Ahh, the holidays! That time of year where you kick your feet up, relax and spend time with loved ones. However, if your business stays active throughout December, then the holidays can also be a stressful period as you try to prepare for the holiday rush, wrap up the year, and make preparations for the next. In order to help you better prepare yourself for the silly season, here are three questions you can ask yourself to sharpen your online strategy!
What promotions have you featured for the holidays? Chances are you’re running promotions for the holidays, but be sure to feature them on your website to maximise reach and awareness! Think about how your new and exising customers use your website, and how best to advertising your offers. Better yet, split-test different approaches to the same offer to learn what best resonates with your customers, be it your website, social media, emails or all of the above. Let them know what’s on offer so they can reach you.
Are you prepared to handle the rush? It’s difficult to anticipate demand, but in the same way that you don’t want to be understocked or understaffed during the rush, the last thing you want to do is have your website go down during peak periods. Particularly if your business has a strong eCommerce stream, be sure that your website can handle the surge of traffic that comes around this time of the year – think failovers, backups, security, bandwidth and load optimisation.
Is your website up to date? As the year ends, many businesses reflect and benchmark their progress, year-on-year. Be sure to take your website’s YOY performance into consideration as well, and make use of all that valuable behavioural data that’s been aggregating throughout the year! More customers than ever will be searching for products and services online in 2015, so it’s absolutely vital that your website is running smoothly and gives your customers what they’re looking for.
Plan ahead, and this holiday season can be your most lucrative yet!
