Each year, a growing number of people are doing their holiday shopping online, which
means there will likely be a larger than average number of visitors to your online store.
But is your website ready to handle the increased traffic?
Hey, it's Noni from Printful.
Preparing your store for the holidays is about more than just pushing products to your store
and planning promotions.
It also means making and following a plan to make sure your store is technically solid.
But first, make sure you subscribe to our channel and tap on the bell icon to get notifications
so you can stay up to date with our ecommerce videos.
Now, one of the first things you can do to prepare your store for the holidays is optimize
your user experience.
Optimize your user experience.
In order to optimize your store, you'll need to run a user experience audit.
To do this, go through your purchase flow as if you're a new customer.
You can even get a friend or family member to check out your site and let you know if
the process of finding and buying what they're looking for is easy and intuitive.
Note if your website is easy to navigate and figure out which pages, content, and add-ons
you need to update.
From there, make any necessary changes!
This may mean creating holiday-focused landing pages for your seasonal collections, updating
your SEO to include holiday focused keywords, creating a gift guide, adding or optimizing
your search function, gamifying your site, adding discount or email collection pop-ups,
and updating your product descriptions.
After that, make sure your checkout process is user-friendly.
28% of customers who abandon their carts do so because the checkout process was too long
and complex.
So make it as simple as possible for them by only asking for necessary information,
adding a variety of trusted payment methods, and checking to see if they're all working.
Next, you'll want to improve your page loading speed.
Improve page loading speed.
75% of people won't return to websites that take longer than 4 seconds to load.
So make sure that your website is loading quickly by using Google's Page Speed Tool
to see how your website performs and what fixes you need to make.
From there, you can speed up your website by:
Removing or compressing large photos and videos on your site
Uninstalling plugins you're not using Increasing the bandwidth of your hosting package
so your page can handle all your visitors Using multiple servers to distribute your
traffic load by using a load balancer or Content Delivery Network
Adding a caching plugin to your integration
After you've done all of that, create a page loading speed backup plan in case your site
goes down or takes too long to load.
Know if your integration has a backup plugin and 24/7 support.
If it doesn't, you might need to switch or upgrade to a different plan.
Once your page is nice and speedy, double-check that your site is mobile friendly.
Make your site mobile friendly.
By 2021, mobile commerce will account for 53% of all ecommerce sales.
So make sure your site is mobile friendly!
Start by using Google's Mobile Friendly Test.
Just put your store link in and it'll tell you if it's mobile friendly and in the case
that it's not, it'll tell you about any issues that mobile users might encounter.
Now here's what you can do to make your site more mobile friendly:
Use responsive website design so that it works on both mobile and desktop
Adjust your image, font, and button sizes Remove flash from your website, since it's
not super accessible for mobile users Enable mobile payments
Make sure your pop-ups are the right size and easily closible
And as mentioned before, optimize your page loading speed
Next up, be prepared to answer any questions.
Prepare customer service materials.
With more visitors on your website, you can expect more questions from customers.
So you'll need to make sure your website has all of the information necessary to address
their concerns before they reach out to you.
To do this, Write informative product descriptions
Put together clear store policies Create an FAQ in a highly visible spot
Craft a great About Us page–for more info on that, check out our video that's all about
About pages.
Link in the description below.
And list your shipping times and what date your customers need to order by to get their
gear by the holidays
In the case that your customers still have questions, make sure you're easily reachable
by: Creating a contact us page
Using live chat to answer questions Putting your social media handles in your
footer in case your customers prefer to direct message you
And Setting a timeframe for yourself to answer customer questions
Last but not least, before the holidays, you should increase your web security.
Increase web security.
You want to know that your store is protected and customers want to know that their data
is safe.
So start by using an HTTPS, which is an internet protocol that keeps the data on your site
secure through authentication, encryption, and data integrity.
Before you can switch to HTTPS though, you need a free SSL certificate from a site like
Let's Encrypt.
Then once it's all set up, your URL will show visitors that your website has a secure connection.
From there, install s security plugin like Jetpack to ensure that only you have access
to your site data and customer information.
A good security plugin will include: Firewalls that monitor site activity and get
rid of bots before they become a problem Malware scanning that detects threats
And Alerts that let you know if there's a threat
Then, offer secure payment gateways.
You want your customers to feel safe when they browse your store.
So offer a payment gateway like Paypal or Stripe that processes credit card information,
calculates tax, verifies orders, and uses geolocation
Overall, it's just about starting early and testing!
That's what you need to know about updating your store for the holiday season!
How are you preparing your store for the holidays?
Let us know in the comments below