Most of us decorate our homes and business for the holiday season, but are there things you need to do to get your website ready?
You bet! Read below to learn about the steps you should take to prepare your website for the holiday season.
List Your Customers’ Holidays
Start by making a list of holidays that your customers celebrate.
You can include both big and small holidays to experiment with different holiday marketing ideas.
Below is a list of holidays that are often associated with shopping:
Holidays in Canada:
- New Years Eve
- Family Day
- Valentine’s Day
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Good Friday & Easter Monday
- Mother’s Day
- Victoria Day
- Father’s Day
- Canada Day
- Thanksgiving
- Halloween
- Christmas
- Boxing Day
Holidays in United States:
- New Years Eve
- Valentine’s Day
- Easter – Good Friday
- Mother’s Day
- Father’s Day
- Independence Day
- Halloween
- Black Friday
- Thanksgiving
- Christmas
Ethnic Holidays
- Easter
- Passover
- Ramadan
- Cinco de Mayo
- Rosh Hashanah
- Chanukah
- Diwali
- Mardi Gras
1. Show Holiday Greetings on Your Website
Getting your website ready for the holidays doesn’t mean a complete redesign. The changes that should be made are fairly simple. Below are the basics that you should address.
- Create a holiday-themed message to greet your visitors. This will typically appear on the home page of your website. If possible, link this greeting to a holiday promotion idea you are planning.
- Make certain that your holiday business hours are posted in addition to your regular business hours.
- Post information about your holiday shipping, – focus on the delivery time. Customers are anxious about getting their orders on time, even when they are placing them at the last minute.
2. Run Holiday Promotions on Your Website
Around the holidays, people are in the spirit to shop. This is a great opportunity for your business to create promotions and drive extra sales.
Below are some ways you can use the holidays to bring more customers towards making a purchase.
- Offer a special sale that is holiday themed.
- Publish or share articles that promote your products or services as being great for the holidays.
- Create promotions that help the public link what you offer to the holidays or gift giving.
- Provide incentives that will make your customers more likely to buy with you than with your competition.
To create additional holiday marketing ideas, think about holiday-specific needs your products or services address, the specific concerns of your audience, and how you can inspire positive feelings, – then tailor your promotion to address this.
3. Automate Your Holiday Marketing
Holidays repeat each year, typically around the same time in the calendar. This means that you can save time by re-using your marketing materials each year.
Consider using an email sending software that allows to “schedule” email messages to be sent automatically on specific dates each year.
If you haven’t done so already, begin encouraging your website visitors to sign up for your email list.
There are a few email sending software platforms that make it simple to build an email list and schedule your email messages.
4. Make Your Website Work Fast
Around the holiday season more people will be searching for seasonal products and services online. This means that you will be getting more visitors to your website.
When your website is being accessed by more visitors then usual, then your website begins to slow down (ie. it gets overloaded).
So before the holiday season starts, make sure to audit your Website’s Speed and make improvements if necessary.
5. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
As of October 2016, it was reported that more people access websites using their smartphones then regular computers.
Since smartphones have small screen sizes, your website needs to be easy to use on devices with small screens.
So, check how well your website loads on your smart phone. If your website is not easy to use on smartphones, then fewer of your website visitors will buy from you.
In this post we covered several updates you should make to prepare your website for the holidays, such as holiday promotion ideas. In addition, we covered how you can use the holiday prep as a good time to review other aspects of your website – which affect how your website performs for your business all year. Happy holidays!