This is the best time of the year for eCommerce stores. But it can also go wrong if you aren’t prepared enough. Here are some tips to help you manage more traffic and convert them into sales:
- How Holiday season brings with it increased traffic? Sometimes it could be 10x or more than what you encounter usually. Reinforce your IT infrastructure with additional servers and load balancers so it can bear the load and maintain site speed.
- Apart from scalability and performance, the website should be secure enough to avoid fraudulent transactions. And there should be enough reassurance to your consumers that it is safe to transact on your online store.
- Don’t make last minute changes to your website, especially if they are big changes. You might end up with a bug-ridden site, and a few minutes of downtime or a bug in your checkout page can result in huge revenue losses. Big changes should be done 2 to 3 months prior to the start of the season.
- How do you know which products of yours are going to sell well during the holiday season? Some products may have really high demand and the last thing you want to display to your consumers is that “out-of-stock” message. Do some analysis based on last year’s sales, market trends and have an eye on social media to estimate which products you would need to stock-up.
- More sales will mean more support. See if you can ramp up on your staff members by 10 to 15%, especially in customer service and fulfilment department. Every unanswered call or delay in delivery will cost you dearly. And when someone’s gift is delayed it hurts the most.
- Give a festive feel to your website. Create a holiday mood with upbeat content, special promotions, free gift wrapping and personalized messages.
