It’s that time of the year when everyone’s more than ready to pull out their credit cards and pay for your goodies. The months between October and February are the ones when business picks up and profits are made.
Studies have shown that not only does the peak season come with an increase in number of orders made, but also with larger than average order-sizes too: businesses can make up to 40% of their annual profits in just these months.
And so, the question becomes: Have you prepared your ecommerce website for the holiday season?
If you haven’t, don’t worry. We have all the things you need to do; just tick them off one by one:
Security Is Always #1: making sure you and your clients are protected should always be your number one priority. If there are any safety features that you have been putting off for a later time, now is that time.
If you can’t have them all installed right now without affecting your client’s online user-experience, then install as many of them now and make sure you complete them all once the rush is over.
Scale Up Now, Not Later: if you are expecting a surge in traffic, which is more than likely if you are as competitive as you should be, scale up to a more accommodating hosting plan or increase the resources that are available to you – unlimited, unmetered resources would be ideal. Don’t wait until your website comes to a complete standstill.
Later, if you don’t need the extra resources, you can always scale it all back.
Pause Major Overhauls: if you have a loyal customer-base and haven’t changed your website’s template for a while (say, a year) the holiday season would be the wrong time to start implementing any new changes.
Your visitors and clients are already used to the way your site works. Therefore, if they are still visiting your site, it means they are comfortable with the way it works – don’t create unnecessary confusion by moving things around.
Once the peak season is over, you can go ahead and tinker with it to your heart’s content. Just make sure the site is up and ready well before the start of the next holiday season so your clients can get used to the new way of doing things.
Stock Up On Your Products: if you have been in business for a few years, you will have a rough estimate of how much of your stock people will purchase – make sure you have the items ready to be shipped.
If you are new to the business, stock as much of the goods you are sure you will be able to sell, but also make sure you have extras on hold so you can get them to your customers in the shortest amount of time.
Hire Helpers: your customers won’t appreciate being put on hold or having to wait for days until their email queries are answered. You also don’t want to appear to be a fly-by-night operation working out of a basement.
Hire staffs that can help pick up the slack – satisfied customers will be the pay back you get for your efforts, but that is still a priceless return.
Make Sure your Site is Mobile-Friendly: this is something that you should have done right from the launch of your website. But, if you haven’t done so, now is the time to make sure you site can be accessed and viewed from any device.
Be Festive: share the holiday spirit with your customers. Let your website reflect that you too are in a festive mood. By adding a few graphics you your site, you can make it more appealing to your visitors’ eyes.
A pumpkin or a ghoul during Halloween or a Christmas tree or Santa in one corner during Christmas will do a lot to spruce your website up.
You can also change your template colors accordingly – black for Halloween and red for Christmas – to achieve wonderful visions.
Make Offers and Recommendations: make it easier for your clients to find exactly what they are looking for by offering seasonal discounts and recommending seasonal and appropriate gifts. Put your bestselling products where they can be clearly seen – as soon as your page loads.
Encourage Action: tell your visitors that if they order their presents or make purchases now, you will be able to deliver them before the actual holidays. The thought that it is not too late to go shopping will encourage – and bring relief to – a surprisingly large number of your customers.
Smoothen the End-to-End Process: it will all have been a waste if, after all the effort you have put into preparing your site, the customers find that they can’t complete their orders because of a bug in your purchasing process.
Test, test and test your end-to-end processing from selection to check out. Make sure it can handle an influx of traffic. Make sure the links work. Make sure prices are calculated correctly… make sure of everything.
Once you’ve done all of the above, it is time to make money!
