Nigel Wilkinson
Managing Director of Daneswood. Nigel has been in sales and marketing since the 1980's and run digital marketing agencies since 2000.
The festive season is always one of high turnover and equally high stress for those running an e-commerce store. This year is set to be even busier with the ongoing restrictions set upon high street retailers and shoppers’ preference to purchase online.
Since the start of the March lockdown online shopping has increased by a whopping 94%
Ensuring that your e-commerce store is as prepared as possible not only helps to increase your conversions but also means you have more time available to ensure your customers are receiving the best experience. This in turn helps to improve sales and long-term customer retention.
So, what are some of the ways you can help to prepare for the Christmas sales?
How can I prepare my e-commerce store?
User Experience
The first thing you should be considering is the overall user experience of your site. If your site doesn’t load properly, looks poor or has broken functions, your bounce rate will soar and not only will you lose custom, it will also impact your SEO. This means less people will be able to find your site.
Begin by checking your page speed. You can do this using Google’s page speed checker. Pop in your e-commerce sites URL and analyse your page speed. Google will provide your rate as a number from 0-100, 100 being the best. In general terms, you want to be aiming for a load time of around 1-3 seconds.
63% of consumers say a slow page load speed would be the main reason to abandon a purchase.
Next, make sure your site is fully mobile responsive. Nower days, most people will be viewing your e-commerce store on a mobile device. Infact 28% of purchases are made this way, so ensuring your site is displaying correctly and is fully accessible is a massive tick box.
If you are concerned about how mobile responsive your site it, you can speak to one of our experts for advice.
Optimise for Search Engines
Your overall SEO should be next on your list of things to assess. While you are likely to already have optimised your site, take some time to check over your keywords, content and security features – such as your SSL. This will help with your Google rankings and make it easier for people to find you.
Sync Your Stock
Now that you have ensured your site is working as well as it should, you need to start thinking about what people will be looking for and how you can best ensure they find it.
Start by making sure your stock is fully up to date on your website to avoid customers placing orders for out-of-stock items.
You can also go back and look at past data to find out what your most popular items were in previous years to help with this, as well as monitoring trends on social media and analytics.
Nail Your Navigation
Next, test your navigation. Is it easy for customers to find what they are looking for? Does your search function work as it should, or do you need to make improvements to ensure customers can navigate your site as easily as possible?
It’s All in the Design
Finally, think about the appearance of your e-commerce store.
Try and make your site as eye catching as possible, with particular attention drawn to your promotions and offers.
This can be easily done by using banners and graphics across your site, which are Christmas themed, to catch the eye of shoppers.
Additionally, make sure that your shipping dates and costs are clearly visible to avoid confusion or disappointment at checkout, as this could lead to abandoned carts.
If you would like to know more about how to prepare your e-commerce store for Christmas sales, or would like help in implementing some of the tips we have written about above, contact us today.