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5 Must-Know Tips to Prepare Your Website for the Holiday Shopping Season

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Steve Soto
Steve Soto
holiday shopping season

The holiday shopping season is right around the corner, and that means two of the biggest online sales events—Black Friday and Cyber Monday—are almost here. In 2023 alone, shoppers spent a whopping $9.8 billion on Black Friday and $12.4 billion on Cyber Monday. 

With that much potential revenue on the line, it’s crucial that your website is up to the task. A neglected or poorly maintained website can leave you with more stress than sales.

Can Your Website Handle the Traffic Surge?

The amazing deals and promotions offered on Black Friday and Cyber Monday mean a massive influx of visitors across the internet. 

With so many shoppers flocking to the internet for the best deals, businesses have a massive opportunity to increase sales and attract new customers.

But here’s the catch — while the potential for revenue is huge, a spike in traffic can also lead to major headaches if your website isn’t ready.

Why Traffic Surges Can Be a Problem

Imagine this: your best Black Friday deals are live, shoppers are clicking through, adding items to their carts…and then your website crashes. 

It’s every business owner’s nightmare, right?

While a surge in traffic can be fantastic for your bottom line, it can also cause serious problems if your website isn’t properly maintained. 

Here’s what can go wrong if your website isn’t ready:

  • Slow load times: If your site is sluggish, visitors won’t stick around. Studies show that people will abandon a website if it takes more than a few seconds to load.
  • Crashes: Too many visitors can overwhelm your server, leading to dreaded downtime—leaving customers frustrated and your sales in the dust.
  • Checkout delays: If your site can’t handle the traffic during checkout, you risk losing sales from abandoned carts.

During the busiest shopping days of the year, you can’t afford these hiccups. If your website slows down or, worse, crashes under the weight of all that traffic, customers will head elsewhere—and fast.

Luckily, there are ways to make sure your website can handle the pressure.

5 Tips to Get Your Website Holiday-Ready

 

1. Upgrade Your Hosting Plan

If you’re expecting a major increase in traffic, it’s a good idea to upgrade your hosting plan.

A hosting plan with more bandwidth or a dedicated server will make sure that your website can handle the extra load. The last thing you want is for your website to crash because your hosting can’t keep up.

2. Speed It Up

Page load speed is critical. If your website is slow, potential customers won’t wait around.

To keep things running fast:

  • Compress images to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.
  • Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute your website’s content across multiple servers.
  • Cut down on unnecessary plugins that can slow down your site.

3. Test for High Traffic

Before the holiday shopping season begins, run load tests to simulate high traffic and see how your website performs under pressure.

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you spot any performance issues and fine-tune your website before the big (shopping) day.

4. Keep Your Website Updated

Outdated elements can slow down your website or even leave it vulnerable to crashes. So, to get your website ready for the surge of online shoppers, make sure your website’s software, plugins, and themes are fully updated.

These routine updates keep everything running smoothly all year round, but especially during high-traffic periods.

5. Make Checkout Simple

You’ve put in the work all year and kept your website maintained, and now it’s ready to handle the holiday rush. But here’s the thing: none of that matters if shoppers are abandoning their carts before completing their purchase.

So, what makes customers bail at the last minute?

According to Baymard’s latest study, here are the top five reasons shoppers abandon their carts:

  1. Extra costs (shipping, tax, fees) were too high (48%)
  2. The website required an account to checkout (26%)
  3. The website wasn’t trustworthy enough to provide credit card info (25%)
  4. Shipping and delivery times were too slow (23%)
  5. The checkout process was too long or complicated (22%)

 

Yikes. With so many factors that can cause visitors to abandon their carts, it’s crucial to simplify the checkout process—especially during the busy holiday shopping season.

Make it Easy for Shoppers to Click “Buy”

To prevent cart abandonment, you need to make your checkout process as easy and user-friendly as possible.

Here’s how:

1. Be upfront about costs. No one likes surprise fees. Display shipping, taxes, and any additional charges early in the process.

2. Offer guest checkout — forcing customers to create an account is a surefire way to lose them.

3. Use trust badges and secure payment gateways to reassure customers that their personal info is safe.

4. Speed up your shipping times, and, if possible, offer fast or free shipping options to keep your shoppers happy.

5. Simplify the process by keeping your checkout steps minimal and intuitive so customers can breeze through to the payment stage.

Bottom line: a seamless checkout process can make all the difference between closing a sale and losing one.

 

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are huge opportunities to boost your sales, but only if your website is ready.

If you haven’t done a deep dive into your website’s performance, now is the time. Make sure your website is up-to-date, fast, and able to handle the traffic surge, so you can capitalize on the biggest shopping days of the year.

Need help making sure your website is ready for the holiday rush? At Breezy Sites, we’ve got you covered—let us take care of the details so you can focus on your business.

Reach out to us today!

YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD BE AS GREAT AS YOUR BUSINESS IS

 

Ok, you keep hearing that your website is the front door of your business but you just don’t see it. Most of your business comes from referrals and your website is just there. This limits you at only being able to reach the people you can yourself. On top of the fact that when the people you meet see your site, it gives an impression of what it will be like working with you.

You should be confident that your site is up to date, searchable on Google and tells the story as well as you do.

The problem is that your nephew doesn’t have enough experience, you have to manage the freelancer and you don’t want to pay for an expensive site redesign.

The truth is you’re tired of having a website that breaks and is not generating business.

Maintaining your website should be easy. Now it can be. Reach out to learn more about how our team can help you today!
Thanks to them I have increased social following. The results of kind of their social media posts have driven people to my website and resulted in some clients for me.
Ben Reinking, MD
Ben Reinking, MD
CEO | The Developing Doctor

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