Whether we want to admit it or not, the holiday season is upon us. Stores are taking down their fall decorations before Thanksgiving and putting up Christmas trees and North Pole inspired decor. Before we know it, the standard background music will be replaced with “Jingle Bells.” Furthermore, data from Google® showed that more than 25 percent of shoppers begin holiday shopping before Halloween.1 So, if you haven’t already, now is the time to start optimizing your website to meet the demands of both the overachievers and the procrastinators when it comes to online holiday shopping.
First things first, provide customers with a fast, seamless online experience regardless of the device being used. Customers shop online and avoid the stores because of convenience. If your website cannot handle the influx of traffic causing any page to load slowly, there is a good chance that customer will abandon your website and look elsewhere. In fact, a recent report from Radware found that 57 percent of customers will leave a site that fails to load in three seconds.2 So, take the time to update features like broken links and images and address error messages to make sure your website is running like a well-oiled machine.
Use behavioral data to identify seasonal sales trends. Website analytics can provide marketers with insight into what customers are searching for, whether they are typing specific words and phrases into a search box or using a navigation toolbar. It’s also important to look at trends from the previous year, especially which days saw the highest amount of traffic and which pages were visited the most. This type of information can help decide what to feature on the home page and in upcoming marketing campaigns.
We can’t forget that nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone.3 That means holiday shoppers will be spending a large majority of their time searching websites for the perfect gift on their mobile device. Even though Google’s Mobilegeddon was enforced earlier this year, which encouraged many businesses to ensure their websites were mobile friendly, now is the perfect time to make sure everything is running smoothly and both your mobile site and mobile app, if you have one, are user friendly.
The holiday season is often the most important time of the year for many businesses. It’s crucial to understand that the buying experience has vastly changed over the years, with more consumers shopping online rather than making a trip to the store. Businesses, more specifically, marketers need to make it a priority to optimize websites to keep customers happy in order to meet holiday revenue goals.