Dear Sainsbury's - I've handpicked three website issues that are costing you online sales

So, I love Sainsbury’s (especially those Vittoria Taste The Difference tomatoes) – they’re just so damn delicious and I buy them most weeks. However, today i’m not talking about their food or their incredible Taste The Difference range. No, today I want to talk to you about their website – sainsburys.co.uk and what I’ve unearthed.

Your toy sale is what brought me here

First, a little backstory and context. Last Saturday evening, I decided to browse the highly anticipated Sainsbury’s toy sale online. Not only had all of the good stuff sold out (my fault), I was left frustrated whilst browsing (not my fault) and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

Now, being a SEO (we’re curious folk us digital marketers) I decided to dig a little deeper and I found some stuff that Sainsbury’s digital team really should care about.

Why should Sainsbury’s care?

It’s simply the right thing to do by their customers to fix these issues and secondly there are grocery retailers that are just doing these things better. In such a margin-scarce market, you cannot afford to let these issues pass by. They’re proactively costing you sales.

I’m also approaching the age where solving life’s problems can only be solved with a solid letter, but I’m also young enough to not enjoy visiting the letterbox, so here’s a post instead. Without further ado…

Your 2009 website migration might be approaching its expiry date..

It doesn’t matter how many years ago you migrated from an old site to a newer one, those migration rules and redirects should never be removed. Updated as required? Sure! Deleted, hell no… In fact, Kiddicare made similar mistakes when moving their site across to Dunelm. A quick then and now for those that are as curious as I was.

This migration issue causes a number of core concerns. On the surface, it looks as if as if those redirects configured in 2009 are falling by the wayside.

Links from the BBC, Wikipedia and The Telegraph are going to waste

In fact, for the old home page alone (which now generates the 404 page as seen below) there’s a gut-wrenching 1690 backlinks pointing to it. As this page 404s, these backlinks don’t count. They’re simply just sitting there in cyberspace, their not working hard to help Sainsbury’s wider SEO landscape.

In fact, those 1690 backlinks are just the icing on the cake (I couldn’t write a blog post on Sainsbury’s without a single food pun now, could I?). There are actually 12,000+ backlinks to that older Sainsbury’s website that currently 404 including a bunch of discontinued products from the old website too.

This sort of equity can not just go to spoil. Fixing this could be the difference between a customer clicking on Tesco, Asda or any other retailer over Sainsbury’s for a key commercial keyword. OK, so SERPs aren’t everything – but to Sainsbury’s online sales should be.

Browsing categories on mobile is kinda painful

If there’s one thing I hate when browsing and hunting through web categories online, finally clicking on a specific item, only to go back and totally lose your place.Ok, it’s not so bad when you’re on the first page, but when you’re midway through some heavy-duty browsing on page 2+, it’s frustrating. Enough to make you abandon the purchase altogether, in fact. Take a look at the video and see for yourself what I’m getting at here.

Putting breadcrumbs at the bottom of pages isn’t doing you any favours

Only 19% of web visitors are viewing content below the fold and only 5% scroll to the bottom. (source: nngroup)Typically 30-40% of web visitors access eCommerce websites via their product pages. Although this is only a problem on mobile, not having breadcrumbs where customers would expect them is likely to disorientate and maybe even stall their mobile shoppers.

Let’s say I’ve entered the mobile Sainsbury’s site on a product page on mobile, how would I work out how I’m to get back to the category page?

It’s only when you scroll right to the bottom of the page that the breadcrumb trail becomes apparent.

Now, the truth is, Sainsbury’s may be on to something here by having the breadcrumb trail at the bottom of the page. I’m happy to be proven wrong here. However, why not play it safe and display breadcrumbs both at the top and the bottom of the page? Problem solved.

Be proactive in finding and fixing these issues – it’ll save you bags of time

On the surface it looks like you might not be monitoring your 404s. Now, I’m not talking about the number of uniquely 404ing URLs as such (you’ve probably got thousands of those). I’m taking about how often a particular 404ing URL is accessed. This is where the real money is.

These particular 404s can be the difference between a spending customer and a frustrated visitor. These high-volume 404s are always at the top of my fix list when auditing eCommerce websites.

If your CRO/SEO teams were proactively watching these, I can guarantee this blog post would not exist.

With the Christmas season so close, Sainsbury’s – you can’t afford to ignore these low hanging fruits

What’s more important is these issues aren’t particularly difficult to fix, especially when you consider the amount of effort Sainsbury’s will put in to their TV ads, supply chain and more over the peak period.

Regardless of the size of the website or brand, quality backlinks and the importance of a friction-free shopping experience should not be taken for granted or misplaced. Brand alone can only take you so far. Remember Blockbuster anyone?

So, Sainsbury’s, why not ‘Try Something New Today’ and fix the above? If you can’t, then I know someone that can. It might just make a big difference the right side of Christmas. Especially when sales are predicted to exceed $1.1trillion this year.

Finally, whether you fix any of this or not, whatever you do, don’t stop selling those delicious Vittoria tomatoes, otherwise I’ll have to get down to Asda – and I’m pretty sure you don’t want that.

Dear Sainsbury’s – I’ve handpicked three website issues that are costing you online sales