How is it already the holiday season? I feel like I blinked and the entire year just flew by. And yes, I’ve already begun decorating my house so don’t judge me. I can’t help myself – this is my absolute favorite time of the year.
And, with this time of the year passing fast, it’s important to ensure your website is doing its part. Truthfully, you could do a full overhaul for the holidays but honestly, you don’t need to. I’d love to share the top 5 things you can do without completely wrecking havoc on your website.
1: Give yourself a quick website refresh by switching out your summer & spring-esque colors with more muted or neutral colors that pair well with holidays outfits & graphics. It’s important to have a color palette that interchanges between the seasons, even it varies ever so slightly. Doing so allows you to update your website to the fall & winter or spring & summer without throwing customers off entirely when they land on your page.
2: Clean up your Pinterest board and add a few curated boards that are holiday-specific. Create one for your products and a few others that will bring traffic who would be interested in your products or services. For example, if your target market is interested in recipes & holiday decor, create those boards and fill them up! Add a few of your items within it to help drive a little extra traffic. You can even add your products to other group boards (which is definitely a great idea!)
3: Get on that email list! There’s no better time than now to start training customers to read your newsletters. If you find people opting out, do this: send 1-2 emails a week that are just content-based with things like blog posts, latest social media posts, tips + tricks, recipes, your favorite pinterest pins, and so much more. And then, send out a max of 1 new arrival or sales email during the week. You can even add in a “new arrivals” section to the bottom of content emails. The trick to getting people to read your newsletters is to actually give them something they want, are inspired by, or that helps them. No one wants to be sold to consistently. Make them want to come to your website.
Start today by sharing a curated list of your favorite holiday styles, holiday recipes, or even holiday gift guides from around the web (just make sure to give credit where its due!)
4: Update your website navigation to easily showcase new arrivals and any sales you’re having for the holidays. Your customers want to find things quickly & easily – do NOT make them search for anything. The most important thing is to make sure shopping is EASY. If you decide to do a sale on clearance items, make them organized into one sale section and easy to find. And, if possible, break the sale section into increments (Under $10, Under $50, etc).
5: Make your return policies clear and add any sort of holiday policies everywhere possible. If at all possible, it’s great to add a “terms + conditions” checkbox to your cart. Make sure your shipping notification emails are sending properly & install a chat popup so your customers can quickly ask questions!
Have something to add? We’d love to hear in the comments below!
