The holidays are here! Which means shopping is at a high, and black Friday is right around the corner. Online shopping (especially on mobile) has increased dramatically over the years–it’s so much easier than fearing you’ll be crushed while in line at a store. But that means more traffic will be heading to your website. Here are a few tips to get your website shopping ready (and no crashing!).
- Traffic Management
- Contact your Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider to ensure they have planned for the increased traffic. If you don’t utilize CDN, contact your hosting provider to let them know traffic will increase. Make sure this is done before Black Friday to avoid any issues.
- Image Size
- The three second rule: If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you will lose potential customers. The best way to avoid this is to ensure your images are sized properly. If you have a high-resolution image that is only sized smaller, your website will try to load the full image, therefore delaying, and possibly crashing, your site. Be sure to appropriately size images on your entire site.
- Remove third party scripts
- Scripts on your website from a service that you’re no longer using takes away from your load speed on your site. Talk to your IT team to remove unnecessary scripts.
- Security and Trust
- Shopping online often is risky for customers, and they want to ensure their information is safe. Noticeably display your security information, letting the customer know that your site is safe. It will create a better checkout process (and increase traffic).
- Return Policy
- Make sure this is clear and easy to find. Give the piece of mind that if they need to return the product, they can easily.
- Enable Secure Sockets Layer
- SSL technology encrypts the connection between your site and your customer’s browser. This confirms that the visitor’s personal information remains private throughout the checkout process.
- SEO
- Optimize for specific keywords on your homepage and key product pages. According to Hubspot, focus on including them in: titles, descriptions, headings, body content, alt text, and URLs to make searching for, and finding, your site easy.
Following these seven last minute tips will help your website handle the influx of traffic for this popular day. Have a great holiday!
Source: Hubspot: “Is Your Website Ready for Black Friday? 7 Last-Minute Tips to Prepare.” Jeffrey Vocell. Nov. 17, 2015.
Image Source: Shopping Now.
