Summer isn’t even over — we can’t possibly be thinking about holiday shopping, can we? The answer is yes. And if you aren’t assessing how to prepare your business for one of the busiest days of the year, Black Friday, then you are already at a disadvantage. Now is the time to make sure your business is running smoothly, inventory is being planned to handle the holiday rush, tools to maximize customer conversion are being put in place and ways to extend the holiday sales spike beyond traditional U.S. peak holiday shopping times are being thought through.
Here are a couple key things to be on the lookout for and have in place for the holidays:
Develop a mobile-ready website.
No matter the size of your business, customers want to either browse or make purchases on their mobile devices. Mobile web traffic is now over 50 percent of all web traffic according to StatCounter, a firm that monitors global internet usage, so it is critical that a business’s website is mobile-optimized to ensure that customers can navigate, search, choose and pay for their selections quickly and easily. This is even more important during peak shopping times.
Consider what enables a customer to easily move from product selection to checkout. Keep the design simple and adaptable to small screens, use larger fonts and buttons, minimize data entry and — most importantly — remember to take time ahead of Black Friday to test it out! A number of platforms like Shopify, SquareSpace, and BigCommerce can help create an online and mobile store with powerful features and options, right out of the box.
Make purchasing simple — both online and offline.
If customers can’t buy it with a few clicks, they will easily take their business elsewhere and abandon their carts. Research shows that more than 45 percent of all cart abandonment…
