As we approach the holiday season, people are starting to look for and buy presents and prepare for celebrations. Likewise, businesses across the country and the internet are starting to take strides to increase sales as much as possible. However, not everyone is going to be taking advantage of the same opportunities. How do you know what should be done to put your best foot forward? Many things could help, but there are a few that are better than others. Let’s take a look at what you can do to best prepare your eCommerce store for the holiday season.
Make Your Store Mobile Friendly
First and foremost, over half of Americans now use their smartphones to make purchases online. This means that the majority of the people who will be making purchases online are only seeing your mobile website. So, if you want to avoid high bounce rates, where a potential customer only visits one page, you need to make sure that your website looks good and functions well on a mobile device.
However, good looks aren’t everything with a mobile site. Page speed also matters to users, as well. According to Google, your online store needs to load within 1 to 3 seconds. Anything slower than that, you risk losing upwards of 33% of your total audience! Luckily, there are plenty of ways that you can help your online store, and website as a whole, load faster. Google has a free Mobile Site Speed Checker that you can use to check how fast your site is and to see what you can do to improve the speed.
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
As a person who manages or works on an eCommerce store, you probably know the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When done correctly, you increase your chances of appearing on the first page, or the first three results, of a Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). However, with many online stores utilizing SEO tactics to improve their rankings, what can you do to stand out from the crowd?
Simply put, make a plan! One of the biggest mistakes made by companies is trying to rank for every keyword they can think of. This approach can overload Google and hurt your rankings! The best plan of action is to create a strategy of what products you want to highlight for the holidays. Once you know that, you can start optimizing the proper pages and reap the benefits of being more calculated than your competitors.
Spend Money to Make Money
It’s a pretty old saying but, really rings true for online stores during the holiday season. Making your website mobile-friendly and optimized for Google are great ways to get more sales, but that is for people who already want to buy. What about those people who are thinking about it, gave your website a visit, but just haven’t purchased anything yet?
This is where digital advertising comes in! You can run Google Ads, Facebook ads or remarketing ads that follow users of your website to get them to re-engage with your online store. By going after your audience rather than being more passive, you can really drive up sales and maximize your numbers for the holiday season.
Subscribe via RSS
