How to Prepare Your Website for the Holiday Rush in 2021

The 2021 holiday season is shaping up to be like none we’ve ever seen before, prepare your website for the rush! In 2021, the number of online buyers is currently at 2.14 billion, which added 900 million more online shoppers compared to 2020 – an almost 5% increase!

It’s no secret that website performance issues lead to lost revenue. It’s not just your site crashing during a surge that you should be worried about — if your website is too slow, customers won’t wait for it to load to make their purchase.
Check out these recent statistics:

  • 79% of time spent on the internet is via a mobile phone in the United States
  • The average web page takes 87.84% longer to load than the desktop version
  • The bounce rate on a page that takes 5 seconds to load is 90%
  • A one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversion. For an e-commerce site making $100,000 in sales per day, this translates to $2.5 million in lost revenue for the year.
  • Optimize your checkout flow

But worry not! We’ve made a list of actionable steps you can take today to get your website ready for the holiday rush – and checked it twice

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

As the previous statistics suggest, having your eCommerce website optimized for both desktop and mobile buyers is vital.

Spend some quality time combing through your website to look for problem areas. Utilize free tools to test your website’s load speed and performance and use that as a jump-off point to make improvements. Take a look at your most visited pages and consider what you could do to make the page load faster. Consider sizing photos so they load quickly and removing things like videos or widgets that don’t add value and slow load time.

Next, you can track user activity on your website and measure the growth over time. Take this one step further and compare your benchmarks compared to your competitors to see where they are outperforming you. Make the appropriate adjustments and you’ll improve your conversion rate as well as user experience. The information you collect is also powerful because you can identify trends on your eCommerce website and forecast spikes in purchases and use the information to time future sales and product launches!

Keep Your Website’s Mobile Performance Competitive

Not only do mobile-friendly websites rank higher in Google search results, but 65% of eCommerce website traffic comes from a mobile device! Here are a few things you can do to ensure your online store is ready to make mobile purchases and seamless and simple as possible!

  • Make your check-out process as trustworthy, intuitive, and easy as you can. Make sure your SSL certificates are up to date and display any badges including McAfee or Norton security.
  • Keep menus as easy as possible to navigate. The farther a user has to dig into menu options, the less likely they are to make a purchase. Consider keeping hot sellers near the top of each category and always have a search bar available so visitors can locate exactly what they are looking for as quickly as possible.
  • 91% of online shoppers look to take advantage of Free Shipping and buyers love to take advantage of reduced prices throughout the holiday season. Make sure your promotions and coupon codes are easily accessible from any place on your website – even on mobile devices. Many top selling brands include a “Promotions” tab at the top or bottom of each page, and it follows the user around as they navigate the website.

Now is the time to prepare your eCommerce website ready for the holiday rush! By following these steps your eCommerce store will be in the best shape possible to manage a surge in online visitors, all while offering your customers a perfectly smooth shopping experience.

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