10 ways to prepare your website for Christmas

It’s that time of the year again – with just 77 sleeps until Christmas, it’s time for online retailers to start panicking about their key selling period.

While normal bricks and mortar retailers have the luxury of shutting up shop every night, the internet is open 24/7 and online retailers know their shopfronts require constant attention.

Good design, strong traffic infrastructure and perfect search engine optimisation are just a few of the problems online retailers face coming up to Christmas. Hal Pritchard, chief executive of online kitchenware retailer Everton Online, says e-retailers should already be thinking about their holiday strategies.

“Christmas is twice as busy as any other time, which makes it difficult from a logistical point of view. Preparations start during September and if you get that done, you’ll survive. When you get into November and December, it’s done, you can’t change anything,”

Here are the top 10 tips from online retail experts in order to prepare your website for the Christmas season.

Get customers attention with a freebie

Giving things away for free may seem antithetical to the biggest shopping period of the year, but Jim Stewart from Stewart Media says businesses don’t have to give away products in order to maximise their impact at Christmas.

“If you’re a clothing retailer, you might want to give information on your different products. Add a tool or box giving information on how you can accessorise during summer, and show those related products. You don’t necessarily have to give a product away.”

Ross McDonald, head of retail at Google Australia, says these tools that suggest similar or related products work very well. “Research shows that these typically produce higher average order values.”

Ruslan Kogan, chief executive of online electronics retailer Kogan Tech, says adding something extra to a purchase will make customers return after Christmas when the hype has died down.

“People always love a bonus with their purchase, and Christmas is the time to do it. It doesn’t have to be a separate product, but offer some sort of value with their purchase, like gift wrapping, or even a bonus small product if you can afford it. If you don’t do it all year round, then do something at Christmas to get people’s attention.”

Give your SEO a seasonal tweak

Pritchard says it is crucial for businesses to design and tailor their keywords for the holiday season to gain as much traffic as possible.

“All of our keywords are certainly geared more towards Christmas at this time of year,” he says. “You need to associate your business with Christmas somehow, put Christmas into your titles and keywords, and start putting that into people’s heads. If you start doing them early then the more traffic you will get, and then hopefully sales.”

McDonald says a good way to test your SEO is to search for your site yourself. If you aren’t getting results, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
“Search online for your key product categories. Does your name appear to remind customers of your range? Do your competitors’ names appear? Shoppers search for products and product brands far more frequently than retailer names.”
Get festive with design

Bricks and mortar retailers spend millions of dollars decorating their stores for the Christmas season to draw a crowd, and these experts say online shouldn’t be treated any differently.

Craig Reardon, chief executive of website design firm The E Team, says it shouldn’t cost retailers a lot of money to design their site for Christmas.

“This is a very affordable tip to use, it’s easy to get a graphics designer to put up some simple art around the site and give it a real feel of currency and festiveness. If you don’t have the budget in way of a design, then there is some good clip art available elsewhere on the internet that will work. People view your site the same way they view a shop window.”

Kogan agrees, and says no expense should be spared when updating your design.

“Christmas is a very exciting time for retailers, purely for the amount of traffic through their stores. Online works the same, and you have to make a good impression because competitors are just on the next search results page.”

Have a social media strategy

This year has seen social media take off with Facebook continually growing and Twitter gaining prominence in the mainstream media. Jim Stewart says you need to be using social media to market your website for Christmas, but warns against using methods that seem too obvious.

“Lose the social networking label, and talk about engaging online. For example, I give information away each week about SEO and that gets distributed around the web. Publish or perish, really. If you’re out there giving something away for free, being unique, you’ll get links to your site and people talking about you.”

“The latest changes from Google are putting a lot more emphasis on links back from other communities. You’re going to get these links if you’re involved in other communities, other websites, and so on. Start thinking beyond your website and whether that be a YouTube channel or something like that, then do it to get your name out there.”

Shayne Tilley, marketing director at Sitepoint.com, says businesses won’t gain anything from social media if they start using it purely for gaining traffic for Christmas. Instead, he says, a Christmas strategy must be part of a retailer’s existing social marketing approach.

“The approach shouldn’t change from what they’re doing all year, except that this time of year is a bit more lighthearted. Also, remember you have a global audience, and some don’t celebrate Christmas, so don’t try and go overboard with the Christmas decorations either.”