Black Friday is on 27 November this year and Cyber Monday is on 30 November. That leaves about a month to get your site ready for the busiest weeks of the year. Changes made now go live calmly. Changes made in the middle of the rush tend not to.
Here’s the checklist we run through with our own clients.
The checklist
1. Check your speed
A slow page costs sales, and extra visitors only slow it down further. Shrink large images, clear out plugins you no longer use, and test your key pages with a free tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights.
2. Try it on your phone
Most festive shopping happens on phones, often in a queue or on the sofa. Go through your site on your own phone as a customer would. Can you find the offer, tap the buttons and read the text without zooming?
3. Test checkout and forms yourself
Place a real test order, from adding an item to the basket through to the confirmation email. Then send yourself a message through every contact and booking form. A broken form is invisible until a customer gives up on it.
4. Get seasonal content ready early
Prepare banners, offer pages and gift guides now, and schedule them to go live and come down automatically. Make sure discount codes work, and that offers end when you say they do.
5. Update hours and delivery cut-offs
Add your Christmas opening hours, and your last order dates for delivery before Christmas. Put them somewhere obvious, such as a banner, the checkout page and your contact page. Remember to update your Google Business Profile too.
6. Back up, and pause big changes
Take a full backup before the rush. Then avoid major updates or redesigns during the busiest weeks, unless it’s an urgent security fix. December is not the time to find out a plugin update broke your checkout.
Want a hand?
If you’d rather someone else ran through this list, or you need a seasonal landing page built, now is the time to ask. Our diary fills up in November. Get in touch for a fixed quote, and we’ll get your site ready before the rush.