Actionable ideas to prepare your website for the holidays

December 13, 2022December 13, 2022 TBN Editor 2

The busiest shopping time of the year means more lucrative website traffic for you. If the sound of the cha-ching excites you, make sure your website is prepared to deliver this holiday season.

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

In the age of online shopping, a holiday website strategy is more important than ever. This is because more and more people are looking to buy gifts online. In fact, according to Pew Research, 59% of all holiday shoppers plan on buying gifts online this year.

This means that if you don’t have a holiday website strategy in place, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers. And it’s not just about getting people to visit your site—it’s about converting them into buyers once they get there.

We’ve put together a mini-guide as the holiday shopping season draws near to help you optimise your website this season. The following actions you should take will help you ensure that your website will be visited and can support the demand for your goods or services.

Why a Holiday Website Strategy is Essential

The holiday website strategy is the backbone of your online marketing plan, and it’s what keeps things running like clockwork. Without a healthy holiday website strategy, you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential customers who’ll end up going to other websites instead. And it’s not just about getting people to visit your site—it’s about converting them into buyers once they get there. If you have a successful campaign, your sales start to skyrocket.

What You Need to Know About Holiday Site Design

Designing a website for holidays can be tricky. It’s not just about choosing festive colors or incorporating holiday symbols. For example, you may need to make sure your site is accessible in various languages if you sell products internationally.

It’s important to plan ahead so that holiday web design doesn’t become a stressful last-minute task. Here are some tips for getting started:

Scope out the Competition

What holiday activities are your competitors doing that you could modify for your particular audience? List everything. You can even look to well-known brands for inspiration (lots of inspiration is coming your way).

Create content with a holiday theme

An effective way to draw traffic to your website is through content. We advise producing holiday-themed content to draw in a swarm of new customers eager to find suggestions and guidance on what to buy for Christmas. Most people will want anything that will help them solve their problems during this stressful time, which is also a fantastic opportunity to establish authority in your niche. Remember to subtly promote your website, online store, and goods and services in your content. Use buyer- and holiday-related keywords in your blog posts as well. Your content will move up in Google search results, thereby improving your chances of being found online.

Create a holiday promotion

A unique holiday promotion or discount is the most effective way to turn a casual customer into a buyer. Take inspiration from retailers like Lidl. The Lidl weekly ad has been online with Christmas specials for a while already. The products are season-specific, thus drawing attention from all types of customers who celebrate Christmas. Your special offer may be influenced by the kind of service or item you sell, the price, the customer’s purchasing habits, and demographics.

Offer freebies

Another way to increase traffic (and sales) during the holiday season is to give something away to your clients. Freebies would work well now that the holidays are here and consumers want to save money. You can include a website pop-up that advertises a gift or incentive. The value of your free offer is, however, arbitrary, so keep that in mind. The freebies may cost you less to produce or even nothing at all, but if they are extremely valuable to your customer, they are a strong incentive. For example, if you sell gifts, offer a free gift-wrapping service, or free shipping, free delivery, etc.

Distributing a holiday newsletter to your email list is one way to let people know about your exciting Christmas promotions and increase website traffic. You can send emails immediately to generate interest as a teaser for upcoming special holiday offers or a holiday-limited offer to instil a sense of urgency. You’ll be able to beat the last-minute Christmas rush if you do this. So that your customers can spread the word about your offer to their friends, remember to include social sharing links. Grab this chance to increase the number of people on your email list, as you will likely draw more traffic this season.

You can design festive pop-ups that catch users’ attention and appear just as they are about to leave your website. Doing this can get their attention when you need it and lower your abandonment rates. You can request their email address in exchange for a unique discount or enticing giveaway.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

It is important to optimize your holiday website for search engines and social media. This will allow you to show up on the first page of search engine results and will also help you get more social media shares.

Add a new blog post or article on the topic of your choice that relates to the holidays. Make sure that your keywords are in the title, URL, meta description, H1 tags, content, and image alt text
Add some festive content and images
Use Google Analytics to figure out which pages are getting the most traffic
Create an appealing holiday promotion
Create a holiday landing page that has a clear call to action
Update your social media pages with holiday updates and promotions.

Summary

59% of holiday shoppers anticipate doing their shopping online this year. You are losing out on a large number of potential customers if your website doesn’t have a holiday website strategy in place. Optimizing your holiday website for search engines and social media is essential. As the holiday shopping season approaches, we’ve put together a mini-guide to assist you in optimizing your website. This includes using buyer- and holiday-related keywords in your blog posts to increase your chances of being found online. Also, freebies would work well now that the holidays are here and consumers want to save money. Distributing a holiday newsletter to your email list is one way to let people know about your exciting Christmas promotions. You can design festive pop-ups that catch users’ attention and appear just as they are about to leave your website.

TIME BUSINESS NEWS