Is your eCommerce website ready for Christmas?

That may sound like a long time, but with Christmas being the busiest time of the year for most eCommerce businesses, can you afford to not have your website in tip-top shape?

Act now – read on for our tips to supercharge your website ready for the Christmas rush.

Customer experience is everything

Customer experience is probably the most important thing when it comes to eCommerce websites. Your customers should be able to get what they need with as little hassle as possible, and with a seamless shopping experience from start to finish. Put yourself in your customers shoes and ask yourself these questions:

• Is the design/look & feel of your online shop effective, and does it reflect your branding?
• Are there any key features your website is missing? Eg product search, filters, etc.
• Is your website easy to navigate? For example, does the navigation menu allow you to easily find what you are looking for within a couple of clicks.
• How does your website look on a mobile phone? Ensure you are prioritising mobile experience above any other device.

Get up to speed

A slow-loading website will severely effect your website conversion rate. Plenty of studies show that website speed is a large factor for consumers when deciding if they want to buy from an online retailer or not, so ensure your site is as fast as possible.
There are plenty of ways in which you can improve your website’s performance, such as image compression, script optimisation, caching, or by migrating to a better hosting provider.

Build resilience for an influx of traffic

The holiday season means you’ll likely see an increase in traffic to your website – especially if you are ramping up your marketing efforts. Your current hosting provider should be able to reassure you that your website will cope should there be a sudden spike in website traffic. Don’t leave it too late to check, or you’ll find this out the hard way.

Get stocked up

This is going to sound obvious, but we’ll say it anyway – make sure you have plenty of stock in preparation for demand. Keep your online catalogue up to date and monitor your stock levels closely so you don’t get caught out and end up disappointing your customers.

Customer service is key

We all know how frustrating it can be to get through to a customer service team when you’ve got questions regarding a product or order. A great way to ensure this isn’t the case is to include a help section or FAQ’s that will help answer these questions without them needing to contact you. It’s also worth considering installing a live chat facility to direct enquiries to the right place.
If their problem still can’t be solved, make sure there is always someone friendly at the end of a phone to help out.

There is still time

The good news is that it’s not too late to get prepared your website ready for the Christmas rush. Whether it’s speeding up your website. ironing out some technical issues, or even building a new eCommerce website that’s better suited to your customers, we’re here to help.