Why Every Business Needs a Mobile-Responsive Website in 2025
The Benefits Of E-commerce At Christmas
Christmas is the busiest time of year for a lot of businesses (except maybe UK based ice cream sellers!) and selling online whether you have a traditional bricks and mortar shop or not is now the norm.
Smaller companies often sell their wares online through third party eCommerce sites such as Amazon, Not On The Highstreet.com and Etsy because it saves on website set up and hosting costs and they manage transactions securely. Which is all great, but this comes at a cost, the fee you pay these sites, either fixed or as a percentage of sales, will eat into your hard-earned profits.
And even if you’re not a small business and you’re well established, having your own eCommerce website, especially at Christmas, will help boost your end of year sales.
- Customer’s all love a bargain but dislike queues! – Think of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and the frenzied online buying these attract. Businesses often record their highest ever-daily online sales during Christmas despite having bricks and mortar shops and good deals spread like wildfire on social media.
- Some of your customer’s will be unashamedly last-minute shoppers – You might think these poor souls always end up in Boots at 4pm on Christmas Eve, but no longer! With so many quick delivery options retailers like you can reply on, online shopping has never been more attractive to your customers. And you’ll probably find these last-minute individuals are willing to pay the extra delivery fees associated with next day, or same day delivery, to stay in their loved ones good books…
- Late night shopping (after a mulled wine) is so addictive – Most of us will do anything nowadays to avoid the hassle of the annual Christmas shop – buying everything in one day and trudging back with it all and 14 rolls of wrapping paper. Who isn’t attracted to kicking back with a mulled wine and a mince pie and doing it all from the comfort of their sofa?
- Online shopping has never been easier – eCommerce websites are so intuitive now, making it easy to research, compare and purchase goods like never before. And with the ease of PayPal and similar online payment gateways, shoppers are more inclined to trust putting their bankcard details online.
- It’s easier to appear less pushy online – The days of the pushy sales assistant are surely numbered. But you can still influence customers buying decisions, just in a subtler manner. Offering discount codes for first time buyers, or in exchange for an email address (an excellent marketing tool for future use) really can turn a potential customer into an actual customer.
- You can learn for next year – Buying decisions, popular products, not very popular products; you can learn a lot from a season online and use it to tweak your site for next year. Putting popular lines on the homepage, offering two for one deals and even adding a fancy Christmas banner to your site can all help boost sales.
To prepare for the Christmas rush you should consider some of the following pointer’s to optimise your eCommerce website:
- Ensure your website is a responsive web design & optimised for mobile performance
This is key to improve the shopper experience at this key time of the year and it will also ensure you rank higher on Google search results as customer experience falls directly into the Google algorithm. - Keywords are important
Optimise your website for search results through finding keywords that drive a lot of traffic around your industry area. If you don’t include on your website what your customer’s are searching for – your website simply won’t rank for those terms and your competitors will get the sale! - Time to embrace the festivities online
Ensure your landing pages are ready for the festive rush with key festive deals, content and clear call to actions to shop. It’s time to get the customer excited about Christmas and show inspiration for who they could buy your product or service for this Christmas. - Ensure your products are just a few clicks away!
Review the customer journey and ensure your customer’s can find the products they are looking for in a few simple clicks.
If you’re not online, you’re missing out on potential customers or at least valuable social media shares and likes. Make getting online top of your (early) Christmas list. We can get your site up and live within a couple of weeks – so get in touch today and we’ll get you set up and ready to go!