Holidays are upon us, and people are ready to do some shopping. Even though the big malls are full of Christmas spirit and Christmas songs, many people decide to stay at home and do some online shopping in order to avoid the large crowds and long queues. That is when your e-commerce shop should stand out and benefit the customers and you, both. However, you need to work on it twice as hard because attracting the people to the website and convincing them to shop will be a result of several successfully realized tasks. To help you out, here is what you can do to prepare your online store and promote it the right way.
Table of Contents
1. Make the Layout of the Website More Festive
Add some of that Christmas spirit on the homepage of the website. Make sure that you update the design with holiday-themed copy and include some festive images. However, keep it to a minimum so that the layout basically stays the same and the customers don’t have a problem to find the product they are looking for. So, not too much drama, just a little bit of Christmas cheer to keep the customers engaged and in Christmas spirit.
2. Check Your SEO Status
Prior to any changes, have your SEO status checked. You must know how your site is performing at the moment before you decide what kind of changes you need to do. Which keywords are you targeting, do you have all the meta tags necessary and are there enough links and locations set up online that will help customers get to you quickly. If your SEO game is not extra strong during the holiday season, your SEO ready competitors will crush you.
3. Holiday Keywords… Have You Targeted Them?
Apart from the regular keywords that you are targeting (again, are the keywords you are targeting the right ones?), try including some holiday terms that people search for during the holidays. Perhaps you should retarget the audience as well because during the holiday season your customers can be people who don’t usually shop what you are selling.
4. Become Mobile Friendly
If you haven’t done it already, now is a perfect time. Your e-commerce shop must offer the customers optimal experience regardless of the device they use to shop. Holiday shopping is usually done right here, right now, or at the nick of time. Customers may use two different devices to complete a purchase, so make sure your e-commerce shop is optimised to offer such an experience.
5. Make the Website Faster
The speed is another factor that the customers appreciate when it comes to online shopping. Make sure that your website is fast enough to satisfy the needs of customers and that it won’t crash if an additional number of people are browsing. You can do that by:
- Reducing the size of the page
- Compress data
- Specify image dimensions
- Optimise platform configuration
- Use caching and in-memory technology
Moreover, to fix Error 509 (which appears when the site is receiving more traffic than the host can support), there are some additional things that can be done. For example: implementing caching which is a way to save a copy of the page on their browser so that when they come back, the site is retrieved from the browser rather than from the host’s servers.
Then, upgrading the hosting plan is the next thing you should do. Don’t stay on the initial hosting plan as the cheaper the plan is, the higher the chances are for it to crash during an increased number of visits.
Finally, use a content delivery network (CDN) which is a network that distributes the files to various servers around the globe so that the files are served from the closest point of the location of your website visitor and will facilitate the work of your server.
Of course, you need to keep the pages of your social media profiles fresh with holiday-themed posts, offers and deals. It is also a good idea to create a contest so that you can create new engagement that will lead to more organic traffic.
Staying alert during the holiday season and working hard on your brand image wrapped in the holiday spirit is what your e-shop needs in order to make big profits. The best thing is that you don’t need to walk alone along this path, you can always ask for help.
Merry Christmas Everybody!
