As 2023 draws to a close, the holiday shopping season is about to begin. So how can you get your e-Commerce website ready for the influx of sales?

A study by insiderintelligence.com shows that “US holiday e-Commerce sales will return to double-digit growth this year at 11.3% YoY, as growth rates for all retail channels return to a state of pre-pandemic normalcy.”

Now is the time to check your e-Commerce website’s capacity and to put your marketing plan to work. With the disappearing third-party cookie tactic, you need a solid content marketing strategy to help shoppers find your products. Early preparation and fixes for the holiday e-Commerce shopping season will help you to be prepared for the growing calendar of mega sale days (MSDs) such as Cyber Monday and Small Business Saturday.  A recently commissioned seasonal holiday study by Facebook found that half of holiday shoppers buy something during an MSD event.

Here are 6 areas we recommend that you prioritize now to get your website ready:

Add “Buy Now – Pay Later” Option

Buy Now, Pay Later is becoming increasingly popular with over 50% of Gen Z saying they will use it in the upcoming holiday season¹. The first installment is paid upfront with the rest of the charge divided across a certain time period until your purchase is paid in full. This allows the shopper to feel more confident in their budgets and can encourage spending. Consider adding Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) to your website.

Test Your Website on Mobile 

Is your website responsive and easy to navigate on a small device?  Not everyone is using fast connections like 5G yet. Your website’s load times must be fast, so you don’t lose customers. You have three seconds to make an impression before they click away from your website. To get your website ready for holiday e-Commerce traffic, make sure it loads and functions well on any device, including smartphones.

Review Your Security  

Holiday shopping season is a key time for online attackers to make attempts to steal user info, so you need to ensure that your company and your customers are protected. Here are a few things that you should consider looking into:

• Backup your website regularly
• WordPress users are recommended to update their theme and plugins
• Confirm that your website has an SSL certificate in place

Invest in Product SEO Now!

Investments in SEO can take time to manifest, so we recommend starting now to maximize rankings before the holiday shopping season begins. Getting your products to rank on the first page of marketplace searches takes time, Below are a few things that can lead to greater traffic to your listings. 

• Click-through Rate (CTR) – When product listings inspire clicks in search results, rankings will improve. Be sure to create listings optimized for search intent. This will improve your product rankings as it encourages more people to click through to see more.
• Product Images – Strong images are the top influencing factor for nearly all consumer purchase decisions. 
• Reduce Load Times – the most important optimization!

Implement a Content Marketing Strategy

People are discovering and purchasing products on social apps through content in greater numbers than ever before. Many have turned to social apps, specifically, for inspiration and curated recommendations. Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram are built for social commerce. Facebook has coined the phrase, “discovery commerce” when referring to this new shopping behavior. Discovery commerce happens more during the holiday season than at any other time.

Start your holiday content library now with video, graphics, and high-quality photos created for social app viewing. You can use an automated scheduling platform to keep your profiles updated with a steady flow of new posts. 

Reporting and Analysis

Take advantage of GA4’s measurement continuity, automated insights about the customer journey, and easy activation to improve marketing ROI. 5D Spectrum can help you create custom reports in your Google Analytics 4 property. Automated insights can help you optimize your website for the holiday eCommerce season.

Are you using these free tools provided by Google? If not, you could be missing out on the 3 main components that can improve the overall health and success of your website. 

• Analytics for Marketing – The insights you can gain from Analytics reports can be vital to improving your marketing.
• Analytics to Aid your SEO – Access to the right reports can help boost the ROI you see from your SEO efforts
• Analytics to Improve Site Performance – Vital questions analytics can answer are:
  • Which of my pages get the most traffic?
  • Where on my site do visitors leave?
  • How quickly do my site’s pages load?
  • Are load times longer for visitors using mobile devices?

The answer to these questions can give you some concrete data as to how you can substantially improve your site’s performance. For example, if your blog posts get a lot of traffic, that might tell you you could drive even more traffic to your site by producing them more frequently and promoting them.

If any of this sounds confusing to you, let the 5D experts help you set up this amazing suite of tools to provide mission-critical data in an easy-to-understand format. Once you’ve got Analytics and its features set up, you can sit back and relax. After 24 hours, the platform should have collected enough data for you to view your first reports.

We provide the following services in this Google Health Checklist:

• Google Services Website Integration
• Google Tag Manager Configuration
• Google Analytics Configuration
• Google Search Console / Bing Webmasters Verification

Contact us today to set up your Google Health Check!

1. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/holiday-shopping-in-2023-it-started-early-and-will-end-late ↩︎