Growth is exciting – and daunting. When your business starts growing its customer base, increasing website traffic, its sales and its employees, there are growing pains too. One of these is that e-commerce websites cannot keep up with the sudden spike in website traffic. And during the holiday season, there is an even bigger risk of that!
Previous years have indicated that 46,3% of South Africans are expecting to spend more over this festive season. Moreover, 33,4% plan to solely spend on gifts.
From just before Black Friday, consumers increase sales and most businesses can expect this to continue well into December. This is fabulous news to e-commerce sites that have the opportunity to capitalise on shopper’s desires while they are searching for online deals. Why not make the most of this increased holiday website traffic?
Reasons to Prepare for Increased Website Traffic
There are a few reasons to properly prepare for the increase in traffic to your e-commerce store.
Prevent Downtime: You should load test your e-commerce site to identify potential problems that can cause your website to go down in the middle of the spike in visitors (shoppers).
Beat Competitors: A site that loads quickly, is easy to navigate and still offers wonderful products will attract more returning visitors than those that crash when you want to access the same products.
Increase Sales: Sites that can handle the pressure of high traffic easily receives more sales opportunities than those e-commerce sites that cannot.
Better User Experience (UX): If your online store is optimised for online visitors, customers are sure to have a better experience.
Helping your E-commerce Site Load Faster
Improving the user experience of your site can be as simple as increasing the load speed. Use the following tips to enhance your website:
- Compress images: By compressing images, you can immediately help the site load quicker because their is less data to load. The image can still be the same size (1080 x 1920, for example) but the file size will be smaller (kilobytes in stead of megabytes)
- Use cashing: This entails a local copy of the website stored on the user’s device so sites load faster for returning visitors.
- Implement asynchronous loading: This loads the prioritised key elements of the page first before the rest.
How to Attract More Visitors During the Holidays
This holiday, you can attract new visitors who are looking to buy Christmas gifts and other festive items to grow your customer base. You can consider the following if you haven’t already:
- Optimise your page for mobile use through mobile-friendly themes and easy navigation.
- Use plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache for caching.
- Enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to make mobile devices load your pages faster.
- Use holiday-specific keywords on both new and old pages.
- Create holiday or festive season content such as celebration ideas.
- Don’t neglect e-mail marketing.
To-Dos for Increased Website Traffic
Before you sit back and watch the sales roll in (and have to prepare the shipments), you need to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Test Payment and Checkout Systems
A working checkout and payment gateway is vital for your e-commerce business. After all, that is how you complete a sale. Make sure that all of the systems are functioning as they should and that multiple checkouts can be completed at the same time.
Monitor Key Performance Metrics
While running tests, keep an eye on the metrics that will give you insight into your website’s health. This includes response time, error rates and server usage. This will tell you if there are any underlying issues that need to be fixed first.
Join the Festive Vibes
Depending on the industry you operate in, freshen up your website and look to join in on the festivities. You can add festive season images on the website as well as your social media.
Communicate Your Shipping Policies
When shipping and courier companies close over the holiday period, you will need to communicate beforehand what the last dates will be that customers are able to place orders.
Armed with these tips, you are sure to make the most of your holiday business and increase your website traffic.
