13 Fun Ways to Spruce Up Your Ecommerce Website for the Holiday Shopping Season

You website needs to be prepared for the holiday shopping season’s rush of online shoppers. Not only the look and feel of the website aesthetically, but your website needs to have a lightning fast loading speed and be able to handle the influx of website traffic it will receive during the holiday shopping season from November 20th through December. Here are some of the areas and elements of your website that can be spruced up for the holiday shopping influx.

1. Homepage Main Image – Use a holiday themed main graphic on the homepage. Run frequent holiday promotions, i.e. best sales of the year. -> Free Shipping is the #1 promotion that motivates consumers to purchase online.
   
2. Holiday themed company logo – Adding a little graphical flair to your company logo for the holidays can be a nice touch, like: garland, snow, pieces of a wreath, and other related holiday items.
   
3. “Pre-Holiday Deals” Page – add a page on the website that can be linked to with a graphic on the homepage and in the header. And then promote via your email blasts, social network posts, boosted posts, and online ad campaigns, to drive traffic to this page.
   
4. Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals Pages – Create pages on your website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals that can be linked to via email blasts, social media posts/ads, and the home page’s main graphic. Create blog posts for “Top 10 lists” for multiple product categories, such as “Top 10 Black Friday Deals on Gadgets.” By including your retargeting cookie on your article/blog pages, it can add to your remarketing reach during the holidays to maximize sales. These pages can bring you SEO traffic if they are optimized well for content and page titles and linked from your homepage.
   
5. Holiday themed header/footer – Adding some ornaments, garland, or other holiday items can add a nice seasonal touch and show your visitors that you’re timely. The header and footer are good places to advertise promotions as well.
   
6. Free Shipping Offer – consumers love free shipping, it’s the #1 promotion in ecommerce. Push it in your newsletters, automated emails, website graphics, social network pages, live chat widget, and in use it in the phone sales center. All of your consumer touch points should be well coordinated and emphasizing your holiday promotions.
   
7. Server Load – Make sure your website server can handle the influx of traffic very well and is loading as quickly as possible at all times. A NO EXCUSES POLICY needs to be in effect for your hosting and website speed. Nothing kills conversions like a slow loading website. Check into “load balancing” and server error reporting, to keep an eye on it. Use website monitoring alerts so you know when your site goes down so any issues can be addressed immediately.
   
8. Website Speed – this is one of the top factors in having a well-converting website and increasing sales, especially during the holidays. You can optimize your website’s loading time through various strategies. There are tools you can use to test your website’s speed on desktop and mobile to find and fix the areas that can be sped up.
   
9. Abandoned Shopping Cart Follow-up Emails/SMS – Use abandoned shopping cart follow-up emails and text messages to convert more visitors. Also, browser abandoners can be emailed. It’s a must in high-volume traffic time frames. Make the promotions seasonal in the emails and in the optin box popups on your website!
   
10. AddShoppers – this is a service to send email retargeting follow ups to your website visitors even if they don’t leave their email address with you. Tell them Evan Weber sent you for special promotion/deal.
    
11. Mobile Optimized – make sure you have a great mobile version of your website, that loads fast and is easy to shop through. You absolutely need a well-converting and performing mobile version of your site this time of year with more people than ever shopping on their phones. A mobile app is also a great idea if you have the budget to have it developed, so you can send app/push notifications and have an easier check out experience.
    
12. Proactive Live Chat – Use a widget from the footer on all visitors with a holiday themed box stating, “Happy Holidays, can we help you with anything?” It’s an info first, promotion second chat management strategy that adds the human element to your web traffic, tracked with coupon codes. It’s a proven strategy to increase conversion rates! I really like Olark.com but there are others like Facebook Messenger for website chat.
    
13. Browser Push Notifications – having push notifications, i.e. browser notifications, is a phenomenal way to increase repeat website traffic. It will proactively market your offers to your audience that says yes to receiving them, and increase sales and overall conversion rates. Check out PushCrew.com or OneSignal.com.

Thanks for taking a look! If you need any assistance with the design and development of your website for the holiday shopping season, we can help with that. If you need your digital marketing and online advertising strategies implemented and managed to perfection, we can handle that for you as well. Contact us for a free evaluation. Have a busy and profitable holiday shopping season!