It’s never too early to start getting your eCommerce website ready for the holidays!
That’s why we have put together a handy checklist for your e-commerce business to make sure that you have your website ready for the holidays.
It is very important that you make sure that your customers have the best user experience on your website, update your branding and visuals for the festive season, optimize your checkout page and create a holiday marketing strategy.
Download the 2020 Christmas eCommerce Website Checklist Today
1. Make sure your customers will have the best user experience
First Impressions matter, it’s important that you test and update your website to make sure you are giving your customers the best user experience possible.
1.1 Test your website
- Make sure your checkout & cart is working
This is the most important thing to check. If your cart doesn’t work = no sales. Easy as that. Here is a guide by WooCommerce on testing your WooCommerce Cart > Testing WooCommerce Payments – WooCommerce Docs - Check your website speed
Tools like GTmetrix | Website Speed and Performance Optimization is great for this. They also provide a bunch of recommendations to fix your website speed. - Test your coupon codes
This is another self-explanatory function to test.
1.2 Update your shipping & returns policy
Make returns less painful for your customers to increase your customer loyalty. Make sure your return policy is fully transparent and reasonable.
Simplify your return process using one or some of the methods below:
- Tell your customers how they can make a return or exchange by including a note with their purchase.
- Tell customers how to reuse the original package for returns.
- Offer an extended return window during the holiday season so customers have time to return their gifts.
Satisfy your customers and keep them coming back after the holidays by actions the points listed above in your eCommerce business.
1.3 Enable Abandonment Cart Notifications
The average shopping cart abandonment rate is as high as 70% (Retrieved from contactpigeon.com) Installing an abandoned cart plugin that sends emails to customers with items left in the cart helps to recover these carts. Abandoned cart emails have been proven to help recover on average 20%-25% of abandoned shopping carts.
A free popular abandoned cart plugin: Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org
A paid popular abandoned cart plugin: WooCommerce Abandoned Cart: Send automatic recovery email
1.4 Make sure your contact information is easily visible
Make sure your contact details or a link to your contact page is clearly visible in the header of your website to increase your customer’s trust with your store.
Creating a FAQ page is another great way to answer common questions you receive from your customers.
1.5 Ensure your site is secured with an SSL Certificate and contact forms include a Google Recapture
Not sure whether your website is secure?
Get in touch with us today and we will check and provide a quote for you.
1.6 Install live chat onto your website >Tawk. to
We believe every online store needs a Live Chat function.
Live chat saves time for both you and your customers. Your customers won’t have to leave the shopping cart to ask for answers and they don’t have to get on the phone or wait for an email reply.
Live chat humanizes your online store. Personally, we love being able to receive support from a real person. It makes it feel more like a real store experience rather than just having a phone number or email to contact.
If you don’t have live chat on your website tawk.to – “100% FREE live chat software for your website!” Is a great free option. Contact us today if you would like us to install this onto your WordPress website.
2. Update your branding and visuals for the holiday season
2.1 Showcase your holiday products
Determine what products you’re going to sell this holiday season.
Add a holiday-specific category in your website navigation for example a ‘Gifts’ category, or ‘For Him’ and ‘For Her’.
2.2 Spruce up your profile pictures and update your website banners
Roll out festive branded images over all of your networks such as your website, social media accounts, and google my business profile.
Decorate your existing profile picture or your business’s logo with a Santa Hat or festive graphics.
Extra Tips
Freepik is a great source for free festive stock images – Free Vectors, Stock Photos & PSD Downloads | Freepik
Here is a great guide for the social media image sizes – Always Up-To-Date Guide to Social Media Image Sizes | Sprout Social
3. Optimize your checkout page
3.1 Enable guest checkout
Requiring registration often interrupts the checkout purchase.
Online shopping requires trust and many customers don’t want to hand out their personal details in their first purchase.
Checking out as a guest is often much quicker and viewed as less of a commitment therefore making it easier for customers to make purchases on your website leading to more sales.
3.2 Offer several payment options
Make it convenient for customers to checkout on your website by providing as many secure payment methods as possible. There is nothing more disappointing than realising an online store doesn’t provide your payment method of choice.
Consider offering more payment options such as AfterPay, ZipPay, and/or PayPal.
3.3 Consider free shipping
It has been proven that customers are more likely to go through with a sale if there is free shipping.
You could offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount or on orders before a particular date. Have a look at your competitors and see how you can better your store to attract as many people as possible over the holiday season.
3.4 Enable gift card functionality
Consider offering gift cards for people to purchase as gifts for their loved ones or as an upsell at the checkout.
3.5 Offer gift wrapping
Consider adding the option at checkout for customers to have their gifts wrapped before being sent.
4. Festive Marketing & Promotions
4.1 Plan contests and giveaways
Attracting new customers with giveaways is a good way to increase your brand awareness and engagement whilst boosting sales. You can do this directly on your website or on your social media accounts.
It is a good idea to include an email sign-up form so you can collect email addresses for your email marketing list to be used in the future.
4.2 Advertise holiday products/specials on social media
Post on your Instagram story, create a Facebook post to notify your follower about your holiday products and specials.
4.3 Send Seasonal Emails
Send emails to your email list that include your holiday sales/discounts maybe even send a special offer to your subscribers. This also ties in with abandoned cart emails. Your customers will be overloaded with advertising during the holiday period so sending them a little reminder that they still have products in their cart is a good way to make them think about you.
4.4 Create and schedule social media content
It is important for every business owner to relax and spend time with people they love during the holidays. Batch and schedule your social media content so you don’t have to worry about creating content and posting over the holidays.
