SALES
Preparing for busy seasons
In this series, xneelo will be helping those with a killer idea take their ecommerce business online.
In part 3, we looked at building an online brand for your business. This time, we’ll be looking at preparing your ecommerce site for busy shopping periods like Valentine’s Day, Black Friday and the festive season.
Step 1: Getting your website ready
A fast, secure website is crucial for success during busy shopping periods. Shoppers are in high gear, so if your website loads slowly or looks untrustworthy, you risk losing them to the competition.
Here are some crucial steps to take in order to ensure your website is ready:
Test your speed
On any normal day, page speed may not seem important, but during peak shopping periods, it's make or break. Use a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights to test the load speed and conduct a website health check to identify any issues that could be affecting your page load speeds. It could be worth using a CDN to improve page speed times.
Ramp up your security
To ensure customers have peace of mind during their shopping experience, make sure your website is fully updated and that a valid Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is installed (you can check with your hosting provider). Other security precautions you can implement include installing a firewall and using trusted payment gateways at checkout.
Test your checkout process
Go through the checkout process yourself to make sure it works well and test any promo or discount codes to ensure they work. Rope in a few friends, colleagues or family members to help and be open to honest feedback.
Get your website mobile-ready
Mobile friendliness is arguably the most important factor for success. Use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool to see how mobile-friendly and responsive your website currently is and fix any problems that arise. Better yet, test your website yourself on your own phone. How easy is it to navigate? Do the pictures load correctly?
Use a product that does all this for you
Small business owners looking for a simple way to optimise their website performance would benefit from a product like Managed WordPress that makes it easy to set up, customise and update a WordPress website. Managed WordPress also includes free themes and Starter Sites, including ones specifically built for ecommerce, that are already optimised for speed, security and secure checkout.
Step 2: Marketing your website
Now that your website is ready for an increase in traffic, it's time to strategise your value proposition and marketing plan.
Look at the type of deals and promotions your competitors have run in the past to gauge the type of deals you should be creating. These can range from a price drop or a two for one deal, to a free gift or even a sitewide sale. You can also think outside of the box to separate your brand from others.
Once you have your value proposition decided, you need to create a marketing plan to promote it to attract visitors to your website.
Tried and tested techniques include:
- Sending an email promoting your deal to opt-in customers (You can do this for free with Mailchimp)
- Promoting your deal on your social media channels
- Planning your blog and social media content in advance
- Adding a banner and pop up to your website promoting your deal
- Running a small Google Ads campaign
- If you’re using WordPress, installing a plugin that shows recommended or related products
- Preventing abandoned carts by sending a gentle email reminder to customers (just make sure you abide by POPIA)
When it comes to marketing to your customers, authenticity is key. Don’t exaggerate deals that don’t provide any real value as you can jeopardise your reputation and lose customer trust. Be real. Tell your customers you value their business and have created a deal you think will be of interest to them.
With the right preparation, there’s nothing stopping you from having a great busy season.
We hope you enjoyed our series on taking your business online. If you missed it, here’s part 1: how to make your idea digitally compelling.