eCommerce Store Optimization Checklist for Holidays Season

After the debacle that was the year 2020, the only optimistic thing currently is the upcoming holiday season. With people finally coming out of lockdown protocols and quarantine for months, the season looks promising with the market anticipated to be quite liberal in terms of spending on preferred goods and services.

And if you didn’t know, online shopping also garnered immense interest and patronage during the pandemic with most people across countries resorting to eCommerce websites for both essentials and non-essentials. With the fear of the contagion and a sense of festivity prevailing together, there’s no doubt that people will continue to shop online for the upcoming holiday season as well.

So, those of you out there who own an online business – looking to make some profits this year – this is the ideal time. And we’ve got you covered with this very essential post on how you can prepare your eCommerce website for the holidays.

Read More: 10 UX Design Tips for eCommerce Websites to Explode Your Sales

What are we waiting for? Let’s get started.

One of the best initial ways to attract customers is to announce free shipping for all goods purchased. Like you know, shipping charges are those that completely change the pricing of a product if you don’t have your shopping cart organized. And this festive season, it’s time to completely remove your shipping charges to lure customers from across the country you’re operating in.

Okay, so in 2018, over 40% of all the eCommerce sales during the holiday season happened through a smartphone. And we are in 2020 now. Obviously the dependency on smartphones and applications have only increased. That’s why you should take your time out to optimize your website for mobile sessions and make it completely mobile friendly if you intend to push instant sales.

Though the festive season is on, the festive spirit is only gradually catching up. The market is still sceptical about buying goods and services from new shops and eCommerce websites. That’s why you need to arrive as a reliable business by allowing cash on delivery options. Receiving payment from customers after they physically see their orders is ideal to drive sales this season. Also introduce other convenient payment options such as digital wallets integrations, net banking services and more.

Do away with old content on your website and give it a fresh overhaul tailor-made for the holiday season. Have headlines and copies written for the season and make your copy relevant for the visitors today. Include deals and discounts that are fresh and make your website’s comprehensibility fresh and new. Also make the content SEO friendly as search engines bring 10x the traffic than your social media channels.

Bundling is a great way to offer convenience to your customers and simultaneously make profits. Bundling allows your customers to instantly pick their preferred products and buy the items they intended to buy in one go. You could bundle relevant products regardless of your market segment such as apparel, gaming and electronics, groceries and essentials and more.

If you didn’t know, the National Retail Federation has revealed that eCommerce sales are expected to surge by 10 to 12% this year. This means more traffic, more leads and more sales. And this also means you need to get your inventory properly organized to meet the increasing demands in the market and ensure you don’t run out of stock of your fast-moving products just when you are about to make some profits. Out of stock boards are the last things your website visitors would want to see.

The visitors to your eCommerce website will leave if your website is slow. Yes, close to 40% of the users abandon websites when they take more than three seconds of time to load and display content. Imagine. All your efforts put into developing an eCommerce website gets judged and abandoned in less than three seconds. And during the holiday season, this could be lethal to your business. So, check the backend of your website, remove all unnecessary plugins and chunks and speed up your website for more traffic.

When you have more traffic coming in, you are obviously going to have a lot of people coming up with questions and queries as well. From questions on shipping details and estimated time to billing issues and discrepancies, you are going to be bombarded with questions. That’s why it makes complete sense to assemble a customer service team to handle all the concerns seamlessly.

Not people buy for themselves all the time. When you introduce free shipping, people would want to send products to their friends and family living in a different part of the country. So, introduce gifting ideas and options and increase your brand loyalty. Given them personalized message cards options they could select for the holiday season and ship them with the products for a little personal touch. This will definitely strike the right chord with your audience.

Email marketing should be on your top priority to get your old customers to visit your eCommerce website once again. From personalized deals and discounts to new sign ups onboarding, have an automated email sequence planned to entice your customers and keep pulling them to your store.

eCommerce development doesn’t end with the launch of your website. Like you saw, it requires consistent association for several instances like these. That’s why we recommend getting your website developed from a reliable eCommerce development company like ours.

We hire eCommerce developers who are industry veterans and at the same time understand market sentiments. When you collaborate with our eCommerce development service, you only get returns that are profitable. So, reach out to us today and get an ideal eCommerce store set up for the holiday season.