It’s never too early or too late to start increasing your business visibility online.
As we are getting closer to the most wonderful time of the year and heading towards 2024 start maximising sales potential from your website. Whether you are an e-commerce business or a brick-and-mortar shop how well you prepare your strategy for the near year will enable you to boost your business earnings.
When it comes to making your business highly visible online, there is only one strategy, that is continuous optimisation. Just as you would make your brick-and-mortar shopfront attractive for your customers, your online storefronts must also be ready and optimised to align your website content to your customer journey.
How visible is your storefront online?
To that end, Tamara Forrest-Smith put together 18 ideas for your holiday and 2024 optimisation strategy.
In this article:
This week I have been spending time optimising our brick-and-mortar business website, and e-commerce website for the Christmas / New Year, as well as optimising them for 2024. I thought I would share with you these 18 ideas I used to optimise both websites.
1. Are you offering a holiday promotion? Make sure you can display it on your product or service page.
2. Want to encourage sales right away? Create urgency with countdown banners on your website.
3. Make purchases smoother by simplifying payment options.
4. Selling products? Highlight with full-size image galleries.
5. Simplify your mobile experience. Do you need to reduce the clutter above the fold?
6. Increase average order value by adding intuitive and easy-to-add product functions. For example, at the checkout, add recommended products, or offer a discount where it matters.
7. Highlight social proof.
8. Add seasonal pop-ups to increase booking, reservations, or sales.
9. Constantly align your content to the customer journey. Think about the journey customers are going through and align your website products, content, and service to their search journey.
You need inspiration to start, but most importantly you need consistency to keep you going.
10. Eliminate the guesswork by displaying prices next to your products.
11. Boost visibility by utilising the search bar and making it prominent.
12. Review and reorganise the navigation bar to make it more user-friendly.
13. Highlight important features such as Free postage, Free return, Easy click, and pick-up options.
14. Test different images between lifestyle and still images.
15. Personalise website messages to increase the chances of returning visitors and buyers.
16. Make the account sign-up pathway easy to follow.
17. Do you need to convert website traffic into footfall traffic to your store? Maximise the store locator feature on your website.
18. Above all, keep Testing, keep tracking, and keep tweaking. What may work on one website, may not work on another. You can only tell how well your website is converting if you keep on tracking and testing.
Remember, that creating a solid holiday strategy will not only boost your income during the holiday period but will solidify your visibility and the ability to attract more visitors to your store, shop, e-commerce website in the next year as well.
Sometimes to stand out from the crowd you need inspiration to start, but most importantly you need consistency to keep you going, as it is the consistency that creates the magic. These ideas above are just a starting point. The way to keep up with the increasing competition and buyers' purchase journey is to keep on testing, reviewing, and acting on your findings.
So start by jazzing up your website and creating the ultimate online experience for your visitors.
To visibility
Tamara Forrest-Smith
The Thinking Marketer