The festive season is just around the corner, follow some of the tips below to make sure your business gets the most out of the festive season:

Make sure your website is festive season ready by updating it with all your current and upcoming promotions.

Shoppers are doing their research well in advance of the festive season, searching online for the best deals, wanting to avoid the holiday rush and to allow for enough time when it comes to delivery schedules.

Are your servers, partners and employees festive season ready?

Test the server load capacity and make sure it can handle the surge of traffic, especially when running your promotions, to not lose out on the holiday rush sales. If you're hosted on-premises, review your past performance metrics and ensure that you have bandwidth and capacity for the expected spikes. Also consider the increase in demand you will experience over the holiday season and make sure you are able to keep up with the demand with contingency plans and having staff on hand to assist shoppers should they experience difficulties online. Make sure that your shipping partner is on board with your delivery expectations.

Is your website mobile responsive?

Shopping trends have adapted to move to mobile, with the majority of mobile shoppers abandoning a website if it's not mobile friendly.

Test your website speed

Web performance is key. Put tools in place to alert you to slow or low performing pages.

Shoppers who purchase online expect faster page loading times and research shows that delayed loading times have resulted in shoppers cancelling their online purchase mid-way during the final checkout.

Stock up

Ensure that you have adequate stock to meet shopper’s demands. Always have a contingency offer available, should you sell out.

Test your checkout

Test payment processes from product selection to check-out to ensure that shoppers have a fast and efficient purchasing experience.  

Online product imagery

Image quality is key when making an online purchase decision. Shoppers are not able to test or touch your products. It is essential to have imagery of your products that gives the shopper a sense of feeling, seeing and holding your product. It always helps to have product photos taken from different angles and product descriptions that sell, not just describe.

Run marketing campaigns

It is advisable to keep a shopper database with email addresses and a mobile contact number on hand. Emails and SMS campaigns are a cost effective and easy way of keeping shoppers connected and aware of trading hours and special promotions over the festive season. Consider offering free shipping over the festive season to further incentivise shoppers to shop with you.