Get your e-commerce website ready for the holiday rush

The festive season is on our doorstep and this means that consumers are getting ready to shop big. If you have an e-commerce website, now is the time to get your site organised for the rush.

It is expected that more consumers will shop online this year than ever before. This means that your website may see more traffic compared to previous years. As a result, you have to ensure your website can withstand the possible surge. Let's look at how you can get your website ready:

Ensure your site is fast

During the holiday period, consumers generally have more time to shop around. But that doesn't mean that they will have time to spend on your slow website. They will quickly click away to a faster, more efficient site. To avoid this, you have to ensure your site and all of its pages load fast.

Slow speeds may be due to unoptimised images, excessive HTTP requests, outdated plugins, unclean code, too many ads, etc. If you are unsure of how to fix these issues or are unable to find the source of your slow pages, speak to the expert e-commerce website design team at Web Guru. We will analyse your website to pinpoint the cause of the slow speeds.

Evaluate stock levels

The last thing you want is to run out of stock in the middle of the rush. Some research can help you to prepare your stock levels:

• You can compare your sales for the same period from previous years and see how it has grown to prepare for this year;
• or you can get the sales inventory of the last couple of months and use the data to predict sales for the holiday period.

There are some sales forecasting tools to help you analyse the data correctly. These include Pipedrive, Adaptive Insights, Zoho CRM, and Slickpie.

Ensure you can meet shipping demands

Over the holiday period, good customer service is very important, and this includes efficient shipping. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that you can meet the shipping demands of shoppers with the right infrastructure. When it comes to shipping, it is better to be overprepared than to be caught off guard and have customers wait for packages.

Advertise your offerings

As soon as you have your stock levels in place and your shipping processes in order, you should start advertising your offerings. If you have specials coming up for the holiday period, now is a good time to start your email marketing campaign and running social media ads. You can also use your website to market your upcoming specials or sales through blog posts, banners, and pop-up ads.

Enable customer reviews

As mentioned, shoppers typically have more time over the holiday period to shop around. They will be looking for feedback before making a purchasing decision. Therefore, it is important to add customer reviews to your website and social media platforms in the run up to the holiday rush. To gather reviews, you can ask your existing customers to send feedback.

Secure your site

Unfortunately, during the holidays, hacking attempts generally increase. To keep your website and your customers’ sensitive data safe, it is important to invest in the right security measures. This can include getting an SSL certificate for your website, installing malware detection software, and doing frequent scans to identify any security issues on your site.

The holidays are a competitive time for retailers. If you are not able to overcome challenges fast, you may miss out on valuable sales during this time. Get your site ready, evaluate your data and market your products well in advance to prepare for what's to come. If you are organised and ready, your business can thrive during this period.

Need help getting your e-commerce website ready? Talk to the team at Web Guru, we will make sure your site is well prepared for the holiday rush.