Why does a product page need written description as well as photographs?
Because Google needs text to understand what a page is about. Stunning photography with a few customer quotes gives it almost nothing to rank.
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When the website IS the business
Every technical fault becomes lost revenue. For some of the 55 businesses I audited, every sale and customer interaction ran through the website. A clothing retailer went from about 50% of sales online to beyond 70% almost overnight, and its stock, fulfilment and customer service could not keep up. A jewellery company's product pages had as little as 127 words, all customer quotes, so competitors with weaker products outranked it. When the site is the revenue, even a 1% improvement in conversion is worth pursuing.
What happened when a retailer's online sales jumped overnight?
Its systems became bottlenecks. The clothing retailer had been running about 50% of sales through the website before Covid, and when the shops closed that jumped beyond 70% practically overnight. Stock management that coped at lower volumes started creaking, fulfilment built for a few dozen online orders a day had to handle far more, and customer service queries spiked because people who would have walked into a shop were emailing instead. The audit was about whether the operation could handle the load, rather than how to get more traffic.
Why do thin product pages cost sales?
Because Google needs text to understand a page. A jewellery company had stunning product photography and almost no words: one product page had 127 words, and all 127 were customer quotes rather than a description. Competitors with worse products and better descriptions ranked higher, because what mattered to Google was what the page said. Another retailer's descriptions were brief, generic and interchangeable, with nothing to tell a buyer why one product was worth its price over another.
What is the risk of selling through someone else's platform?
The platform takes a cut and owns the customer. A gaming furniture company had built good sales through Amazon EU and its own website, but every Amazon sale carried platform fees and the company's own site was underdeveloped. The audit became about reducing that dependency: driving more traffic to the site where the company keeps the full margin and building the brand outside Amazon. Anyone selling through Amazon, Etsy, Not On The High Street or Booking.com will face the same choice eventually.
What should an online business check?
Everything that touches a sale. A page that takes five seconds to load on mobile is lost revenue, a checkout that breaks on some devices is orders that never happen, and a product page with no description sends customers to a competitor who wrote one. Margins matter too: a 1% improvement in conversion on a site turning over a hundred thousand pounds a year is a thousand pounds, and on a million it is ten thousand. Monitor the site like your best salesperson, test it on every device, read your product descriptions as a stranger would, and know from your analytics where traffic comes from and where people abandon the checkout.
Related evidence: 55 digital audits. Here’s what I found.. Earlier in this journey: Not every digital problem is about websites.
Questions people ask
Should an online business rely on Amazon for sales?
Amazon gives reach but takes a cut and owns the customer relationship. Building your own website into a destination is harder but more sustainable.
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