How can you optimize your WordPress Ecommerce store for the Holidays?
The holiday season is here, and with it comes an influx of customers eager to buy gifts for their friends and family. You know how important it is to ensure that your online store is ready for the holiday rush. Fortunately, there are several ideas you can take to optimize your WooCommerce online store for maximum holiday sales. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the most important ones.
1. Optimize Your Site Speed
Nothing turns off customers faster than a slow-loading website. Make sure that your site loads quickly by optimizing images, minifying code, reducing redirects, and using a content delivery network (CDN). A caching plugin will help to speed up your website by caching your pages and posts. This means that the plugin will store a copy of your pages and posts on the server, so they don’t have to be generated each time someone visits your site. This can dramatically improve your site’s speed and performance. Some popular caching plugins include WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, and Super Cache. WP Rocket is especially good as it comes with a lot of options. It is a premium plugin however, so you will have to pay to the the best of it.
There is a great article that covers how to configure WP Rocket properly for a WooCommerce site, you can read it here.
Photo by Myriam Jessier
2. Make Sure Your Website Design Is Up to Date
Customers expect websites to look modern and aesthetically pleasing. If your site looks dated or unprofessional, they may be less likely to purchase from you. Make sure that your website design is up-to-date and mobile-friendly so that customers have a positive experience no matter what device they’re using. Best is to focus on obvious issues and fix them in time for the Holiday season. It could be simple as adjusting some spacing, font sizes and colors, to make sure it is consistent across the site.
Photo by Daniel Korpai
3. Use Holiday Images and Holiday Call to Actions
Include images of festive holidays in your website design and use call to actions that encourage customers to buy gifts. For example, you could include a “gift finder” widget that helps customers find the perfect gift for their loved ones. You could also use holiday-themed banners and buttons that urge customers to buy now.
You can find great holiday picture for free at Unsplash.
Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev
4. Create Special Offers & Discounts
To further entice customers during the holidays, offer special discounts or create limited-time offers that can only be redeemed during the holidays (e.g., 20% off if you spend $100 or more). These types of offers can help draw in more business during the busy holiday season and make customers more likely to purchase from you again in the future. You can use a banner WordPress plugin to show the offers on your website.
If you are using the Elementor builder, it comes with a popup builder, you can create holiday offers within automatic popup that encourages customers to buy from your website. This popup can include a special discount code or free shipping offer that is only valid for a limited time.
We also recommend the Smart Coupons plugin from Woocommerce which allow to extend the basic functionnality of WooCommerce coupons.
Photo by Markus Spiske
5. Free Shipping and Shipping Discounts
One way to encourage more holiday shopping is to offer discounts on shipping. You could offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount, for example, or waive the shipping fee for orders placed during a certain time period. This can help to draw in more customers and increase sales during the holiday season.
Here is an article on how to set up free shipping with Woocommerce.
Photo by Bench Accounting
Wrapping up!
The holidays are a time when people traditionally shop for gifts for their friends and family. It’s therefore important to ensure that your website is ready for the holiday rush. In this blog post, we’ve discussed some of the most important ways you can optimize your website for maximum holiday sales. These include optimizing your site speed, making sure your website design is up-to-date and mobile-friendly, using holiday images and call to actions, featuring promotions and deals, creating special offers and discounts, and offering free shipping or shipping discounts.
By following these tips, you can help increase traffic to your WooCommerce store during the busy holiday season and boost your sales in the process!
Photo by Lore Schodts
By the way if you are not sure what technology to use to power your ecommerce store, checkout out blog post comparing Shopify vs Woocommerce.
Lastly, feel free to contact us if you would like us to implement any of these improvements on your online store.
Happy Holidays!
