If you own an eCommerce website or an informational website, the holidays are a great opportunity to drive traffic and conversions online. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are great excuses to go in and make some changes and upgrades to your site. And doing so will guarantee more revenue for your business. In fact, in 2016, an estimated 209.6 million people in the US conducted their shopping online.
So, how do you capture this type of traffic? Below are a few tips and tricks for small business owners regarding what they can do to improve their website during the holidays.
1. Create a Holiday Website Theme
Create a holiday theme on your website by making a holiday version of your logo or adding some holiday imagery. If you can’t easily change your logo or replace the imagery, get creative with the copy. Change text color to red or green to make it more festive and add a message wishing your visitors a happy holiday season.
2. Promote Your Website and Deals Offline
If you are offering multiple special promotions during the holiday season, it’s safe to assume the competition is offering them too. Make sure potential customers know about your offers through emails, your website, and most importantly by using offline promotional tools and word-of-mouth. You can do this with direct mailers, business cards, holiday cards, flyers, banners, t-shirts, and many other promotional products. Just make sure that your company’s URL is clearly visible on all offline materials.
3. Offer a New Sale or Offer Each Day
Everyone expects you to offer a special deal on your website on Cyber Monday, but why not offer one every day of the holiday season? Follow in Walmart’s footsteps (image above) and offer a different sale every day during the holidays. The important thing to remember is to change your content, this will keep people coming back and interested.
4. Highlight Free or Fast Shipping Options
After finding the right gifts, the second biggest concern of shoppers around the holidays is making sure their gifts will arrive in time. Offer different shipping options and make sure to highlight these new options throughout the site. As a rule of thumb, be upfront with additional charges for faster shipping options and do not forget to emphasize “Free Shipping Available” where applicable. Your shipping options could differentiate you from the competition – if you can offer a guaranteed arrival date, make sure to call that out as well.
5. Mobile Optimize Your Website
Target and Amazon reported that last year 60% of their customers shopped using mobile devices during the holiday season. While these are very large companies, a large number of consumers who do their shopping via mobile devices is relevant and important information for small businesses. This number will only continue to grow so make sure your site looks great on mobile phones.
