With less than 3 weeks until Christmas - it’s safe to say that most people have at least started their Christmas shopping. Your business needs to get ready for this busy season. Prepare for a merry and successful holiday season by reviewing these five tips and collaborating with your team.

1. Prepare for incoming traffic. 

As you’re probably already aware, the holiday season means increased traffic to your online store, especially during sale season. There is nothing worse than a site outage during one of the busiest times.

Make sure your inventory is stocked. 

Increased traffic and customers means and increased need for inventory. Prepare ahead to avoid wait times and frustrated customers when they see that dreaded “out of stock”. Be sure to check with your suppliers ahead of time to ensure your inventory needs are met.

Check your site speed.

Nothing is worse than getting onto a website and seeing the dreaded loading sign. With increased traffic and demand ensure your site is up to speed to handle the incoming traffic. Check with your ecommerce provider on current stats, so you know how well covered you are. 

Evaluate your third-party integrations. 

Take a look at your third-party integrations. Are they up-to-date? Test them, make sure they can handle the load and then don’t add any others. Additional or last minute app add-ons can break aspects of your flow or slow down your site. 

2. Create a hassle-free customer experience.

In this day and age, shoppers want to be able to come to a site and get what they need, quickly and easily. Ensure your site is up for the job. 

Enable cart abandonment notifications. 

Consumers are busy, and often checking multiple sites. Sending a push notification may be the difference between making a sale or not. Abandoned cart emails have excellent conversion rates — based on data, they have a 10.7% conversion rate.

Optimize checkout. 

Once a customer has reached the checkout page, they have most likely decided they are ready to make a purchase. Optimizing your checkout page means making the process as smooth as possible, so the customer doesn’t leave before completing the purchase. You can create a seamless checkout experience by only having one checkout page, enabling guest checkout, and offering several payment and shipping options.

3. Have many shipping and fulfillment options.

To execute on a great customer experience strategy, you’ll need a clear plan on where to sell your products and how to ship and fulfill orders.

Expand your sales channels.

Your ecommerce store isn’t the only place to spread holiday cheer. Consider other sales channels, such as:

• Social commerce: Update your product catalog and tag items to sell them on Facebook and Instagram.
• Brick-and-mortar shops: Ensure your efforts are consistent across online and offline channels. 

More importantly, connect these channels together for a seamless experience.

4. Create strategic holiday marketing and promotions.

Consider using gift cards to upsell at checkout, offering seasonal services such as free gift-wrapping or shipping, or creating limited-time offers to add urgency.

Plan for holiday contests and giveaways. Enacting different contests and giveaways during the holidays is a great way to help you increase customer satisfaction and engagement while also boosting sales. This can be done directly on your store’s website, or you can utilize social media tools. Not only are you engaging customers and fostering a sense of community around your brand, but you’re also promoting specific products and deals you might be running during the holiday seasons. 

5. Ramp up your customer service and support.

The holiday season is quickly approaching and, to be prepared for success, both your business and your customers need adequate support. ENsure your customer service team is prepared to answer the influx of inquiries or consider adding a live chat feature to your website. 

Have dedicated support and respond to inquiries quickly. Even when something goes wrong, a positive customer support experience can lead to a loyal customer. You should have dedicated support for phone, email, and social media — and be sure to respond to all inquiries within 24–48 hours.

Let’s Chat

Don’t want to handle the holiday stress alone? If you’re interested in hearing how Good Commerce can elevate your online marketing contact us to book a Brand Discovery session and let’s start achieving your business goals together.