October is here, and I hate to break it to you, but it isn’t “almost the holiday season.” It is the holiday season. Which means between now and the end of the year, your website has to pull its weight if you want to cash in on the biggest online shopping season of the year.
Unfortunately, most business owners wait until November to prepare their website for an increase in traffic. By then, they’re scrambling to update, and oftentimes, it’s too late. Promo pages don’t get indexed in time, offers look rushed, and customers leave because the website feels outdated, confusing, or just doesn’t work.
That shift raises the bar for your website. Shoppers are ready to buy, but they’re also searching for information that leads them to the best deal, and expecting real answers: What promotions are running? Which gifts are popular? How much is shipping, and when will it arrive?
If they don’t find that information on your website, they’ll look for a business that gives it to them.
And it’s not just people doing the searching. AI tools like Google’s AI results, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are scanning websites to decide what answers to serve up first. If your website doesn’t spell things out clearly, those tools won’t pull you into results, and that means customers won’t either.
Making these holiday website updates in October gives your website time to get indexed, optimized, and ready for when buying peaks in November and December.
It’s the difference between looking prepared when shoppers start comparing…or being left out while your competitors take the sale.
October is your prep month. This is when your site needs to look current, answer the right questions, and be set up for search before the rush begins. The updates you make now are what shoppers — and search engines — will see when buying heats up in November and December.
Here’s where to start:
Seasonal visuals are one option, but they’re not the only way to show customers you’re paying attention. If swapping photos isn’t your style, update your homepage headline, add a banner with shipping deadlines or promotions, highlight holiday gift categories in your navigation, or refresh your featured products. The point is to make it obvious that your site reflects what people are shopping for right now.
October is also the month to get your promo pages live. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday bundles—whatever you plan to run needs to exist now, not later. Search engines and AI don’t index instantly, so the pages you put up today are the ones that will actually show when shoppers start searching in November.
And these pages don’t have to be finished yet. You can publish with a “coming soon” note or a simple outline and fill in the details later. What matters is that the URL is live and working for you. If you ran promotions last year, refresh those same pages instead of creating new ones from scratch. Pages with history already carry weight, which gives you a better shot at showing up in search results.
October is when you want to catch the small glitches that can turn into big headaches once holiday traffic picks up.
The easiest way to do that is to go through your website exactly like a customer would. Pull it up on your phone, search for a product, add it to your cart, and complete a test checkout. Watch how quickly each page loads, notice whether the form fields are simple to fill in, and confirm that the follow-up emails arrive the way they should.
These are the exact steps shoppers take when they’re ready to buy. Walking through it yourself now gives you a clear picture of what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs attention before the rush begins.
Shoppers think differently during the holiday shopping season. They’re not browsing anymore; they’re planning around their schedules, budgets, and deadlines.
That means they want answers upfront:
Which means you need to prioritize providing clear holiday shopping information on your website. Because if those details aren’t easy to find, customers either call you to ask (which slows things down) or move on to a website that has the information they’re looking for front and center.
Adding a banner with shipping cutoffs, updating your contact page with seasonal hours, and making return policies visible on product pages takes the guesswork out of buying. It also helps AI search pick up your information, since those same details are what people type into Google or ask ChatGPT when they’re deciding where to shop.
Clear logistics give shoppers confidence that you’re ready for the season, and that confidence translates directly into orders.
More holiday shoppers are turning to AI tools to plan their buying. Instead of searching the old way, they’re asking questions like “Where can I find holiday deals under $50?” or “Which stores ship gifts by Christmas Eve?” Which means if your website isn’t set up to be crawled by AI, your promotions and answers may never show up in those results.
The fix is straightforward.
Add a permissions file—similar to the way websites have long used robots.txt for Google—so large language models can read your content. Then make sure the details shoppers are asking for are clearly written into your pages: shipping cutoffs, pricing, availability, and return policies.
The clearer your website is, the more likely AI tools are to include your business in the answers people see while they’re shopping online.
Holiday sales don’t begin and end on Black Friday weekend…customers are already looking ahead in October. The earlier you give them a reason to pay attention, the more likely they are to come back when your holiday promotions go live.
That can be as simple as adding an early-access signup for your first sale, publishing a preview of your holiday gift guide, or putting a countdown banner on your website. Each of these creates a clear next step for customers: sign up, check back, or mark their calendar.
Even if the deals aren’t live yet, you’re setting expectations and keeping your brand in front of them while they plan.
Even if you’re just now thinking about holiday prep, you’re not too late.
Start with the basics: make your website look current, highlight what’s coming, and communicate clearly. From there, roll out promotions and deadlines in a way that builds trust and keeps people shopping with you instead of clicking away.
If you don’t have time to mess around with updating your website for the holiday shopping season, The Breezy Company is here to help.
We’ll make sure your website is holiday-ready—promos, shipping cutoffs, and all—so you can focus on running your business, not updating promotions on your website at midnight.
Steve Soto is a seasoned CTO and Partner at The Breezy Company. With deep expertise in software architecture and executive-level product development, he empowers teams to scale with smart, secure digital systems.
Read more articles by Steve Soto
