If your business involves eCommerce, it’s hard not to notice the huge online shopping increase created by the COVID-19 pandemic that has irrevocably changed the way people discover, shop and purchase. American consumers spent a record-breaking amount in online shopping during the first holiday season of the pandemic in 2020, topping $100 billion in November of that year for the first time. 

Online sales are only going to increase with the holiday season approaching. Experts like those at Deloitte predict that this year’s holiday eCommerce sales could total between $210-218 billion. This holiday season, your readiness and ability to fulfill orders will determine the trajectory of your business. 

Now is the time to check your eCommerce 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 eCommerce 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 5 areas we recommend that you prioritize now to get your website ready:

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 eCommerce 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 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 – Make the Switch to GA4

As Google recently announced, they will begin shutting down Universal Analytics, so we encourage you to make the switch to GA4 as soon as possible. To take advantage of Google Analytics 4’s measurement continuity, automated insights about the customer journey, and easy activation to improve marketing ROI, 5D Spectrum can help you finish setting up 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 answers 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!