How to prepare your online store for Holiday Shopping Season

How to prepare your online store
for Holiday Shopping Season
How to increase sale in these Holiday Season
How to prepare your online ecommerce store for this holiday season and increase your sales online. Complete details
with the changes with proper customization and updates which needed to make your ecommerce website more
attractive read the content and follow the details – By i-Verve Inc

The holiday season is a time when online buyers are high in spirits and turn to online websites to find
something to buy. In 2016, online sales on Holiday season were increased by 17 percent year-on-year to
$80.2 billion. This happens because buyers sit on their money they saved throughout the year. They want
to spend this money if they are offered a good deal.
The festival of Halloween kick-starts a shopping extravaganza for which online shoppers waits for the
whole year. But if you have missed the Halloween, there’s still ample opportunity left for you. According to
a data, 75% of the online buyers start shopping only after Halloween.
Online shopping has come a long way in the last 10 years. “Billion dollar day”, which once used to be a rare
phenomenon, has become a new normal. In 2016, we saw 13 days exceeding $1billion mark in online
spending. And the two days which far exceeded the mark were Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The holiday season can increase your website visits many times and thus, it is important to equip your
website to handle this traffic in a better way – because only then, you will be able to take a share of this
huge online shopping market. So what are the steps that you should need to make sure your website is
well-equipped for this year’s holiday season?
Tips to prepare your online store for Holiday season
1. IMPROVE LOADING SPEED
The rise in volume can be a boon or a bane, depending on your level of preparedness of your eCommerce
store. If your website is not equipped for handling large traffic, it will result in slow loading speeds and
increased server downtimes.
This will give a bad customer-experience which will be detrimental to your website.
CSS files merging and minification can be applied to your online store which will improve its speed. You can
do this by navigating to store>settings>Configuration>Advanced>Developer>CSS Settings. Choose “Yes” on
both Merge and Minify options.
Another easy way to increase your website load speed is by leveraging browser caching mechanism. This
will store your website’s CSS and JavaScript thereby, making it quicker to load the pages.
2. CUSTOMIZATION AND FESTIVE LOOK
No matter what you sell in your online store, it is always possible to give it a refreshing festive look. Add a
few visual components to make your website reflect the true spirit of the festival. You can consider hiring a
web designer, either from a designing company or a freelancer to do the job.
You can use tinsel and flashing lights to decorate your eCommerce store. Use graphic designs, and small
effects such as, falling snow effect or beautiful snowflakes to indicate it is the winter and holidays are just
around the corner. If you want to keep it simple, redesigning your logo is a subtle way to say it to your
users that you too are equally excited about the festival.

Experiment with these things and grab the attention of your customers by using them creatively.
Create a special email template for each holiday and offer special discounts to them. Customers always
expect a discount on festivals. While you take these orders, remember that delivery dates are of utmost
importance.
3.CREATE A HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN AND PROMOTE IT
Customers expect a good deal from your website on holiday season. If you don’t offer them special
promotions and discounts, they will be disappointed. Do not make these discounts complicated to apply.
Make sure that it is easy to comprehend for your customers.
Another thing that is equally important is, promoting your campaign. Share, tweet, and post your
promotional offers so that your users know that you are aware of such offers. If you think offering them
discounts will undervalue your product, try providing free shipping or additional freebies with your
product.
4. ECOMMERCE SEO
When you do all or a few of the above steps, you need customers to visit your website. To accomplish this,
you need your website to rank high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). And for this, you need SEO
for your website.
SEO includes taking a number of measures such that your web pages are easily comprehended by Google.
These measures are called on-page SEO techniques. These techniques can greatly improve a website’s
Google rankings.
Another thing that you can do to improve your image, as well as, SERP ranks is, writing blogs. If you write
relevant blogs for Halloween and subtly pitch your product in the article, that will be of great help to you.
There are many Halloween related article on the internet, just take ideas from there for your product and
create your own content. You can show all your creativity in creating such content and make your target
customers like and share those contents.
5. UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEM
To make sure your eCommerce website is secure and fast, it is important o keep your platform updated.
Also, if you don’t have the newest version of your eCommerce platform, this is the right time you get it
done. There is a host of reasons why an upgrade is very important, namely to increase page speed and
website security.
Newer versions of any e-commerce platform, no matter which one you use, will enable your website to
perform better than its previous versions.
Another important part of your business is ERP. Today, ERP software has become an important part of the
functioning of an e-commerce company. Many e-commerce businesses use one or the other ERP software
to address their business management needs. The Application Programming Interface (API) of major
platforms is very flexible and it is easy to integrate any ERP solution with them.

ERP integration will make the communication between ERP software and e-commerce platforms automatic
and efficient. This will save your time also which is much required for the festive season and you will be
more focused on other marketing activities.
You must hire a certified e-commerce development company to make these changes to your system.
6. PAYMENT OPTIONS AND RETURN POLICIES
Festival is a great time to consider having an additional payment option for your store. If you only accept
Visa and MasterCard, it will be beneficial if you add a few more payment options like PayPal. By doing this
you will see a sudden rise in your conversion rate.
If you are planning to offer holiday season discounts, you will need to carve out new return policies too,
just to accommodate for returns done on these discounted items. Some stores offer very liberal return
policies, while others do not. You need to consider the impact your return policy will have on your sales
and your profits. Based on these considerations you should decide which move will be the best for you.
The holiday season is right here, but don’t worry! These things won’t take more than 3 to 4 days to
accomplish. If you don’t have an expertise in any of these, it is highly recommended that you hire a team of
Certified Magento Development Company to do it for you. And Voila! Your online store will be Holiday-
Ready!
About Author:-
Making your business more progressive in this holiday season with good presence on web and mobile
searches. We are expertise in ecommerce website development and services since 9+ years and helping
customers to make their ecommerce store more delightful with great web presence. Certified developers
who are willing to take any challenge to make your every penny worth know something more about
ecommerce website development company for your business expansion globally.
Contact:-
Email:-hello@i-verve.com
Phone:+1-404-643-6023
Website: http://i-verve.com
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