This is the time of year when online shopping really takes off. You may be able to take advantage of the extra traffic by optimizing your site for holiday shoppers, but you need to get started now. Our guide will show you how to make sure your site is ready for that increase in sales, so you can capitalize on it and stay ahead of the competition.

Improve your site's performance and speed.

Speed and performance are critical for eCommerce sites. According to a recent study by Akamai, users are three times more likely to leave a site if it takes longer than five seconds to load. So what can you do to improve speed and performance?

• Test your website's speed using sites like Google Developers, Pingdom, and WebPageTest. These tools will tell you how long it takes for your site to load under different conditions and how much time each element of the page—such as images or Javascript—takes.

• Use caching plugins (like W3 Total Cache) that store static elements of your WordPress site on servers closer to users' locations so they download faster. This doesn't work everywhere, but this is especially helpful if most of your traffic comes from countries outside of North America or Europe where high latency speeds are common.

• Get rid of any unnecessary plugins (or use lighter-weight alternatives), reduce image sizes where possible, minimize Javascript usage unless absolutely necessary, and keep scripts running only while they're needed instead of constantly running in background tabs or processes.

Optimize for mobile.

It’s important that you optimize your site for mobile devices because many of your customers will be shopping on their phones or tablets. Make sure that your site is easy to use on a mobile device. Make sure it looks and works well in portrait mode (where the screen is taller than it is wide) as well as landscape (where the screen is wider than it is tall). You can do this by using responsive design techniques, which automatically adjusts content to fit whatever size screen your customers are using. You can also use a theme with built-in support for responsive design, so all you have to do is install it and start building!

• Make sure all links are working properly and easy to read on all devices: If there are any broken links or buttons on your website then you will lose a lot of customers who click that particular link or button while searching through your web pages.

• Don’t forget about the checkout process: Have a seamless checkout process. If you use Shopify or WordPress, add in options for other processors like Paypal, and Amazon Pay, and the options for interest-free installments. Shopify has a great built-in platform for this

Ads.

Tell your story with video and images. People love to see what they are buying before they buy it, so make sure your product descriptions include detailed images of the product in all angles. You can also create videos of how a product works or show an example of how other customers use it in their homes or businesses — the more authentic and interesting you can make them look, the better!

• Have a call to action (CTA). A CTA is simply something that tells customers what action you want them to take after seeing your ad—and if possible, gives them an incentive for doing so! For example: "Buy now" or "Find out more".

• Make it easy for them to purchase, and redirect them straight to your checkout page.

• Know your audience! Make sure to do your research on who you are targeting. Where do they live, what are they up to,

• Optimize your checkout page with testimonials, benefits, and features of your products, and upsell options.

Create a holiday look for your site.

• Create a holiday look for your site.

• Use seasonal colors, graphics, images, and fonts on your site.

• Make sure the look is consistent across all devices so that it looks great on mobile devices, ads, and social media platforms.

Send targeted email newsletters and create holiday ad campaigns.

My favorite email marketing tool is Klayvio, and it integrates seamlessly with Shopify. It’s the perfect email platform to start your email marketing + SMS campaigns especially for the holiday seasons. Use their resources and templates that show high click rates, and add in your branding.

There is no doubt that eCommerce is the future of retail, with sales continuing to grow and more people turning to the internet for their shopping needs. For small businesses, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity: as we’ve shown above, there are many things you can do to make sure your site is optimized for holiday eCommerce—but if you don’t do them, you could miss out on potential revenue or even see your customers go elsewhere. Remember: it all starts with having an engaging site that looks great on mobile devices and has fast page load times. From there, it’s up to you! 😉