This time of year, online shoppers are gearing up to find the best bargains, and start shopping for gifts. It’s worth noting that 70% of South Africans shop online, with Yoco reporting that 33% of shoppers prefer online shopping to beat the crowds on Black Friday. So if you haven’t started preparing your online store for the upcoming festive season, the time to start is right now.
For online store owners, this means making sure you have enough inventory available to meet the increased demand, and rolling out promotional marketing campaigns to attract new and existing customers. But there is a third step many website owners neglect, and that’s making sure their websites are prepared to handle the load.
Here are five essential ways to prepare your website for busy shopping seasons.
Prepare for traffic spikes
Look at your marketing and sales projections to see how much extra business you expect to attract over the busy season. Each potential transaction counts as a website visitor and a unique session. Check with your web hosting provider to see how much your website’s traffic allowance is and if it’s sufficient to handle the traffic you expect. If not, you might end up with poor website performance when you need it the most or a bill for traffic over usage.
If it looks like you’ll need a larger traffic allowance over the busy season it might be time to upgrade!
If you’re an xneelo customer, learn how to keep track of your website’s traffic usage here.
Check on your load times
If your website takes too long to load it can cause higher bounce rates, shopping cart abandonment, and even hamper your conversion rates.
Slow load times can be caused by a variety of factors such as:
- High-res images that have not been optimised for web
- Not running regular updates
- Not using a CDN to cache content
Use a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights to test the load speed of your website and identify potential problems. You can also conduct a website health check and fix any issues that could be affecting your page load speeds.
Make sure your website is mobile friendly
Shoppers who prefer the convenience and ease-of-use of their phones are a rising demographic, and one you don’t want to miss out on.
This year, approximately 47 million South Africans used the internet through their mobile devices – and not just to browse social media. More and more retail stores are investing in apps to capture the lucrative mobile market. Takealot, Woolworths and Checkers all have mobile apps with many more following suit – and you can be sure their websites are optimised for mobile shopping too.
Use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool to see how mobile-friendly and responsive your website currently is. If your images, navigation and button placement are not loading well on a mobile device, you might need a developer’s help to scale your design. Good news if your website is built with WordPress. Many WordPress themes are mobile-friendly by default.
Keep your website secure
A secure website is imperative for a positive online shopping experience. Customers are becoming increasingly safety-savvy and expect nothing less.
Gain customer trust by employing the following safety tactics:
- Using trusted payment gateways at checkout
- Installing a valid Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate
- Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) such as Cloudbric WAF
- Employing two-factor authentication
- Keeping your website updated
- Using a trusted web hosting provider
Check with your hosting provider to see how many of these safety protocols are already in place.
Learn more about keeping your WordPress website secure here.
Test your UX
A positive user experience (UX) can be what sets your online store apart while a negative experience can result in the loss of potential sales – and repeat visitors.
Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that the ordering process is as seamless and frictionless as possible. This means testing the ordering and checkout process yourself, and making sure every button and page loads quickly. If you’re offering seasonal discount codes make sure those work before rolling them out.
Other factors that contribute to a positive user experience include:
- Keeping the shopping process simple
- Offering your customers’ multiple payment methods
- Not asking for too much data at checkout
- Incorporating the sale price at checkout
- Making it easy for customers with questions to get in touch
Learn more about why user experience is as important as what you’re selling here.
Back up!
It’s always advisable to keep a backup of your website.
Worst case scenario. Your website is attacked by hackers just before Black Friday and you lose valuable data, sales and suffer reputational damage.
Thankfully, keeping a backup of your website can prevent data loss when something goes wrong as you can simply restore an earlier version to ensure business as usual.
Ask your hosting provider if they have a backup or a recovery schedule in place.
Learn more about preventing data loss here.
Preparing your website for busy shopping periods shouldn’t be a daunting experience. By implementing a few tips, tricks and tried and tested advice, you’re laying the groundwork for a successful busy season. Good luck!
Here are some more seasonal tips you may find useful.
