One third of consumers spent more than half of their holiday shopping budget online in 2015, according to the National Retail Federation. With back-to-back shopping bonanzas following Thanksgiving – Black Friday and Small Business Saturday – Cyber Monday drives home the start of the holiday shopping season.
If you can answer the following questions with a smile on your face, you’re in good shape:
1. Have you optimized page load times?
Shoppers on a mission have no time to wait. If your pages take more than the blink of an eye to load, your potential customers are likely to continue their online sprint. Although we do encourage high resolution images, you don’t need to overdo it as they, besides looking smashing, also can consume as much as 80 percent of your site’s bandwidth. A content delivery network that caches your images is a good tool to ensure nothing slows you down.
2. Can you handle the traffic?
Lots of shoppers converging on your e-commerce store should be a good thing. Don’t be taken by surprise if there’s a surge in visitors. The last thing you need is for the store to come tumbling down in the midst of one of the biggest shopping events of the year. Have a word with your hosting provider well in advance of the big day to make sure you’re ready to shine when the crowds arrive.
3. Have you planned your shipping solutions?
This question doesn’t only pertain to how and how much you will charge to ship the orders to your customers but also how you plan to handle returns. It’s not uncommon to be a little more generous with return and exchange policies during the holiday season. Any changes to your regular policies need to be clearly stated. If you’re offering free shipping for a limited time, your customers want to hear about it. They also like a smorgasbord of shipping options, from overnight delivery to free standard ground shipping.
4. Have you considered additional payment options?
If you seek to increase conversions and revenue ― and who doesn’t? ― consider adding additional payment options. Visa and MasterCard are given, but some people prefer to use a service like PayPal. The good news is that it’s easy to turn on.
5. Has your marketing campaign kicked into high gear?
Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, blog posts, social media promotions, e-mail marketing. The list goes on. Let’s also hope you’ve written strong ad copy, created landing pages for each promotion, and turned on Google Analytics or some other analytics program to track your success. Did you know Walmart’s Cyber Monday landing page is live year-round?
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