The Christmas and New Year holidays are a real lottery for Ecommerce businesses. Some of them earn as much as 40% of their annual revenue during the last quarter of the year.
With such a big occasion approaching, you need to make sure your website and online store is in the best possible shape to benefit from the additional customer influx.
But this can only be done if your store and website design is tailored for this visitor surge.
Even seemingly small design mistakes can cost you heavily because of the sheer volume of Ecommerce traffic generated during the New Year holidays.
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Here are 6 design and user experience mistakes that you should look to correct before the surge begins.
1. Using the Same Store Color Theme
Your website looks great and you’ve branded it properly with your distinct color combinations. But you can’t leave it untouched during the holiday season.
A different color and design theme for the holiday season would immediately get your customers interested in what you have to offer for this holiday season. You need to become a part of the celebrations. You can incorporate holiday colors, videos and a festive logo to create the right atmosphere.
2. Not Using Responsive Design
Using a mobile friendly website design and online store is not an option anymore, it’s an absolute necessity. A mobile friendly or responsive design adjusts according to the dimensions of the device it’s viewed on.
If you’re using a custom developed Ecommerce website or online store, make sure it’s built using responsive design. You can also hire professionals to create a mobile friendly version of your website.
3. Placing the Email Opt-In Box at the Wrong Place
Email list and subscriber base is the backbone of any Ecommerce website. Throughout the year, you should make a conscious effort to find different ways of building your email list and subscriber base.
But during the holiday traffic surge, list building becomes even more important. A large mailing list gives you the opportunity to work on your subscribers, build a relationship with them and generate repeat sales.
But for effective list building in Ecommerce websites, you need to use a multi-dimensional strategy. Instead of just placing an opt-in box in the side bar or the footer, aggressively promote it at the most prominent places of your website.
Use pop ups and offer holiday season discounts in return for the user’s email address. Add it to the main header of your website and in the sidebar. Also make sure your payment processor can be linked with your mailing list at the checkout stage, so that all the buyer email addresses are collected. Both Gumroad and Selz offer this functionality.
Remember, this traffic hike would go away in a few weeks. If you don’t add these visitors to your mailing list, you’ll be losing thousands of dollars in potential sales over the next 12 months.
4. Using Multiple Redirections in the Check Out Process
Using multiple redirections at the checkout and payment stage is the prime reason for shopping cart abandonment. Sometimes buyers get frustrated with the number of redirections involved. Other times, they don’t complete the transaction because of slow internet.
Whatever the reason, multiple redirections are known to increase incomplete checkouts. There are two ways you can counter this.
- Use a payment processor that uses Java script and completes the payment process in the same window. (eg. Selz and Ecwid).
- Route the buyers to a reliable third party payment service that can handle the payment for you (eg. PayPal and Stripe)
Whichever service you choose, make sure it involves minimum redirections and offers the most flexible and widely accepted payment options.
5. Not Integrating Social Media Sharing on Product Pages
According to research, almost 80% of Ecommerce purchase decisions are influenced by word of mouth or recommendations from close friends. To maximize your Ecommerce sales this holiday season, make social media sharing and discussions on product pages as easy as possible.
Here are a few things you should do.
- Add a social media sharing widget to the individual product pages and encourage sharing. You can use widgets like AddThis or DiggDigg.
- Enable Twitter cards on your ecommerce website. Twitter cards display additional product information like price and stock details when your products are shared on Twitter.
- Enable Rich Pins in Pinterest. Similar to Twitter cards, Rich Pins also display additional product information when products are shared on Pinterest.
- Embed Facebook comments in the product pages and encourage discussions.
The holiday season traffic surge offers a great opportunity to maximize your product reach with social media websites. Failing to take advantage can cost you significantly in terms of referral sales.
6. Not Creating Holiday Specific Blog Content
Apart from attracting 200% more inbound links and almost 400% more indexed pages, blog content also has a huge impact on Ecommerce purchase decisions. According to Neil Patel, an entrepreneur and content marketing expert, almost 61% of US customers read a blog post before making online purchases.
But surprisingly the majority of Ecommerce websites and online stores ignore this highly effective form of marketing. Creating content does take time, but it offers much higher returns and attracts additional customers. You can simplify content creation to an extent by hiring professional freelance writers. Wrapping It Up Almost all Ecommerce businesses benefit in the short term by the additional traffic and higher sales during the holiday season. However there are very few online stores that approach this occasion with a long term strategy.
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