10 Best eCommerce Tips to Prepare your Online Store for Holidays in 2021

Posted by Akash Dwivedi on December 24th, 2021

Holidays come quicker for online shopping as they did the previous year. Along with coming early, customers get a fixed time for holiday online shopping. Hence, the eCommerce businesses should try to keep everything streamlined with the website. Targeting the holiday season for online shopping websites is not easy and gets trickier with the growing competition and customer base. 

The holiday season starts in the second half of the year and November to January are the core months to target. The entire online shops tend to run holiday-specific marketing campaigns, offering special discounts and better interaction with customers to ensure more and more sales on the business. No matter what’s the niche, every online shop should be targeting the holiday season with utmost seriousness and not miss the golden opportunity. 

To make the job easier, we have compiled some of the online store tips that can help in preparing the eCommerce website for holidays: 

#1. Start including the major changes now

The online shopping holidays period remains one of the busiest periods for the online website. Ensure that the website is running flawlessly with zero errors. There shouldn’t be any way that can restrict the smooth functioning of the website. It is high time for the business to grab more sales and you wouldn’t want to end up in the situation where your competitors take advantage of your business. 

#2. Make the best use of the traffic

You might be receiving a huge amount of traffic during holiday online shopping. Do not run into any serious concerns during this period of the year. If the website needs changes to make sure to get them done beforehand. However, if you think that the website is already optimized and doesn’t need any changes, this is the time to move to the next step. It\'s your best chance to gain the conversions and make sure to get the best out of that. 

#3. Streamline the checkout process on the website

The entire online shopping websites industry is facing the problem of the abandoned cart as it is around 70%. This data signifies that maintaining the seamless checkout process is one of the surefire online holiday shopping tips. It will boost the sales in the holiday season as well. Streamlining the online checkout process is a considerable thing to take care of before the holiday\'s duration. 

#4. Avoid confusing users 

Removing unnecessary pages from the website can decrease the cart abandonment rate. Make the checkout process simple and easy to understand along with providing the guest checkout option as well. Do not force users to create an account if it doesn’t require it. The checkout can assist in impacting the total number of sales and revenue throughout the online shopping holidays. 

#5. Mobile Optimization is a must

The number of mobile users keeps on increasing with the passing time and mobile sales is accounting for more than half of total eCommerce sales during holiday online shopping. It makes mobile optimization a must for the online website especially during the time of holiday season. Allow your users to browse and purchase the products seamlessly without navigating much on the online portal. 

#6. Keep referring to the holiday calendar

This is one of the surefire online store tips to boost eCommerce sales during the holiday season. Maintain a content calendar as per the content marketing strategy. Try to post content and promotions related to the holiday season and motivate people to do shopping. Create shopping lists based on the specific holidays and run promotional campaigns accordingly. Having a holiday-specific blog section on the website can be an effective way to make the most out of content marketing. 

#7. Increase the page speed

As per recent data, around 47% of online website visitors demand the web page to load within 2 seconds. With the constant increase in traffic, it is a must for online websites to make sure that the website loads quickly and correctly. It is one of the prominent online holiday shopping tips that every online business should consider. Try to avoid the situation where the web pages are lagging and the customers are not able to find a reliable user experience at the time of the holiday season. They want everything on an urgent basis and do not force them to click off the website. A good loading speed on a web page also boosts the ranking factor of the website. 

#8. Improve the quality of customer support

This is another best eCommerce tip that states that the increased traffic will have more user concerns and questions related to the business. The live chat on the website must be able to help with all sorts of queries and concerns. Create an FAQ page for customers to get quick reading help for basic queries. The key is to resolve the user’s concerns as soon as they raise the problem. 

#9. Avoid any security issues

The holidays period is the most crucial time and hence the next online store tips include maintaining top-notch security standards. You will find the online shoppers being busy doing this and that on the online website. There are a lot of cybercriminals looking for the opportunity to steal precious information and data from your website. Maintain a free database and inform your customers about the same. 

#10. Plan sale booster campaigns

Holiday advertisements and promotions are a bit different from the usual ones and should be able to create a sense of urgency in the user’s mind. It is one of the best eCommerce tips that if customers feel like losing the offer, they’re more likely to complete the purchase. Mosty for online shopping of fashion items, customers shops instantly when they see a good offer. Add new theme banners, holiday logos, keywords, etc. on the online website. Maintain the holiday season spirit and keep a check on the competitor’s campaign as well. 

Hence these were some of the proven tips to ensure that your website is ready for holidays. Make sure your website is fully prepared beforehand and ready to target the holiday sales season.