The holidays are just around the corner and internet traffic is expected to hit its peak right about now.
How to Prepare Your WordPress Website for the Holidays
The bottom line is that the ease of shopping online is drawing more and more people to e-commerce websites. So how do you ensure that your website is ready for all that traffic? Here are some ways to prepare your WordPress site for the holidays:
- Speed things up — One thing that you want to do is make sure that your website is running at optimum speed. Your traffic is going to increase and you don’t want people running off to your competitors because your site is loading too slowly. You may want to check your plugins before the holidays to see if any of them are slowing down your site speed. Also, you can use Google’s Page-Speed Insight tool to check the speed of your website.
- Talk to your hosting service — While we are talking about site speed, you may want to talk to your hosting service provider to see if they have any suggestions about how to speed up your website and to ensure that they are ready to help with the traffic spikes. This may also be the year that you decide to upgrade to a faster server plan that can keep you running smoothly during the busiest month. If you run a WordPress website, consider WordPress Hosting to power your online home.
- Add a countdown timer — One thing that can be an interesting additional banner or widget on your website is a countdown clock. Many people may browse a website and look at items they want to buy, only to postpone this until later. Then, when crunch time hits and the time is almost out, they may not necessarily come back to your site. So instead, encourage them to buy now with a countdown timer reminding them just how many days they have left to finish their shopping.
- Have an exit intent strategy — Another tactic that can prevent customers from leaving without making a purchase is an “exit intent” strategy. This is a pop-up that registers when someone is leaving your site and then offers them a well-timed incentive offer to encourage them to make a purchase.
- Create an email strategy — What about someone who looks at several items before abandoning them and logging off? You can instead create a marketing strategy that sends reminder emails to your customers encouraging them to treat themselves to the items that they were looking at. This kind of “reminder” email has great potential, especially when coupled with a discount offer connected to the viewed items.
- Decorate Your Site — There are a lot of options to help spruce up your website for the holidays. WordPress has a plethora of Christmas themes that feature holiday images, high-quality photographs, custom color palettes, and special headers and graphics. Some of the holiday themes can even be small and subtle, such as adding a simple holiday decoration image to your business logo and banner.
- Personalize your Site — Another way to help dress up your website is by adding a pop-up window that has a special holiday message from you. Think of this as a digital version of a Christmas card where you can reach out directly to your audience and let them know that they are appreciated. It’s that type of special touch that will bring them back later on.
This holiday, it’s essential that you get your website ready for the extra traffic that you hope to attract. By working on optimizing your website and decorating it with special themes and messages, you can ensure that you are ready for business.
