This year has been quite something else; Improving your eCommerce site for the Holidays may be the right move. With a pandemic that lasted almost an entire year now, it makes consumers and e-commerce store owners wonder what the holiday shopping season will bring. Since March 2020, COVID-19 has affected all businesses, making some close for some time while the virus eases, making some stores close for good due to bankruptcy. These e-commerce stores have thrived through boredom and necessities, making room for others to join the movement.
With such an uncertain year, many consumers and online retailers are looking towards the holiday season & new year, knowing that shopping has and will continue to change throughout the new year.
So how can you prepare for the holiday shopping season with e-commerce? Here are our top tips to stay ahead of the curve and improve revenue throughout the holiday period.
Table of Contents
Review your SEO Keywords
Listen to what your customers say. It’s a powerful way of interacting with your e-commerce site visitors & audiences with what they care about. If you ever used SEO plugins or tools like “Google Ads” or “Google Search Console,” It would have provided you with an array of information to plan for this year’s holiday period.
For keywords, use tools such as “Google Search Console” to provide the most used keywords relevant to your e-commerce business to optimize SEO ranking in search engines further. The higher you rank, the more of an advantage you will have during the busy period.
Tweak your existing Google Ads; try to use ads that contain words like “best, cheap, deal or gift” to create a sense of urgency & presence; This will help generate third party revenue in the festive season.
Don’t know much about SEO optimization on websites? We can help; keep reading this article until the end to find out.
Review your Website's Navigation
With more traffic pouring in than ever before, it’s crucial to have a fully working navigation on your website to provide your audiences or customers with a way of searching through the website to find what they need.
You could solve this in the form of a search bar, navigation bar, or quick links. Remember to use the internal linking tool rule, which is a maximum of 3 clicks from the homepage; This will help provide better usability and provide a much more responsive website.
If web development isn’t your strongest point, seek help from web development companies to gain support during such crucial times.
Optimize Your Promotions
A no-brainer, during this period, you should be reviewing your e-commerce website’s campaigns, products, and sales.
Create more sense of urgency with deals that expire, timed offers, and bundles and provide a way of telling customers you have limited stock; This will create a fear of missing out and will attract more customers to purchase products immediately. Also, optimize the wording and shipping styles for these promotions, as customers often disregard items with high shipping prices.
We all know advertising a product for 15$ with free shipping will get more sales than one that’s $10 and has $5 shipping; Free shipping will always seem like you’re providing better value.
Create A Promotions Calendar
While deals and specials may be more existent than ever during this period, it’s crucial to have a calendar to release specific deals; The execution needs to be on point to achieve the desired effects.
With conferencing tools like Zoom & Microsoft Teams, it’s easy to communicate with your e-commerce team to launch products and escalate issues if they arise to appropriate team members.
Security Is A Must
Increased traffic and sales are all good, but with that comes increased dangers and possible attacks. Site downtime is always bad, and during these periods must be completely redundant, meaning your site must be up and running at all times.
Having a firewall configured to stop and protect against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks is necessary. Several other attacks may try to attack your site during these periods, like XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks, trojan & malicious calls, and many more.
Using SSL certification and HTTPS certification will ensure no attack can be carried out, causing downtime or malicious damage to those who visit your website.
Provide Fast Service
E-commerce is all about quality service and efficiency. People don’t want to wait for products to be listed or delivered; they want it now.
Waiting is even more detrimental during holiday sale seasons. With more customers, traffic, and sales than at any time during the year, this period must be as seamless as possible.
To provide this service, make sure to optimize site images, remove any unwanted coding, remove non-required JavaScript coding, and use a CDN to provide a fast and reliable Bootstrap optimization.
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Wrap Up
Getting your website ready for the holiday & new year sales season can be quite daunting and stressful but will pay off with all the revenue to reap during these periods.
The techniques listed above will not only help your e-commerce business stay safe online during these periods but will help your site achieve its highest potential in traffic, sales, and impressions. Remember to carefully prepare for this period and make the most out of the years’ end.
Don’t have the technical expertise to act on any of these tips listed above for your e-commerce website? Why not call for some help from companies such as Big Kitty Labs?
Big Kitty Labs is one of the leading software development companies in Columbus Ohio that has been developing applications, websites, and software for over 10 years. Contact us for free discovery and consultation on your next project!
