A website checklist for the 2014 holiday season

The 2014 holiday season is approaching fast, so optimizing your business website for the busiest months of the year is a must. Here we have a website checklist to give you 7 ideas on how to make your website stand out for the holiday season and maximize sales.

Get a festive design
First off, make your website look festive. A good way to do this is by changing your website color scheme to something suitable for the 2014 holiday season. If you’re in need of a little inspiration, check out these color palettes which are sure to make your website stand out. Fortunately with Style Designer, implementing a new website color scheme is easy.

A festive design doesn’t have to just stop at your website color scheme. Why not create a holiday variation of your logo or banner to match? These small touches will go a long way to adding cheer to your website.

Merchandise your website
Once your website is looking more festive, next it’s important to merchandise it for the 2014 holiday season. Make sure the products that make great holiday gifts are easy to find in your Online Store. Create a new page in the main navigation of your website such as “Holidays” or “Gift ideas” for maximum visibility. You could also create a banner using our custom panel widget to feature a few of your products.

Incentivize purchases
Next on our website checklist are incentives. Incentives really help to convert website browsers to buyers. If you have an Online Store, try offering free shipping throughout the holidays, or a discount on next-day delivery for last minute purchases.

For Cyber Monday or the Boxing Day sales, offer a discount on certain items or multiple orders. Each of these ideas are simple with the Online Store.

Optimize for mobile visitors
With mobile devices accounting for 55% of Internet usage in the United States, optimizing your website for mobile visitors is essential for the 2014 holiday season.

Creating a mobile-friendly version of your website is easy, and it will allow your web visitors to navigate your site easier when viewing on a smartphone or tablet. To optimize your site for mobile, take a look at this article where we take you through the key features of mobile-friendly design.

Start Search Engine Marketing
Wondering how to make your website stand out amongst your competitors? A great way to start is through Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. Paid search lets you advertise on search engines, such as Google, optimizing for particular keywords. For example, if you make handmade jewelry, you could advertise on the keyword “silver handmade earrings.” If someone searches for that search term, your ad will appear on the search engine results page.

The great thing about paid search is that it’s performance based, so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You also have the ability to be targeted with your advertising. For example, you can set you ads to appear only for searchers living in the UK or a specific city, such as London. By being more targeted, your budget will go further, as the ads will just show to those people.

If you’re thinking about starting a paid search campaign, we’ve partnered with SiteWit to make it super simple to get your advertising campaigns up and running.

Start selling on Facebook
Another great way to stay ahead of your competition this holiday season is to start selling on Facebook. With the Yola Online Store, you can integrate your store with your Facebook page, allowing customers to browse and purchase from your store without leaving Facebook.

A study conducted by Ecwid, has shown that store owners have seen a 15% increase in sales when putting their store on Facebook in addition to their website.

Get re-acquainted with your customers
The final point on our website checklist, is to get re-acquainted with customers who have visited your site previously. If you don’t have the email addresses of these web visitors, it’s easy to start collecting them by adding a newsletter sign up form to your site.

Once you have a database of contacts, you can start messaging them. The 2014 holiday season is a great time to launch your first email marketing campaign. But before you do, create a holiday calendar to keep you organized and plan when you are going to send your campaigns.

In order to improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns, use customer data, such as past purchases or interests, to segment your email campaigns. Try to personalize messages to the reader as much as possible. Also remember to include limited time offers you’re running for the holidays, such as discounts or free shipping, to incentivize purchases. All of these tactics will help you get the best return from your promotions.

This is your website checklist for the 2014 holiday season. Let us know how they work for you by commenting below.