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We all know how crazy the Christmas holidays can be.
With many people scrambling to make their next purchase or even to avail of a service, this annual Christmas rush is a great opportunity for business owners to launch new products and ride on the influx of shoppers this season.
The demand to shop this season is not exclusive to brick and mortar stores, but moreover, as online shopping is now on the rise, the Christmas rush is also extended, if not even more, for online sellers and shopping websites.
For businesses with websites, it’s time to ask yourself: is my website fully equipped to handle the rush of people?
As an eCommerce website, it’s always better to be safe and to test your website and equip it with the proper infrastructure and security needs, and platform upgrades to keep the site running at full swing. These things are easier to fix before the problem sets in, as a preventive measure. With Christmas just around the corner, it’s vital to have a quick check to see if your site will be able to handle the rush of online shoppers this season, so we prepared a short and simple checklist to get you started.
1. Evaluate the Site
All eCommerce sites usually start out small until it grows with a substantial amount of following. But this is the time where you can ask yourself: Have I outgrown my site? Is it still relevant to me now?
It’s also important to evaluate your site and see if it’s at par or better than your competitors. Is it optimized for mobile shopping? What kind of look or feel does it give off? Is the layout clean and easy to navigate? Are there images? And if there are images, are they relevant and enticing to potential customers?
These questions can help give an assessment of the current state of your site and its place in the face of your competition so you know what measures you need to take to improve your website.
2. Check your Site Features
Shopping Cart
A major feature in eCommerce sites is the shopping cart where most of the transactions take place. It is important that the customer’s experience with the site is seamless or else the slight hassle might drive your customers away.
Here are some things to keep an eye out for:
·Is it working properly? (Can it display the items added to the cart? Can it show order status? Are there other extra features such as discount offers, images, featured reviews?)
·How is the experience? (Is it very easy to navigate for someone accessing it for the first time? Is the interface smooth or glitchy?)
Payment Options
Are the options you have accessible to as many people as possible? Or are the options only favorable to customers with only a certain credit card brand? These are some factors that can determine whether a customer will make the purchase.
In the Philippines, Cash on Delivery is one of the key options as not a lot of Filipinos have access to credit cards and not including that option can mean a huge loss from potential customers.
3. Check Your Site Performance
Can it handle traffic?
The demand for your site may be overlooked and because of that your website infrastructure may not be able to handle the influx of visitors in the site, resulting to a crash.
Scaling up your resources is important to be able to meet this demand. This can be provided to you by your hosting partner and it’s better to be prepared in anticipation of it than to just meet it unprepared.
Is it up to speed?
Much has been said about needing to capture the rising demands of users, one of them being able to access a website in seconds. Your website taking longer than 3 seconds to load can be detrimental to your leads and sales as it can be driving your customers away.
Testing your site to see how fast it loads is extremely vital especially if your site is graphics or video heavy, which can add to the loading time.
Is it mobile friendly?
Customers may be coming from a range of devices, so making sure that it is compatible to mobile users is very important to keep the experience the same for them as it would on a desktop. Not being able to cater to users on their mobile devices may be taking you farther away from your potential customers.
4. Keep Hackers Out
It’s not uncommon to hear the occasional story of a site being hacked exposing the data of customers who shared information to these cyber hackers.
While not everyone can understand everything that there is to know when it comes to hacking, it’s enough to scare customers away and lose their trust. This is where the importance of a secure socket layer or an SSL comes into the picture. SSL, which may be more familiar to people as the padlock symbol before the site’s URL, lets customers know their information is being encrypted before it is being transmitted. This helps build customer trust and adds to your reputation as a credible store.
At the end of the day both business owners and shoppers alike want a smooth sailing Christmas shopping experience. We’ve rounded up some of the basics in assessing your site, but you don’t have to go through it alone! If you think your website needs an upgrade and are eager to start before the Christmas rush sets in, let our team at iRepublic assist you!
We can help you build an affordable yet functional website within 30 days – just the perfect time to help you navigate through the holidays!
For inquiries, visit our Contact page or email us at info@irepublic.ph !