5 Holiday Planning Tips for E-commerce Websites
The holiday season is the most profitable time of the year for many e-commerce businesses. This 2022 holiday season, Deloitte economists predict that e-commerce sales will climb by 13.5%, reaching $262 billion in sales.
Increased traffic comes concurrently with increased pressure on your e-commerce website. To meet demands and increase your e-commerce sales this holiday season, it’s important to properly prepare your e-commerce website. Consider these five e-commerce website holiday planning tips.
1. Analyze Historical Holiday Season Data
One helpful step to take when preparing your website for the holidays is to analyze data from previous holiday seasons. With this information, you can get a better idea of what to expect and formulate a plan.
Historical data gives you details about your website traffic, most popular products, highest grossing days, average order quantity, and average order value. You can even get information on the strategies that worked and those that failed, helping you utilize the most productive and effective marketing strategies.
2. Scale Up Against Increased Traffic
Increased and unpredictable website traffic can cause slow load times, various performance issues, and even cause your e-commerce store to go offline if your website is unprepared for spikes in traffic. To keep your e-commerce website up and running efficiently this holiday season, test your site loading times and work with your website hosting company to ensure your website is sufficiently prepared for increased traffic.
3. Improve Mobile Friendliness
About 61% of online shoppers during previous holiday seasons purchased products using mobile devices. To ensure a seamless user experience for each and every customer, it is crucial to confirm your e-commerce website is optimized properly for mobile use.
This goes beyond simply making your website responsive for mobile devices. You must design your site with the mobile user prioritized. Test every step of the browsing and purchasing experience on mobile devices. Don’t forget to test multiple smartphone screen sizes and orientations! Once tested, look for improvements to make your shoppers’ experience more enjoyable and simpler.
4. Highlight Holiday Offers/Discounts
Holiday offers and discounts are a great way to boost interest in your products while helping you sell specific inventory. When preparing your e-commerce website for the holiday season, create exclusive holiday-focused product categories and make navigation to these dedicated pages easier to help point your customers in the direction of your holiday promotions. Also, ensure that any promo codes are setup properly, including streamlining the coupon code entry, doublechecking expiration dates, and promoting your exclusive discounts properly.
5. Prep Your Marketing Channels
Your marketing channels are arguably just as important to have properly updated and prepped for the holiday season. Anywhere that promotes your business should also be double checked for accuracy for the upcoming holidays. Channels could include your live chat system, phone system, sales/cross-promotion partners, social media accounts, email marketing platforms, and more.
Is Prepping Your E-commerce System for the Holidays a Pain?
It should not be! If you are struggling to generate promo codes, update your product offerings, or integrate with 3rd party platforms, you may need to consider upgrading your e-commerce system in the future. Keep in mind, we would never recommend switching e-commerce systems in the middle your peak season. However, as you’re planning for next year, do not be afraid to try out different systems.
If you’re looking for a recommendation, Shopify is our favorite e-commerce system for small businesses. Shopify makes starting and running an e-commerce business far more affordable than developing your own store on a system like WordPress or website builders like Squarespace. Shopify has tons of integrations that allow you to sell your products via your website, in person, on social media, and more. You can get a free trial of Shopify online.
Contact Our E-Commerce Website Experts
At Igniting Business, we are here to help your small business succeed this holiday season. For more e-commerce website holiday preparation tips, subscribe to our newsletter! To learn more about our e-commerce design services, contact us today!
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