When carrying an online business, you cannot deny the importance of sales made during festive occasions or holiday season. If you are looking to seal the deal during these days, it is very important that you prep up your website accordingly. This means that your website should have all the essential aspects that would make it rank it high on Google while providing all your customers with a personalized experience.
This feature highlights possible ways which can help you prepare you an outstanding website for the holiday season.
Keep The Functionality Intact
If higher sales in your mantra this holiday season, then keeping the functionality of your website intact is a good way to start. Using new interfaces and annoying displays will not please your existing clients. Rather, it can make their shopping process more complicated, increasing cart abandonment and leading to lesser sales.
If you want to redesign your website, you should do it on days there is not much online activity. Any change that your customers are not familiar with will make you miss out on a huge revenue, driving your loyal customers to other options.
Consider Upgrading Your Server
Holiday season is the time of the year that your website will get an influx of visitors. In order to accommodate the increase in traffic they need extra bandwidth. Once the festive time of the year is over, you can bring them back to their previous state.
In order to quickly perform these required changes, it is important that you consider working with web host. Opt for a package that can be easily reverted back to its initial state once you have dealt with the heavy traffic. Moreover, you need to assure that this whole process is automated and there is no downtime during peak sales.
Consider Adopting Extra Security Measures
A big factor that affects the purchasing process of many online customers is online security. When they visit your website, they are genuinely concerned whether their credit card information is save at your portal. In order to provide your customers with a safest online experience, consider using latest encryption options available.
A SSL certificate and a green padlock on your site in the address bar are good way to portray your credibility to your customers, since they are universal security signs.
Have Extra Staff At Hand
Live chat during holiday season can help your customers with any kind of queries they have regarding the products they are about to purchase. This wouldn’t make your customers to wait in line to get their queries answered or problems sorted. You can also take help from extra staff so that the purchasing process is streamlined and every customer is provided with immediate response. It is always advisable to hire staff well before the festive season, as it would enable you to train them.
Work On Optimization Of Your Holiday Theme
Most probably you must have thought of a holiday theme for your website. However, what you didn’t take into account was that the theme is too big and practically takes forever to load. This is a huge mistake and can cost you thousands of dollars in the form of disgruntled customers who visit competitors’ websites due to the delay.
While choosing on a theme, be mindful that some customers would be accessing the sites through their mobiles. Before putting up your theme, it’s best to run a test. If it is too large, try compressing and optimizing it as much as possible.
Be Mindful Of Shipment Deadlines
Holiday season is where most of the people keep delaying their purchases. However, they expect that their products would be delivered to them at their earliest. Remove any ambiguity by keeping a cut-off date while promising your customers to deliver their products.
Shipment delays can cause a lot of problems for your business’ reputation even if they are the ones at fault for ordering items at the last moment.
Make sure that the date is conspicuous on your website. With the deadline drawing near, you should highlight it so that your customers are well-informed.
Be Ready To Face Problems
Holiday season is the time where there is most traffic on your website. Since the busy nature of this period, a lot of unseen problems can occur, despite you preparing everything well in advance. No matter how many tests you run, you will get struck with obstacles. The best approach is to be willing to face these problems and provide solutions at your earliest.
In order to overcome the frequency of discrepancies, be on your guard during throughout the season, carefully monitoring every aspect of your business along with traffic levels. If need be, don’t hesitate to provide a helping hand to your staff.
What challenges have you faced while prepping up your website for holiday season? Share your experiences with us.
