The holidays are quickly approaching. That means it’s time for businesses everywhere to start thinking about their e-commerce.

I know what you’re thinking – “it’s only the beginning of October, I’ve still got another month to go before things really start picking up”. The reality is, if you’re not ready now, you’re already behind. In the first part of our holiday e-commerce series, we get into some basic tips to help you get a head start on your e-commerce.

Mobile Rules All

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of having an optimized mobile site. Without a proper mobile site, you’re basically considered non-existent on Google’s mobile SERP, which can be detrimental to your e-commerce. Last year, almost 1/3 of all holiday retail sales were influenced by mobile shopping searches. That’s a lot of sales.

Have A Plan

The holiday season can be stressful. Don’t make it any worse for yourself by not planning things ahead of time.

Keep track of all the major dates and make a note of when you should be pushing out content, promotions, and emails out to your customers. Plan this well in advance, as there will be a lot going on around that time you’ll need to worry about. Give yourself plenty of time for error proofing and to adjust promotions as needed. The last thing you want is to push everything to the last minute and realize you screwed up.

The holiday season can be stressful. Don’t make it any worse for yourself by not planning things ahead of time.

It’s The Holidays – Make It Exciting!

This is important and the techniques can vary depending on the industry, the campaigns you decide to run, and what you’re selling. The idea is to create a sense of excitement and urgency towards the holiday season. You want to do this while not coming out as too spammy or overly pushy, otherwise your campaigns could have the opposite effect of what they’re intended to do – and that’s never any fun.

Some common promotional ideas to hype up your customers include the use of the following:

  • – Contests: these are great for generating brand and product hype and it can also be a great tool to collect customer emails.
  • – Subtle visual changes to signal the holiday season (e.g logo, images, website creative, social media posts, etc.
  • -Holiday emails – plan these out, and spread them out appropriately. Your aim is to be as timely as possible.
  • -Holiday gift guides – these work great for educating/upselling your customers.

Make it Personal

Stand out from the competition’s boring old promotional text and give customers a reason to want to buy from you.

Take your time with your promotional descriptions and copy. You don’t want to use something too general – nobody likes to see these, especially around the holidays. Tailor your description to your audience and make it personal. You’ll stand out from the competition’s boring old promotional text and give customers a reason to want to buy from you.

Slow Checkout – Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That

Around the holidays, nobody has time to be wasting on slow checkout or complicated conversion processes. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy everything they need from you and move on. If you don’t know how to test your CRO, start by having someone make a test purchase on your site to see how long the process takes.  If there are any issues, get it sorted as soon as possible.

Get a start on these basic e-commerce tips and we guarantee you’ll be ready to tackle the long winter ahead.