How to Prepare Your Website for the Holiday Season

The ending of Halloween signals the start of the busy holiday season. Thanksgiving Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are just the tip of the iceberg for rising web usage. 'Tis the season for holiday cheer and the flurry of online shopping and even shorter attention spans. Make sure there’s no place like your website this holiday season with these simple suggestions:

Overestimate heavy traffic

During the holiday season, websites are like airports. Both have heavier traffic than normal, and both can cost you loads money if you don’t properly plan ahead. Make sure your website is equipped to handle above-average traffic. Missing out on conversions because of sluggish websites can be more devastating than missing your flight. The safest way to do that is making sure you're using the Cloud. At Solodev, we rely on AWS Cloud services to provide our clients with year-round flexibility. If they need more room, they've got it -- all thanks to AWS Cloud hosting.

Make sure you’re thinking about mobile

At Solodev, we preach the power of the smartphone. Optimizing your website for mobile doesn’t have to be hard. You can check out simple ways to make your website more accessible elsewhere on our blog.

That’s not to say brick-and-mortar counterparts are completely exempt from this. Recent Google analytics found that after it becomes too late to ship goods and order online, consumers will turn their searches to what they can buy near them. Don’t abandon mobile marketing after ‘the point of no return.’

Plan for the rush

Holidays can be a hassle, but your websites don’t have to be. Remember that your site’s visitors will be in more of a rush than normal. Put your critical information at their fingertips. Landing pages should be simple -- even more streamlined than before. Think through each page and purge it of outdated information and unnecessary images/video. Keep it simple and don't overwhelm your visitors. 

Smarter A/B testing

If you haven’t already, make sure you’re planning multiple variants of critical marketing tools. Different landing pages (especially if targeted to specific locations) should be tailored while also maintaining the overall holiday marketing theme.

Streamline your marketing

There’s nothing more confusing to a consumer than mixed marketing messages, and that frustration only increases with holiday stress. Make sure your marketing efforts are unified in messaging. Landing pages should always deliver on the promises from other marketing. Go one step beyond and create a simple holiday marketing look. That design will not only make navigation easier for visitors, it also says “HEY, THIS IS A HOLIDAY SPECIAL. LOOK,” so that your copy never has to.

By keeping in mind these simple steps, you’re on your way to giving your website the gift of more conversions. Want more help making your website standout year-round? Check out our blog here.