Is Your Website Ready for the Holidays?

The happiest holidays for most business owners involve record sales. Even if you don’t sell online, it’s important to optimize your web presence before the holiday season. Research shows 64 percent of shoppers that plan to buy from brick-and-mortar stores still research products online before they decide where to spend their holiday dollars. Here’s how to prepare for the best holiday season ever.

Be Easy to Find

Will customers see your current location when they search for your business? Make sure your address is correct both in search engines like Google and Bing and in local directories like Yelp. If an online search doesn’t take them to the right physical location, your competitor might be their next stop.

Make your physical address and business hours obvious on your website, and be sure to update your schedule for the holidays.

Decorate Your Website for the Season

Seasonal themes welcome visitors and put them in a browsing mood. You don’t have to redesign your entire website to add touches of holiday cheer. Greet them with a holiday-themed introduction to your home page and design promotions around a seasonal theme.

Drive sales by advertising products or services that make customers’ holiday shopping and gift giving easier. Think about what matters to your target audience this season and show how your brand offers solutions.

Prioritize Speed

Users are impatient year-round, but during the holidays they have even less time to spend waiting for pages to load. Your website will receive more traffic than any other time of the year, and when it’s viewed by more users, it doesn’t run as quickly. Speed improves results. One study found that for every second of improved page speed, conversions increased 2 percent. Start now to evaluate and optimize page load times to create an immersive user experience.

Don’t Forget Mobile

More people conduct searches through mobile devices than do on desktops. When many of your customers view your site, they see it on a screen that’s about five inches tall and only a few inches wide. Check how your website performs on smartphones.

Speed matters even more on mobile than it does on desktop devices. The average loading time for a mobile landing page is 22 seconds. Most customers don’t want to wait more than three. Edge out the competition by making your site one of the few that loads lightning fast.

SteerPoint provides website design that makes you stand out, and we always optimize for mobile. Contact us for a free quote today.