URL redirection for E-Commerce.

The internet has made it easier for entrepreneurs to market and sell their products to potential buyers. Whether it’s at a local, national, or international level, or if you are a major retailer, or small business, the end goal is the same: to drive traffic to your online store and keep it there.

Managing an e-commerce website can present its own unique set of challenges. Committing to creating an online store for your company means committing to constantly maintaining your online offerings so that it reflects your current inventory.

Every product on your website will likely have its own page, and therefore, its own URL. This complexity increases significantly when you consider all of the other items that are being sold on the online store. A marketing strategy that uses cross domain redirects through the use of customized and shortened URLs can help drive customers to specific pages in appropriate locations so that they can easily make a purchase.

URL redirection is essential to e-commerce. It is necessary to make sure that all of the store’s URLs are active, up-to-date, and accurate in order to preserve SEO and maximize conversion rates.

Preserving SEO

Because a store’s inventory are constantly changing, the corresponding changes to the URLs associated with your website can pose a risk for your SEO. If one of your products is no longer available, and the page is taken down, users will receive a 404 error – which is a major SEO killer, and a missed opportunity to sell that customer.

Maintaining an e-commerce website means that as certain product URLs lapse (especially those with great search engine rankings), they should not simply be discarded. Instead, make sure that they are being redirected to the closest available product. This preserves a positive user experience, as well as keeps search engine algorithms from dropping your site in their rankings.

Some online stores occasionally have to be reorganized. In some cases, webmasters can decide to switch from one e-commerce platform to another, which can result in an entirely different URL structure. Planning for a smooth transition in these circumstances means making sure that every URL is accounted for and redirected accordingly.

Short, User-Friendly URLs

Sorting your products into categories is good practice, but the resulting URL can become too long or too complicated to remember. If your URL structure adds to the link for every category, using the above shoe example, it might mean that you could have a resulting link that looks like this: store.com/shoes/fall-winter/colourA.html. Other platforms do not have words in their URLs, but rather a long set of characters that are not memorable or user-friendly.

Creating a shorter URL that redirects to certain pages – especially for high traffic pages which lead to popular items – makes each page easier to share. This is important for shoppers who may want to share the link with their friends as they shop. It will make it easier for them to find it again on your website, or by searching through marketing emails and newsletters. It is also a great opportunity to create a memorable URL for a marketing campaign. If your products are updated with similar items over time, an evergreen URL can be used to redirect to them.

Do you manage an e-commerce website and need to find an easier way to implement cross domain URL redirects? We can help you with that. Sign up for a free EasyRedir trial today!