Holidays are some of the busiest days for an online business, mainly because of the surge of customers and shoppers who do not have time to fall in long lines in shopping malls and prefer to do their shopping in the comfort of their own homes.
As such, you as the ecommerce website owner should at least expect this surge and be prepared for it, unless you want to miss out on all the profit.
Preparing your website for the holiday rush can be a daunting task, and as such, you will most certainly need the services of a professional web developer. Here are some things about preparing your website for the holidays that you should both discuss.
First, you need to share with your web developer your website's past performance, specifically from those of last year's holidays. Check which days were the busiest for you, commonly though, these days would be the earlier parts of the season (for early birds) and the last days (for those who are always caught in the last minute shopping frenzy.)
Using these data, your web developer can help you determine and create forecast about what you can expect this coming holiday season, basically because you have a fairly good idea about which days you will most likely need to prepare and restock your inventory.
Second is making sure that the shopping system for your online site is working perfectly well. If needed you may want to ask your web developer to change or make modifications to your shopping cart systems. For example, you may want to have the number of steps that your customers need to fulfil before making a purchase reduced to the minimum possible.
Third, ask your web developer to check your website for any broken links, especially those that lead to the checkout page or even the product information page. In addition, it wouldn't hurt to go over the product descriptions and check if there are any mistakes in grammar or spelling or even the overall content.
Third, make sure that everything needed in order to make the customer's shopping experience with your site as pleasant as possible is present. Tell your developer to make sure that navigation links in your sites are working great. You should also be concerned with the way that your site is structured. Be sure to put the appropriate group labels on top or on the sidebars or your site. Make sure that you do not frustrate a potential customer by leading him on a wild goose chase just so you can show him or her more products that he or she may like.
Fourth, you may want to consider having a mobile version of your site created in order to cater to those potential customers who are always on the go. This will make it more convenient for your customers, since they will be able to shop wherever they are, be it in the coffee shop or even while walking on the streets. Interestingly, recent surveys show that more and more people are now browsing and actually making purchases using their tablets instead of computers or laptops, simply because of the fact that tablets are far easier to carry around than laptops.
Lastly, make sure that you have enough stocks to go around. Remember about forecasting in step one? If you happen to run out of stock, make sure to update the product's status on the website immediately in order to not disappoint your customers.
These are just some of the things that can be done in order to get your website ready for the flood of visitors and potential customers to your website. Since most of these things can be too tasky for one person alone, it is best that you get the services of a professional web developer to help you. These people are trained and experienced in this field, so they will be able to help you especially with those tasks that require knowledge of computer programming and manipulation.
As additional preparations, you can get the services of a reliable web developer who can actually offer you a quality technical support in case something goes wrong with your website. Remember that this is a busy time for your site, and it may not be able to handle the huge volume of customers. Thus, it would be best if you could get a web developer company who could provide you with technical assistance 24/7. This way, you have someone to run to just in case something goes wrong.
