How To Optimize Your Ecommerce Site For Holiday Traffic 

Your website’s traffic is going to spike around the holidays. The best way to capitalize on all of this traffic is to invest in conversion rate optimization. 
October 25, 2022
by
Jon MacDonald
TheGood_WebsiteConversion

The holiday season is around the corner and your campaigns are set up to successfully drive traffic to your website. 

So, what’s next on your to-do list?

It’s time to optimize your user experience to turn more of those holiday website visitors into buyers. 

Your potential ROI on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Your website’s traffic is going to spike around the holidays. 

The best way to capitalize on all of this traffic is to invest in conversion rate optimization. 

But, being so close to the holiday season, this CRO is less about testing and more about maximizing the opportunity with a series of small website optimizations that will lead to big results. 

Take this example. Here you can see what just a 0.25% improvement can mean during a high-traffic period like the holidays. 

If you want to calculate your potential ROI from conversion rate optimization, check out The Good's ROI calculator

Win The Holidays With These Key Website Optimizations

For the quickest impact before Black Friday & Cyber Monday, focus on the purchase funnel and your offer. Let’s explore some "obvious wins" or "low-hanging fruit" that anyone can benefit from.

1. Improve The Homepage Experience

Your homepage is probably the most visited page on your site. That means it’s probably the area where you stand to gain the most by making small, but significant improvements.

As a starting point, perform a 5-second test on your site. 

Ask a customer or friend (who doesn’t know too much about your business) to look at your homepage for 5-seconds and then answer the following questions.

  • Do I know who owns the site I just landed on and does it match my expectations coming from a search result or advertisement?
  • Do I understand what kinds of products/services they sell?
  • Do I understand who their products/services are for and is it easy to determine if I’m in that market or not?

If they can’t answer yes to all of the questions in the first 5-seconds of visiting your website, what tweaks can you make so that they can? 

Now take a look at the navigation. Here you should focus only on commercial links. A good rule of thumb is to include only 3-5 website navigation links. Keep these simple and clear, especially through the holidays. 

You can (and probably should) offer additional links as sub-navigation items. For example, in the primary navigation, you may offer women’s apparel while your dropdown divides those into categories like dresses, pants, etc. Move on once the highest level of your navigation has less than 5 main items.

Next, review your homepage to audit calls to action. Your clicks will go up if you specify the call to action based on what your homepage hero section features. 

For example, use “Shop XX Product” instead of “Shop All.” Another option is a low-commitment CTA like “Learn More” to encourage users to continue their journey through the website. 

The final step on the homepage is to remove all unnecessary distractions. 

Is the website element that is most important to your business the first thing that visitors notice? Eliminate other distracting elements like pop-ups, live chat widgets, and scrolling carousels for the best user experience that converts.

2. Optimize Your Product Page

Now that your homepage is ready for Black Friday & Cyber Monday, let’s check your product page. 

On the product page, we’re trying to earn the business of the customer, and every decision we make on this page can make the difference between an add-to-cart or a bounce.

Copy

Ensure language is customer-focused. Does your website speak to the customers or your staff? I hope that you answer this with “the customers of course!”

To craft copy that converts, you must follow a logical flow that makes your visitors believe what they have to believe in order to buy. Here are some of the fundamental elements of high-converting product page copy:

  • A unique selling proposition (USP). Tell your prospects why your product is unique and different from the competition. It will instantly make you stand out above the rest.
  • A well-defined target customer. Determine who’s the kind of person that buys from you regularly. What do they do? What do they think? Your copy won’t be as effective if it doesn’t hit their particularities.
  • Addresses your customer’s objections. Assemble all the objections that your potential customers might have and answer them in your copy. FAQs are great options as well. 
  • Storytelling. If your products have an interesting background, don’t hesitate to include their story in your product pages. Stories add emotional value that no other copywriting formula could achieve otherwise.
  • A strong call-to-action (CTA). You can tweak your CTA button with something more impactful than “add to cart”—especially when you sell more sophisticated products.

Visuals 

Words can only say so much. And this is where visuals play a crucial role.

Since shoppers can’t touch the products when browsing your website, your only option is to display high-quality images and videos.

It can be overwhelming to optimize your visuals for conversions. So here are some of the most predominant elements of a good page design:

  • A branded design that resembles your brand’s values and core identity.
  • High-quality product images showcasing its most essential features and qualities.
  • Engaging illustrations and animations that put your product in motion.
  • Video demonstrations of how your product works and how to use it.
  • A clean UI that doesn’t overwhelm the prospect and makes purchasing as easy as possible.

In short: tell with visuals what you can’t say with words. A high-quality page will mean high-quality products for your prospects.

Social proof

Take a look through the product page to confirm you’re building trust with your customers through social proof. This is crucial. 

Do you know product reviews and customer testimonials impact the purchase decision of nearly 95% of online shoppers?

Social proof on your product page gives customers a sense of security and builds their trust in your brand.

Two of the most effective elements of social proof are customer feedback and verified purchases. Whenever possible, include real names, faces, and brands to make it tangible.

Building a trustworthy relationship with your prospects is a surefire way to improve your overall customer’s lifetime value—and increase your conversions.

3. Craft a Black Friday & Cyber Monday Offer That Adds Value

Now that we’ve covered some key optimizations for your site, let’s touch on one of the more important parts of BFCM.

What is your promotion or offer to customers? 

This brings me to an age-old debate: Discounting vs Promotions. Discounting leads with price. Promotions lead with the value of your product.

The psychological difference means a big difference for your brand and revenue.

So, instead of discounting this holiday season, why not lead with value and try one of these offers? 

  • Free gift with purchase
  • Buy one, get one free
  • Free shipping & returns

For more ideas, check out this comprehensive guide: The Top Ecommerce Sales Strategies (Including How To Increase Sales Without Discounting)

Convert more visitors into buyers this holiday season

This is what you can do NOW to make sure you have the best holiday season ever.

First, audit your key pages and make a prioritized to-do list. 

Next, review your offer. Establish a compelling incentive that will convert more visitors into buyers.

Finally, implement those changes to key web pages in anticipation of the holidays - ideally before Black Friday & Cyber Monday. 

Want an expert set of eyes to review your site? Tydo’s community is eligible for a free landing page teardown, courtesy of The Good. 

If you would like additional guidance from expert conversion optimization specialists, get in touch

Checkout our roundup to learn:
  • What to pledge
  • How to improve
  • Which tools will set you up for success

Dale Wilson

Partnerships Manager,
adQuadrant
Resolution

I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.

Tip

This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.

Tool

It's an honest tie between Gorgias and Klaviyo. Both tools have amazing plans for 2023 and beyond, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact both have on their clients this year.

Shawn Khemsurov

Co-founder,
Electric Eye
Resolution

We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.

Tip

Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.

Tool

Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.

Katelyn Glass

Founder and CEO,
Fifty Six
Resolution

Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.

Tip

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.

Tool

OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.

Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!

Tom Rees

Founder,
WIRO
Resolution

Stop allocating budgets to low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move the needle on conversion. Think about what’s really going to improve your CX and the return of undertaking different initiatives—not just on what’s top on your list of bugbears on the site!

Tip

One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!

Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.

Tool

Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.

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Jimmy Aristizabal

Partnership Manager,
TalentPop
Resolution

33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.

Tip

The benefits of elevating your customer experience:

  • 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
  • 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
  • 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
  • 72% of customers share positive experiences with 6 or more individuals
Tool

Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.

Jessica Grossman

Founder and CEO,
In Social
Resolution

Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!

Tip

Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!

Tool

I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉

Rikin Diwan

Chief Growth Officer,
soona
Resolution

Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.

Tip

A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.

At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.

Tool

Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!

Shayna Silvers

Director of Marketing Strategy,
Absolute Web
Resolution

Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.

Tip

Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.

Tool

Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.

Wes Buckwalter

Resolution

Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.

Tip

When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.

Tool

Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!

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Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.

Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.

Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.

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Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.

See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.

Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.

Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.

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