Preparing Your Online Store for the 2023 Holiday Season Starts Now
As an ecommerce merchant, you know that holiday sales can make or break your year. And with more shoppers starting their holiday shopping earlier than ever, the clock is ticking to prepare your site for the imminent traffic surge.
From addressing critical site errors to implementing effective upsell strategies, here are four actions you can take right now to help your online business break holiday sales records in 2023.
1. Review Google Search Console to Improve SEO and UX
Getting more holiday sales begins with one critical factor: being visible in search. Technical SEO has never been more important for ecommerce merchants, with Google and other search engines analyzing every aspect of your site to determine its quality and relevance for the end user. Google outlines several best practices to help online stores stay ahead.
Google Search Console is a free service that helps website owners monitor and optimize their sites for search results and user experience. It offers data on search performance, indexing status, and potential issues like crawling errors or mobile usability problems. Site owners can also submit sitemaps or request the removal of specific content from search results.
Once you’ve created an account and connected your domain with Google Search Console, you can start accessing the platform’s suite of tools.
Ecommerce merchants will want to check the “Merchant Listings” and “Product Snippets” sections of the Search Console report, which identify structure data issues for pages that sell products, aggregate product data from multiple sites, or share product review information.
Follow these steps to access Search Console reports:
- Log into Google Search Console.
- Go to “Product Snippets” and “Merchant Listings” on the sidebar.
- Identify any errors.
- Book a free consultation with us to review and address these errors.
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2. Perform a Comprehensive Site Audit to Find and Fix Critical Errors
In addition to Google Search Console, there are a number of tools available to help you optimize your site for high-traffic periods. Tools including Ahrefs, SEMrush, WooRank, BrokenLinkCheck.com will help you audit the overall health of your website and flag any technical issues that could negatively impact your User Experience and SEO.
There are several common issues often overlooked that can seriously affect your rankings, including:
- Broken Internal Links: Broken links are serious roadblocks for Google’s bots and your site visitors. Confirm that every link on your site directs users to an active, relevant destination.
- 301 Redirect Chains and Loops: A 301 signals a permanent “re-routing” from one URL to another. While 301 redirects can be necessary for larger or older sites, excessive usage can harm page speed, rankings, and credibility. Strive for a balanced approach to maintain optimal website performance.
- Missing H1 Tags: The H1 tag, commonly referred to as the main header, plays a significant role in helping Google bots (and other search engine crawlers) understand the content of a page. Think of h1 tags as news headlines that guide search engines—without them, achieving desired rankings becomes challenging.
- Missing Meta Content: Meta content includes the page titles and brief descriptions seen in Google search results. Each page should feature meta content that’s an appropriate length (under 160 characters) and accurately convey what the page is about.
- Duplicate Meta Content: Replicating meta content across multiple pages could negatively impact conversion rates and rankings. Focus on crafting distinct meta content for each page.
3. Test and Optimize Page Load Speed and Core Web Vitals
Swift page load speed is paramount for holiday surges in site traffic, as slow load times can prompt visitors to bounce to faster-loading alternatives.
A key component of Google Search Console is Core Web Vitals, which assesses page load performance, interactivity, and visual stability—three key metrics Google uses to measure a site’s user experience. Regularly auditing your Core Web Vitals will help you monitor performance, reduce errors, and secure a favorable ranking in search results—helping you improve business results for your BigCommerce store.
Find page load errors by taking these steps:
- Log into Google Search Console.
- Go to “Page Experience” on the sidebar.
- Identify any failed URLs you have in the Core Web Vitals report.
- Book a complimentary consultation with us to review and address these errors.
So what makes pages lag? Excess or uncompressed code, oversized images, too many redirects—these are just a few of the common problems that hinder page speed but are difficult for sellers to identify and tackle on their own.
Get started with a complimentary site performance audit to assess your page load speed. With your approval, our BigCommerce experts will resolve these issues to speed up your website as a whole.
Get a Complimentary Site Performance Audit
Get a live consultation on the technical factors impacting your website's speed and performance.
4. Leverage BigCommerce Add-ons to Enhance UX and Upsell Customers
Maximizing conversions and Average Order Value during the holidays doesn’t happen by chance. The most successful ecommerce brands deliberately apply targeted strategies and functionality to turn browsers into more profitable customers.
IntuitSolutions offers a wide range of add-ons designed to drastically improve the user experience and effectively upsell and cross-sell customers.
Here are our top recommended add-ons to implement now:
- Frequently Bought Together: Show your customers the most “frequently bought together” items based off of the product they are currently viewing.
- Add To Cart Upsell: Increase Average Order Value by adding a cross-sell carousel to the Add to Cart confirmation popup, offering customers a selection of related products they may want.
- Cart Page Upsell: Persuade your customers one last time before they check out by displaying a carousel with additional items they may like right on the cart page.
- Countdown Timer For Same Day Shipping: Give your shoppers a real-time countdown timer for how much time is left to receive same day shipping.
- Promotional Images On Category Page: Include a promotional image or call to action image on your category pages amongst your products.
- Swatch Options On Category Page: Easily show your shoppers the additional colors available for your products without having to navigate away from the current category page.
- Product Option Tooltips: Improve user experience and reduce customer service inquiries with instructional text in Product Option labels, using hover tooltips or on-page text.
- Custom Product Live Preview: Changing color? Adding a monogram? Update your product photo in live time to display these changes based on the product options chosen.
Don't Leave Your Holiday Success to Chance. Call Our BigCommerce Experts Today!
Your online store is more than a website—it’s your 24/7 sales engine. Don’t leave its optimization to chance. Give it the expert attention it deserves to make it the most profitable holiday season yet.
Our BigCommerce developers are seasoned platform experts ready to help you attract and convert holiday traffic with a technically-sound, better-performing online store.
Contact us or give us a call at 1-866-901-4650 today!
