Our Top 5 Tips for Xmas Success

Brick technology’s Expert Workshops are regularly offered free of charge to all of our clients. The most recent focused on gearing up your website for Christmas and was a great success - we would like to thank all those who attended and shared their ideas. From these, we have created our Top 5 Tips for Online Success this Christmas 2014!

1 - Be Mobile-Friendly

This, without question, makes the top spot on our list. We recently reported how the crucial tipping-point had been reached between desktop and mobile internet users, with the latter outnumbering the former for the first time ever. The expected result, that every percentage regarding the mobile website user (user numbers, predicted trends, e-commerce sales, numbers of internet-capable devices in existence and more) will continue to rise, is being proved correct at an unimaginable scale.

Research consistently shows that a person buying products or services on the internet is likely to use both a desktop and mobile version of a website when making a purchase; offering a visitor the ability to use both devices and websites seamlessly is no longer an option but a requirement. Visitors will be instantly put off by the dated look a desktop website has on a mobile device! Your website needs to be responsive and adaptive, detecting the device it is displayed from and displaying accordingly and optimally.

Internet-capable mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets once again feature, though this time higher than ever, on Christmas-present lists this year. Is your website ready for this new potential market of buyers?

2 - Make your Visitors Feel Festive

The landing page, or homepage, of your website, the page a visitor will often first see, is your shop window. Like a physical shop window, it is designed to excite the eye, enticing passers-by to stop and look in more detail where your products and services are then revealed. Give yours a good cleanout for Christmas!

On the homepage, make sure you are saying everything you want to say about your company in as brief yet informative way as possible. This should always be changing to keep the website feeling fresh and contemporary to repeat visitors - these are often your most valuable! Use this space to get your special offers up-to-date for Christmas - what products do you want to sell and how can you give them a Christmas flavour?

Make sure your visitors feel festive, a website that looks the same in December as in July doesn’t keep visitors interested enough to want to buy. Attention spans can be short - make sure you hold your audience with a festive feel this Christmas.

3 - Easy does it!

Shopping online for Christmas gifts has increased every year since it has been possible, in both desktop and mobile website terms. What customers are looking for is an easy, stress-free alternative to traditional Christmas shopping so make sure your website is fluid, functional and intuitive, allowing visitors to navigate their way through your products and services using powerful search-and-refine facilities.

Use website analytics to find out how your visitors are behaving. If there are drop-outs, where are they happening? The entire browsing and buying process could be made simpler with the right expertise, enhancing basket conversion numbers.

While you’re busy converting baskets, try and increase the average price of each basket! Up-selling and cross-selling techniques (such as a ‘you may also like’ feature, customer reviews, links to other popular items, BOGOF) work brilliantly well at Christmas time, when everyone is trying to get the most product for the least price.

4 - Where’s My Gift?!

Final Christmas posting dates are just that - final. Making sure your customers know the details of your shipping over the festive period is an essential courtesy and these should be made as clear as possible to avoid disappointment. If you say you can deliver when you can’t, you are likely to lose that customer for ever. Would you buy again from a company who caused tears, tempers and tantrums around the Christmas Dinner table?!

Christmas is an ideal time to offer free or reduced shipping costs to your customers. This could be a great way to create a higher average basket price if, for example, you offered free shipping on all orders over £50 in value. Be sure to keep it festive while encouraging demand by issuing promo codes to particular customers (for example, those who subscribe to your newsletter for Christmas and beyond). Be creative!

5 -  The Gift that Keeps on Giving

There will be the annual spike in m-commerce and e-commerce websites visitor numbers and the sales they generate - this is an ideal time to capture a new market. More browsing and searching will be going on than ever before, allowing new websites to be found by potential buyers - catch and hold their attention now!

Internet marketing is essential and includes a vast range of activities from the publishing of news articles to social media integration. Don’t leave any avenue untried when doing business online this Christmas - try email campaigns, newsletters, live feeds, pay-per-click campaigns, online Christmas cards and more!

The new customers you gain over the Christmas period can, if consistently offered a dynamic, contemporary service this time, be retained for many years to come. Do not miss out on this opportunity.