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Americans are primed and ready to take part in the country’s favorite shopping season. This increasingly includes online shopping, and bargain shoppers are already surfing the web to line up the best deals. Is your website able to handle the barrage of Black Friday shoppers?

The Make-or-Break Season for Commerce

If the answer is no, or not sure, now is the time to do a quick review to be prepared. Retailers know that the last 4 weeks of the year represents approximately 25% of annual sales. In fact the name Black Friday comes from the notion that retailers are finally in the black after Thanksgiving.

Not only is this season the best opportunity to reach your annual sales goals, it’s prime time for capturing new customers. People are shopping for themselves, for family, for friends, and for colleagues. Over the last eight years, Black Friday e-commerce sales grew from $534 million to $1.9 trillion in U.S. dollars. This number is expected to grow again this year, which means optimizing your site for online sales is a necessity to ensure your business stays competitive and captures every sale possible.

Optimize Your Website for Holiday Sales

How can you prepare at this point? There are some quick things to look at, although for the long term, you will want a web development team with expertise in e-commerce sites. NOYO Web Development has compiled this checklist for you, then give us a call to ensure you capture your fair share of holiday sales.

Preparing Your Website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

1. Double check your server traffic capacity. Black Friday to Cyber Monday will attract a lot of traffic to your site, especially if you are offering some stellar promotions. Ensure that your server can handle the increase in visitors and customers to make their experience easier.
2. Create landing pages for Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions. If you have must-have deals to attract customers, make it easy for them to find them. Landing pages on your website created specifically for Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals will help advertise all your deals. You can go even further and create banners for your promotions to be displayed on each page. Make it easy for a customer to say yes and buy.
3. Ensure your site is mobile optimized. The percent of online Black Friday sales went from 27% to 48% in the three years between 2013 and 2016. More shoppers are using smartphones and tablets for the shopping, and it is now a competitive necessity to have responsive web design. If you are uncertain if your site is mobile optimized, NOYO Web Development can do a free assessment.
4. Test and Troubleshoot. Don’t wait for the customer complaints to begin. You may have the best holiday promotions, but if your customers find it difficult to complete a purchase, your top sales period could be a complete bust. It could be a slow landing page or a broken link. Each element must be tested for functionality. While you are testing, be sure to test the promotional discounts and coupons are working too.
5. Ensure the checkout process is seamless. Customers love simplicity. Purchases should be secure, but also completed with the fewest clicks possible. Invest some time in making sure the checkout interface is extra user-friendly with obvious add/delete and checkout buttons.
6. Track everything. To ensure that leads are converting to sales and that you are getting results, keep a detailed track record of each change made to your site and how that change impacted conversions. You can do this more easily through Google Analytics or another program. If you have questions, NOYO Web Development can assist you with understanding and interpreting the data.

NOYO Web Development wishes all of you a happy holidays! If you are ready to optimize your e-commerce site for the upcoming holiday rush, contact us today for a completely complimentary consultation.