The “R” is in the month again, so many e-commerce sites are getting ready for their peak season.
Here are some things that may help making your Christmas season a huge success:
1. Oil, lube and filter for your shopping cart – is your shopping cart system working well? Now may be a good time to dive into your analytics to check your conversions. Especially focus on steps in your check-out process that lead to a higher than normal cart abandon rate, and try to improve those.
2. Only fix what is broken – postpone the rest into the New Year. This is not the time to introduce new problems. Focus on sales improvements, not technical innovations.
3. Tweak your ads – make sure to offer lots of calls to action in your ads.
Especially this time of year, people are looking for steep discounts, free shipping, free gift wrapping etc. Also make sure that people have no problems finding the most popular items. Consider running dedicated holiday ads – and prepare them now; come December you will be too busy for this.
4. Use social media to promote your offers. Going viral with great gifts or exceptional service can pay big dividends this time of year!
5. Consider adding season-specific navigation on your e-commerce site. Allow your visitors to filter by price, gender, age group in order to make finding gifts for a certain person a lot easier. And make sure to promote these features in banners, social media and e-mail Newsletters.
6. Offer something for everyone. Make sure to offer more luxury items as well as stocking stuffers. Many smaller items may lead to a nice amount come checkout time.
7. Consider offering gift cards. This way even people who cannot find what they are looking for, or don’t have the time to shop, can spend their holiday dollars at your store.
Let’s make the most out of the coming busy season.
For more information: contact your web developer, or Nardo Kuitert at www.ferguswebsites.com.
Kuitert has written the On The Web column on behalf of the Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce since 2006.
