As the first couple leaves fall to the ground, ecommerce sellers begin to turn their thoughts to holiday sales. The early bird gets the worm when it comes to the holidays, and considering how crazy that sales period gets you want to make sure to be earlier than all the other birds. Otherwise, there won’t be too much of the worm left for you to grab up!
So instead of waiting until the last piece of Halloween candy is finally chewed up, you should think about redesigning your business now. This way you have more time to make adjustments and get your affairs in order when the madness begins.
But what should you change about your online store? While there are many things to look at, two are undoubtedly on top of the list. These should help you get on the path to success this holiday season.
Speed Up the Process
Customers are fickle even before the holidays begin. When the busy and crazy winter season picks up things get hectic for everyone involved. This means a normally picky person becomes that much pickier.
The more time you make someone spend buying your stuff the more chances you’re giving them to leave. For example, if your checkout system requires them to sign up, they’re probably going to take off for another website. They simply don’t have time or the energy to sign up for a website they may never see again.
So anything you can do to speed up the entire process is a good idea. This doesn’t just involve checkout, though – it also involves testing your website for anything slowing it down. Is there a page that has huge images, meaning that page loads 25% slower than everything else? You’re probably not going to sell as much stuff from that page, so fix it.
Make the process as painless as possible for all your customers and you’ll have a huge step up on the competition. Have someone independently run-through a purchase and give you notes.
Return Policy
Wait, returns? Why would you want to think about those before you’ve even sold anything? While it seems strange, going over your return policy and making some adjustments before the holidays actually has several positives to it.
For one, you’re saving yourself a ton of headaches later on. The last thing you want to happen is to have a problem with a product and tons of angry customers and no way to satisfy them. Going over this now means the process is streamlined and you can worry less about angry customers and more about the next thing they’ll buy from you.
On top of that, the more spelled out your return policy is the more confident your customers will be clicking the “Buy” button. They know if something is wrong you don’t have an issue resolving the problem. If you keep everything a mystery, they might hesitate before purchasing anything or just go somewhere else.
Remember, everyone is too busy for any mess or shenanigans during this time! Do everything you can to make their lives easier and you might just find yourself having a very happy holidays this year.