off on orders to visitors who subscribe for their mailing list. They do this with an attractive popup that becomes visible within 10 seconds of scrolling through their website blogs.

Another way to prompt the readers to provide their information, is by having a static subscription column on the right or left side of the blog. It stays right there, in the visibility of the reader as he/she scrolls along.

Make the most out of the leads

Here’s an interesting fact, 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. Which means the chances of people opening and engaging with a well written and mobile-optimized email is higher than them clicking on a social media ad.

When readers provide their contact information to the business, they may not be interested in purchasing something immediately but do wish to come back when they see the right opportunity or deal.

Keep them updated through regular newsletters and messages, informing them about the newest offers, discounts, product launches, or services. This is called a drip campaign, where a business keeps their current and prospective customers engaged for a long period of time. Upon finding the right deal or product, the customers will reach out and eventually make the purchase.

Still wondering how to execute this process? Let the experts do the job. Various local, national and international brands have improved their business online with the ecommerce website design services and content writing services for business blogs from Flora Fountain. Reach out to us, and let us guide you towards the path of success on digital.

Categories
SEO

Here’s How to Retain SEO Ranking even after a Website Redesign

Retain your SEO Rankings during Website Redesign

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Rankings are sensitive and are prone to changing every time there is a change in the design or content of the website without planning for SEO. During a website redesign or redevelopment, there is a high risk of the website losing its organic traffic, rankings and sales.

While there are plenty of blogs and conversation online revolving around how to make a website rank higher up on the search engine results pages (SERP), very few talk specifically about maintaining those rankings, even in the event of a redesign on the website. So, let’s talk about retaining a website’s rankings on the SERP after a redesign on the site and look at some of the tips shared by the SEO experts at Flora Fountain, a digital agency offering SEO Services in Ahmedabad.

search engine optimization

Save the original website’s data first

One of the ways to ensure website’s rankings don’t suffer heavily is by maintaining a similarity in the flow of content and design of the old site. Because search engines rank those pages or websites higher that are easy to navigate. It is important to save the old or current website’s data, i.e. a list of all the pages, its URLs, important pieces of content, keywords and the sitemap for future reference. It helps the developers and designers to ensure the user experience doesn’t get disturbed on the redesigned website.

Don’t make changes on the live site

This is an important point to remember. While making changes or during the redesigning process, the website must be disabled. The updated version should be made live only after testing. But disabling a website means the business will lose many customers and visitors who might be trying to access the site. It is advised to do it on a different domain. Experts providing top SEO services in India suggest that all the changes and updates should be made in a different domain or a staging site, and once all the changes provide satisfactory results in testing, only then the new site be swapped with the old one live on the internet.

Use 301 Redirects

301 Redirects

When there is a change in the URLs, make sure to have 301 Redirects for them. The 301 Redirects notifies the search engines that the content has been shifted to a new location and takes the visitors to the new web page from the old one.

A broken link can damage the ranking of the website, which will eventually lead to losing organic traffic to the website. This happens because the search engine assigns the existing ranking to the new page only after it knows that both the pages have the same content in them.

Check for broken links

Even upon setting up 301 redirects for the pages, problems can still arise. Broken links can show up if there is a mistype or a spelling error in the URLs. And when this happens, visitors and search engines will see a page with the message “404 Page Not Found”. This again creates a bad experience and can be a serious turn off for the visitors. This error damages user experience and search rankings of the website as well.

Look for broken links on the website by using tools like Screaming frog, Bing Webmaster, Broken link checker and Yandex Webmaster.

404 Page Not Found

Reinstall SSL Certificates

Redesigning a website can result in loss of the site’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. And websites with SSL certificates have added advantage on the SERP. Safety and data privacy play an important role in ranking of a website as it gains people’s trust. SSL creates an additional layer of safety that protects the information people choose to share with a website. In other words, it is a protocol used to encrypt communications.
So, every time there is a redesign on the website, it is important to reinstall all the SSL certificates to ensure that the new site starts ranking up on the SERP quickly after going live. Here’s a easy to understand tutorial on how to install SSL certificates on the website

Update the Sitemap

The sitemap is an XML file that’s contains a list of the website’s URLs which helps search engines to know about the pages of your website for crawling. While redesigning a website, it is recommended to create a new sitemap XML document, as it helps search engines to index the website faster. Moreover, it allows site visitors to easily navigate it. An XML sitemap can be submitted to search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. through webmaster tools like Yoast or Sitemap Generator.

Update the Google My Business page

This might sound like a small step, but it is a crucial one. As soon as the updated website is live, the first thing to do is make changes to the Google My Business Page of the business.

Google My Business is an effective tool for businesses to use to improve their local search rankings. It can give local service-based businesses the exposure they need to be at the top of the SERPs in their area.

You don’t want to sabotage your SEO rankings while redesigning the website, do you? Let the Best Digital Agency in Gujarat help your business in retaining them. Drop us a message on hello@flora.ffteam.in