The holiday shopping season is almost upon us and shoppers are expected to spend over $1 trillion this holiday season. Now is the time to make sure your website is ready and optimized for the influx of online holiday shoppers this year.
1. Check Your Checkout Process
It might seem obvious, but your checkout process is the most important thing when it comes to making sales on your website. That said, when was the last time you went through your own checkout system? Don’t wait until you notice a decline in sales to test out your shopping cart and payment processing solutions. It’s a good idea to run through your ordering and checkout process quarterly to ensure there are no broken links or other errors that prevent shoppers from converting on your website.
While you’re testing your cart and checkout process, you should be on the lookout for a few different things. One, is your checkout process easy to understand and use? Two, is it easy on multiple devices (desktop, tablet, mobile)? New research suggests 25% of shoppers will do all their holiday shopping on a mobile device. Don’t miss out on sales because shoppers couldn’t complete their purchases.
2. Make it Easy to Get Paid
Another trend that has taken off over the past year is the popularity of buy now, pay later services like Affirm or Klarna. These services are especially helpful for businesses with high-ticket items and offer affordable financing solutions for small and medium businesses. Another advantage of using buy now, pay later payment processors is that businesses see average price-per-transaction and conversion rates increase when these options are added.
When it comes to selling to customers online, the easier you make it for customers to convert, the more likely they are to do so. Consider implementing Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal as additional options to make paying for purchases as easy as a single button click.
3. Capitalize on FOMO
We’ve all heard the news stories warning shoppers of likely holiday shortages due to supply chain and shipping logistics issues. Whether your product or service is in abundance or you’re also facing these challenges, savvy Chicago business owners can use these reports as a chance to create a “Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO) to encourage customers to act.
There are a variety of ways to increase customer action by creating FOMO. One of the easiest and most popular ways is to include view counters on products to show how often products have been viewed. This not only creates social proof (showing customers that others find this product to be good or interesting), it also helps to increase the urgency for a customer to act. Another way to create more urgency and social proof is to use a plugin to display notifications on your site that alerts website browsers how many people are currently looking at the same product or when someone buys a product. This is especially effective for limited-quantity items or services.
4. Find Opportunities to Upsell
In addition to showing website visitors what other shoppers are interested in, now is the time to work on your e-commerce cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. Many businesses choose to use plugins to display dynamic banners with messages that countdown to a “free shipping” shopping cart amount or that display “people also liked” product recommendations on the bottom of other product pages. These plugins can be customized to show to only certain visitors (first-time, logged-in users, etc) or can be used in a blanket fashion across the whole site to create one experience for all shoppers.
5. Drive Traffic to Your Business Website to Drive Sales
Create your best holiday selling season yet with help from pay-per-click and remarketing ads that are designed to reach new audiences and sell more goods and services. Google Ads are a great way to reach customers who are specifically looking for the goods and services you are selling while social media ads like Facebook ads can help you win more brand awareness and drive more sales or foot traffic into a physical store.
The 2021 holiday shopping season is set to be a record-breaker in many ways. Start preparing your e-commerce or business website now with help from Neur. Our team has the WordPress website and digital marketing expertise you need to create a website that helps your business reach new levels.
