WCAG 2.4.2 (A)
The page has no title
What this failure is
The <title> element sits in the head of every HTML page and gives the page a name. That name shows up in the browser tab, in the bookmark you save, in the tab-switcher on your phone, in Google search results, and in the list a screen reader shows when a user opens "switch document". If it is empty the user sees an untitled tab, a bookmark called "https://", a search result nobody clicks on, and a screen-reader page list with a blank entry that could be any of a dozen open tabs. Duplicated titles across every page of the site cause the same navigation problems even when the <title> tag itself is present.
Reference: WCAG 2.4.2 (A) — the authoritative spec.
Who it affects
- Screen reader users: When a screen reader loads a new page it announces the title first; a missing title is announced as the URL or as silence, so users cannot confirm they landed on the right page.
- Users with cognitive disabilities: People who keep many tabs open rely on tab titles to find their place; blank tabs force them to click each one.
- Voice-control users: Commands like "switch to the checkout tab" cannot resolve when the tab has no name.
- All users indirectly: The page is far less likely to be clicked in Google results, so accessible content never reaches the audience.
How to fix it
Concrete steps for the four platforms most small e-commerce sites run on. If you use a different stack, the underlying HTML change is the same.
Shopify
Every Shopify theme should already include <title>{{ page_title }}</title> in layout/theme.liquid. If your scanner still reports a missing title, the problem is almost always a specific page whose title field is blank. Go to the page in the admin (Online Store > Pages, or Products > (product), or Online Store > Blog posts), scroll to the Search engine listing preview section, and click Edit website SEO. Fill in the Page title field with 40-60 characters that describe the page — Shopify will use this both for the browser tab and for Google.
WooCommerce
Modern WordPress themes declare add_theme_support('title-tag') which lets WordPress generate <title> automatically from the page title. If titles are missing, either your theme is old and hard-codes <title></title>, or an SEO plugin (Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO) has a template that resolves to empty. Open your SEO plugin's Titles & Metas settings, review the templates for Posts, Pages and Products, and make sure none is set to just %%sep%% or similar. For custom themes, open header.php and remove any hard-coded <title> tag; WordPress will then insert one.
Wix
Open the Wix editor, click Pages & Menu on the left, click the three-dot More Actions icon next to the page, and choose SEO basics. Fill in the What's the page about? title-tag field with a description of the page. Wix uses this both as the browser <title> and as the search-result title. Save and republish. The homepage title is set separately under Settings > SEO > Homepage in the dashboard.
Squarespace
In the Squarespace admin, open Pages, hover the page you want to edit, click the gear icon to open Page Settings, and switch to the SEO tab. Fill in the SEO Title field. If you leave it blank Squarespace falls back to the navigation title, so the tag is rarely truly empty — the scanner more often flags pages whose SEO Title equals the site name for every page, which is functionally the same problem. Give each page a distinct title.
Notes
A good page title is unique per page, front-loads the specific topic before the brand name, and stays under about 60 characters so Google does not truncate it.
Check your own site
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