Common technical errors affecting online stores

Just like any website, online stores are not spared from errors on pages. E-commerce websites are even more prone to these technical glitches because of the number of pages involved. If you own an e-commerce store, what should you do to keep your site error-free?

There are several tools that you can turn to in looking for technical glitches. You can use ScreamingFrog which is arguably one of the top SEO spiders today. You can also use Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Meanwhile, for checking SEO, you can try tools like WebPageTest and W3C Validator.

Common technical errors #1: Missing pages

Missing pages can damage the user experience of your visitors. It can also hurt your SEO as the links pointing to missing pages affect your site’s authority or ranking.

You can identify missing pages with ScreamingFrog. Run a site crawl then go to “Response Codes” before selecting “Client Error”

Common technical errors #2: Redirects

You also don’t want your site to have redirect chains, also called loops. These are a series of redirects wherein one redirect follows another. It can affect your PageRank and create a server overload. Redirect chains also make the pages inaccessible.

You can address redirects by using ScreamingFrog to identify the loops. Look for the 302 redirects and change the temporary ones to permanent. You should also remove links to redirected pages and replace them with links to the right location.

Common technical errors #3: Duplicate pages

Duplicate pages are also common in e-commerce websites. To deal with duplicate pages, you can turn to canonicalization which tells Google which version of duplicate pages is legit.

Again, you can use ScreamingFrod to identify duplicate pages and which ones need to be canonicalized.

In short, e-commerce websites are prone to errors due to their massive size. It’s only reasonable that you keep your site error-free as it not only improves the user experience but also improve your search traffic.