Week 12: Shopify SEO

This final week has been chaotic in planning the launch of the new campaign later in the month, but there is more news. The launch of the website has been delayed for a week due to a bunch of errors made by the person who created it. I had been tasked with slowly fixing it, but with the huge and expensive campaign coming soon, that has all been fast-tracked. The website has been a tough fixer, having to navigate the challenges of linking, images, format, bundles, pricing, sales, alt text, accessibility, banners, checkout, and more.

Linking the site together is seemingly straightforward but can get messy when not carefully managed. There were a ton of internal and external links, image links, and anchor text, and just the general management of them was a handful, to be sure. The most annoying issue was when livestock would sell out from a certain category and then all internal links and external links would be screwed up, so I had to set conditions that would redirect people back onto a page that would work. It was a temporary fix, but it works much better now.

Then, there’s the use of images. Images are a headache to get (with stressed microfish swimming in large tanks with bad lighting), so having a photographer is helping so much. Having high-quality images helps SEO, and our watermark makes each livestock pop out. Adding alt text to some of the images is an even longer process that I have put on hold as there are tens of thousands of products with multiple photos on each page. This is important, but to the majority of our audience, it is something that can be slowly implemented.

Checking out should be easy with Shopify, but there are problems that keep popping up. As suppliers come from all over the world, exchange rates need to be fixed more or less so that anyone buying things within Canada gets reasonable prices. This is hardest on bulk orders, as small fluctuations mean big bites or surpluses for our distributors. Other issues, like free shipping, are fantastic and are implemented, but as people add fish, shipping becomes more complex and far more expensive, so a note had to be added that the tree delivery was only for dry goods.

Its been a long process, but this class has certain taught me lots about website design. Last year I would have been completely lost looking at Reddit or YouTube, but now with the knowledge I have gained, it has made me faster and better prepared for the challenges thrown at me! Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you learned as much as I did. Remember, keep connecting!