Is Your Website Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

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Two of the most significant online shopping days of the year are Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2020, Black Friday resulted in over $9 billion in sales in the U.S. alone. To make the most of these holidays, it’s crucial that your online experience is flawless. Online shoppers have high expectations, and if you fail to meet them, they’ll take their business elsewhere.

To ensure your website is ready for this year’s holiday shopping season, here are some ways to prepare.

Create a Dedicated Landing Page

Build a dedicated landing page for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This way, you don’t have to rework your homepage. Direct your social media followers and newsletter subscribers to a festive landing page, and they can use this as a gateway to make a purchase.

Streamline the Checkout Process

Take an objective look at your checkout process. Customers want things to be quick and easy, so make sure that your checkout process is exactly this. You can do this by offering fast payment options, collecting limited information from customers and offering the option to create an account.

Shorten Page Load Times

The slower your site loads, the more likely people are to leave. Make sure to test your website across devices and speed up page load times by reducing the size of images, graphics and videos. Keep in mind that more people will be visiting your site than usual, so it’s important that it can handle the added traffic.

Fix Common Errors

This tool from Google gives a quick overview of what you should fix on your website. Do this before Black Friday so that you can address minor problems and improve the performance of your site. Some of the fixes include removing unnecessary code, compressing your site and making SEO improvements.

Track Abandoned Shopping Carts

With more people shopping and adding products to their cart, you’re going to see an increase in shopping cart abandonment. But there are ways to get some of these shoppers to follow through with their purchase. Abandoned cart tracking and follow-up emails work well, especially when you combine them with a coupon or incentive.

To make sure your website is ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, test your site on multiple devices, run the appropriate Google tests and follow up with your web developer. You want to make sure that your site can handle the flux of customers that will be coming your way for the 2021 holiday shopping season!