As the year comes close to an end, eCommerce website owners need to step up their game because we are heading into a season when consumers often spend more than they do during the rest of the year. Studies show that December and November are always the best months for eCommerce websites to make sales.
Now that we are in October, it is not too late to prepare for the rapid growth in sales that will be coming in the year end sales season. In this article, we will share with you every essential thing you need to do to position your store as the go-to place for everyone looking for products/services in your niche. So, let’s get started!
1.Optimize Your Homepage
Your homepage is the first page that anyone who inputs your domain in their browser will be taken to. For most websites, it will often have the most views compared to the rest of the pages on your store. So, do your best to make the homepage of your eCommerce store appealing to your website visitors.
When you check out popular websites like Apple’s, you will notice it has its best and top-selling products listed in an orderly and appealing manner. You should do the same with your store as we head into the year end sales season and people are in a holiday mood. Make sure the homepage has some of the best and shiniest products that your store has to offer. However, it is best to only add a few products to avoid congesting it as this could ruin the user experience of your potential customers.
2. Make Navigation Easier
First, ask yourself this question: “when a potential customer visits your website, how fast can they find the products they need and place an order for them?” Making it easy for your potential customers to navigate your site and find whatever they are looking for is one of the best ways your store will generate more sales as we get into the holiday season.
Make sure all the major categories of the products in your store are pinned on the main menu. For instance, if your website sells phone accessories, you can have categories like headphones, cases, screen protectors, and USB cables pinned on the main menu. This way, your customers will know exactly where to go when they visit your site.
3. Make The Checkout Process Simpler
After a potential customer adds one of your products to their cart, you should make it as easy as possible for them to make the payment. For most eCommerce websites, users must sign in on sign up before they make the purchase. If you decide to make signing up a must, make sure the information needed is very minimal.
You should also give your users the option to sign up using other popular platforms they already have accounts with, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and many more. However, if you want to generate even more sales, you need to add the guest checkout option for those who don’t want to create an account with your site.
Giving people the option of purchasing without necessarily creating an account will likely boost your sales. All the popular companies, including Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft, have the guest checkout option.
4. Enhance Your Loading Speeds
Studies show that over 53% of mobile web visitors will leave a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. As smartphones and the internet are becoming faster, people want things to be a lot faster. If your website takes a long time to load pages, you will likely lose a lot of traffic.
Use tools like Google Page Speed Insights to know whether your web pages load fast enough. This tool will show you the load times of your various pages and what you can do to make them better. Some of the common recommendations include hosting your site on faster servers, using lighter images, and minimizing HTTP requests.
Having a fast website will not only increase your conversions but will also positively impact the SEO of your site. Google and other search engines use page loading speeds as one of the parameters while ranking content in the search results.
5. Make Sure Your Site Is Responsive
Studies show that over 54% of traffic visiting the various websites in the first quarter of 2021 was from mobile devices. This percentage has always been above 50 since 2017. That means lots of people are using their mobile devices to browse the internet and buy stuff. If you want to get more traffic from mobile devices, you need to make your website responsive and well-optimized for mobile devices.
The good news is that most website builders such as WordPress, Shopify, and Wix have themes that will automatically make your site responsive without doing a lot of extra work. If the theme you are currently using does not automatically optimize your content for mobile devices, consider using another one.
6. Showcase The Benefits Of Your Products
People want to buy a product that will solve their problems. So, while describing the products in your listing, make sure you clearly and precisely describe how the different features they have are useful to the final customer. You should also take better photos of your products to make them easily visible and appealing to anyone browsing your listings.
Final thoughts
There are several other minor things that you can do to make your store better prepared for the holiday season. However, the six points we have shared above are the most crucial ones and will lead to significant growth in sales if well implemented.
The good news is implementing most of the strategies above doesn’t necessarily involve parting with a lot of money. If you are technical enough, you can even execute all of them yourself without hiring anyone.
