Updated January 10, 2023
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Holidays Are Coming
It’s almost that time of year again. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Christmas. All of the big holidays are on their way. So, if you’re running an online store it’s a good time to give things a once-over to make sure everything is working before it gets too busy. What do you need to look at?
Check Your Forms
One of the first things we suggest you do if you’re preparing for a rush of new customers is to check if your forms are working correctly. Are you getting the notifications when someone fills them out? Are the people who fill in the forms getting an email to notify them their information has been received, or are they being sent to a thank you page? Simple stuff, but if your forms aren’t working properly you could miss valuable customers.
Is Your Tracking Tracking?
Another important baseline is making sure that your website is tracking information properly. If you’re using forms or a checkout on your site, then is that information being logged properly in Google Analytics? If it isn’t it won’t hurt you this year, but come next year when you’re trying to find out where to improve you’ll struggle without data. The same is also true of any PPC campaigns you’re running on social media, or Google Ads. If you’re busy you might not remember where all the customers come from, so get your tracking tags set up beforehand.
Chase Abandoned Carts
If your website has an online checkout then you may already have a system in place for tracking abandoned carts, but we have recently seen a cool new tool from MailChimp that helps. This abandoned cart addon allows you to set up an email that will be sent to anyone who adds anything to their cart but doesn’t purchase. A great way to follow up with customers who almost make a purchase but fall at the last hurdle.
Check your Site Speed
If all goes well your site is going to be getting more traffic over the holidays. So you should make sure that you server can handle the increase in traffic without sacrificing your site speed. One way to do this is to set up caching for your website. If you’re using WordPress, you can find a plugin that will help with this.
Prepare Remarketing Ads
Another way of following up on loose ends is by tracking your customers with remarketing ads. You can do this in Google Ads, showing display ads or Gmail ads to customers who have already visited your site. Or you can do it on social media. Remarketing is a good way to keep your company in the mind of someone who has already taken the time to look you up online.
Are You Ready?
If you follow these four steps you should be able to focus on selling during the holidays instead of worrying about how your website is functioning, or if you’re missing out on any customers online. Do you have any routines you follow to get your site ready for the holiday period? We’d love to hear it if you do.
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