So you have a working website, but is your website working for you? With the holidays approaching, it’s important to ensure your website is optimized to make the most of the peak sales opportunity. Below, we’ve compiled some pointers to help you improve your website before the holiday season arrives.
How to Optimize Your Website for the Holidays
Learn how to streamline your website’s design for increased sales opportunities.
Draw more conversions with actionable CTAs
We’ve all seen the “Click here” buttons on websites. They tell you what to do but that call to action rarely provides much context in regards to where you’re going or the intended goal. Developing clear and direct CTAs can make all the difference, because they provide the customer with a direct action that leads to an outcome.
Motivate potential customers to act by ensuring that your CTA buttons are positioned clearly and the surrounding content provides enough information to lead customers to take action.
For example, a kitchenware retailer might include a content block on their landing page that says “Transform your cooking experience,” followed by a button that says “Shop now.” This provides a clear direction for customers and can change the intention from browsing to purchasing. Getting more descriptive with your CTA copy can be beneficial for customers as well. Writing “Learn more on our blog” lets a visitor know exactly where they’re headed before they take the action.
After you’ve written your CTAs, make sure you’re continuously reviewing them for improvement. Don’t be afraid to change them based on your site layout, products, and website engagement data. You can assess their effectiveness by integrating Google Analytics and seeing which pages have a high bounce rate, fewer clicks, and low conversions. If you’re running a paid social campaign during the holidays, try testing out multiple CTAs if you’re using several landing pages. Mailchimp allows you to easily update your CTAs with the button content blocks feature, so you can write the most compelling CTAs possible.
Add trust signals to encourage more sales
Even though a potential customer has made it to your site and is looking to buy, they’ll likely need some reassurance before making a decision. With so many options out there, it can be hard for customers to know which brands are credible. Integrating content that builds their trust can help give them the confidence to make a purchase.
Sharing your product reviews, introducing website security badges, and displaying a Better Business Bureau accreditation is a great way to boost your brand’s credibility. It might sound simple, but incorporating these trust signals gives customers peace of mind if they are shopping with you for the first time.
If you’re looking to get more reviews, try reaching out to your previous customers for their feedback. Set up a purchase follow-up, first purchase automation, and include a survey as ways to garner customer feedback. If your business is service oriented, you can also request a testimonial so future customers know what stands out about your offerings. Take the opportunity to show that your brand is invested in making sure your customers are happy with your product, and make it clear that their feedback will help ensure the best possible shopping experience.
Optimize your customer checkout process
A 2020 analysis from SalesCycle found the global average cart abandonment rate across all industries to be just over 81%, and that abandonment rates increased as the online checkout experience got longer and more complex. Shoppers are just less likely to complete the purchase if there’s an arduous checkout process, so reduce the steps it takes to checkout and optimize your website for shoppers.
Consider a simplified checkout design to make the experience positive for your customers. Your Mailchimp store offers features that can help. For instance, your product images appear in the shopping cart so customers can clearly see what they're buying during checkout. You can also offer multiple shipping options for greater flexibility.
And a friendly reminder: don't forget to set up an abandoned cart automation. This feature allows you to send a reminder email to customers who left your site without purchasing the items in their cart.
The holidays can be the busiest time of year for many e-commerce businesses, so you’ll definitely want your website functioning optimally during the holiday season. Mailchimp tools featured above were designed to help drive greater customer engagement and an increase in conversion.