7 Ways To Get Your Ecommerce Website Super-Ready for Cyber Monday

By  - Nick James
7 Ways To Get Your Ecommerce Website Super-Ready for Cyber Monday
“As we know from our earlier analysis, the big holiday shopping days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, still bring in 50-100% more revenue compared to shopping days throughout the rest of the year.”
Research by RJmetrics

Online giants receive orders in the millions on Cyber Monday! Don’t be left behind, make sure your estore is ready to compete. This year, the busiest period of shopping will fall in November. Cyber Monday (Monday, November 28th, 2016) – when people will spend lavishly and the retailers will be too generous with their offers, discounts, promotions and free services.

If you want to rock your business this shopping season, you must start prepping your ecommerce website now. Planning and preparing your ecommerce website is the secret to reaping all of the sales and conversions you can this holiday shopping season.

Optimize for Mobile Ecommerce

From Statista,

“In 2018, U.S. mobile retail revenues are expected to amount to 206.53 billion U.S. dollars, up from 80.94 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.”

This shows the rapid shift of buyers from their desktop computers to mobile and other smart devices. Users today switch between their devices and expect to see their cart synchronized in all devices as well. If your ecommerce website is fully optimized for mobile devices, they can buy wherever they are and using any device in their hand. Making your site mobile optimized is a must. If you do nothing else, make sure your site is mobile optimized.

Create A Personalized Buying Experience

People want to experience a tailor-made shopping experience built just for them. Just like the big stores, Target and Bestbuy, this can be done by collecting the user’s data, search records, previous shopping history, wishlists, liked products, browsed or seen products. Target the user by showing them items they have already shown an interest in.

Going beyond using the data collected from his behavior, sites can also leverage the users demographics and geographical data to deliver content targeting their personal interests. Visitors coming from one state will see the offers A and B, and at the same time, visitors coming from another state will see the offers C and D.   For instance, a user coming from Michigan might be shown a Michigan State University t-shirt and a University of Michigan t-shirt offer or sale.  While someone from Florida would be shown a Florida State University t-shirt and a University of Florida t-shirt offer or sale.

By showing offers, promotions, and products based on the visitor’s data in a personalized way, you are truly encouraging them to buy.

Use Discounts and Promotions to Excite Buyers

Discounts alone will increase sales on normal days. But on Cyber Monday, when they are prepped and ready to spend-spend-spend, you can spur their interests to spend a bit extra without a lot of work. This is a fantastic time to use discounts and promotions as sales tools.

There are several ways to present offers, like BOGO, also known as “Buy One Get one”. Pick any single strategy and stick to it. You can also start flash sales that are only offered for a limited time. When customers feel like their time is limited to get that great offer, they are then encouraged to buy because they don’t want to miss the bus on that great deal you are offering.

While running any discounts, offers, promotions or flash sales, make sure the “how, when and why” is in plain language and easy to understand. It should be very clear to the buyer what items are on sale and what the discount or deal is. Avoid creating any ambiguity that could cause unhappy customers when they reach the checkout page.

If you are not new to the business and this is not your first time at the rodeo, you should know which products or sales showed a positive ROI last season. Analytics will help you here as well. Analytics can give you deep insight into what to focus on this year.

Lure of Free Shipping

Who doesn’t love free shipping! Free shipping appeals to most everyone. Shoppers love it even more than the discounts and offers in some instances. Think of it this way, when the money saved on the discounted product is in turn spent on a high shipping cost, it can really take away the thrill of the purchase.

Think of the products that you can offer free shipping on. It is not easy for all businesses to offer free shipping on all of their products, we understand that. One idea is to offer free shipping when the shopping cart cost goes above a certain cost. For example, you can make a standard offer for free shipping when the customers purchase amount goes above $100. Adjust the amount to suit your business needs.

Go Highly Visual

Make your visuals count! Go visually strong with high-quality images and don’t cut corners with stock photos.  Eye popping images lure buyers faster than anything else. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words” and this is no exception. There are hundreds and thousands of stores that are in competition with your estore on Cyber Monday… using great imagery that pops can give your estore the edge you need this holiday season.

Don’t clutter up your photos or overdo them to make them more appealing. Elegance is found in simplicity. Remove the background to create the focus on the directly on your products. The images should match the theme of your site also to create a clean, professional, and uniform look.

Ensure Site Performance

Your website traffic will get s sudden spike during the Cyber Monday and holiday season if you are doing things right. Is your site ready to handle it?

Your website should not only be super easy to navigate, but also very fast to load. Imagine your site traffic goes up suddenly and your site crashes. You will not just lose sales, but you also risk a negative perception of your company by those trying to access your site.

Contact your server host and ask for the temporary expansion of bandwidth to sustain with the massive influx of users you expect this holiday season.

Make the Checkout Process a Breeze

Customers hate it when the checkout process is unclear, complex or time consuming. The checkout process should be fast and flawless. All discounts and offers should be reflected in the shopping cart automatically and instantly. Customers should not have to guess if they are getting the expected discount or not. There is nothing worse than waiting until after your purchase to find out you did not get the discount you expected.

NOW is the time to optimize your checkout pages to ensure happy shopping for your eager buyers. By asking for too much information during registration or the same information multiple times, you will impact negatively your online sales. Make sure your process is streamlined.

Checkout pages should appear with clear call-to-action buttons. Go through the process of a purchase yourself, as if you were the customer.  Look for processes that could be simplified or could have steps removed.

Sometimes a small change in your copy will make big changes. For example, replacing the word “register now” with “continue” will remove the feel of doing work among the users. The text “Register now” gives the feel of hectic task ahead.

Final Thoughts

Planning promotions and preparing your inventory is critical for your success. Many well-prepared businesses start planning as early as in August or September and spend advertising dollars to get the maximum customer acquisition during the shopping days. Is it worth their effort?

Yes! Definitely!

The holiday season gets a lot of attention in the world of retail. This is your “make it or break it” season.  It is important to plan ahead of time and get it right. We wish you & your estore many successes on Cyber Monday & the following holiday season.

Feeling overwhelmed? If you’d like some help getting your estore optimized for mobile traffic or would like to jazz up your estore design, Web Ecommerce Pros is here to help you reach your goals on Cyber Monday and beyond- meet with us today.

Previous post Next post

Leave a comment