Customers turn to online shopping now more than ever before for a multitude of reasons: speed, efficiency, special online-only promotions — and that doesn’t even include popular holiday sales (hello, Cyber Monday!). Your company and your website should be prepared to take full advantage of this trend during the holiday season. There’s no better time than right now (before the holiday sales really go full-throttle) to take inventory of your website’s capabilities and performance.

Are your customers easily finding your business online? Once they do find you, will their shopping experience be seamless and user-friendly? Do you even know where to start to make sure that your customers have no issue shopping for what they need? No worries — we’ve got some great tips below to help improve your site and maximize your holiday sales potential.

Use Customer Analytics 

One of the most crucial steps in making changes to optimize your sales: understand your customer. You need to know what they’re shopping for, where and how they’re shopping, what kind of customer experience they seek, and what kind of advertising they are responding to (if any).

One way that you can do this is by understanding where your customers are finding your online business. For example, if most customers are visiting your website from a social media platform, that can be an opportunity to post more social media content during the holiday season or include a bigger ad spend to drive traffic. If your audience is visiting your website from a specific blog, it may be worth considering a partnership with that blog or to create similar content yourself. 

Simplify Your Site’s Customer Experience  

Customers do not like their shopping experience to be interrupted — especially online. Any bumps in the road can increase the chances of the customer abandoning the site that they’re shopping on, including their intended purchase. So, ensure your website flows well and provides an efficient, seamless customer experience. Simplifying every step between loading the home page and product pages to checking out gives the customer what they want with no hassle and all smiles. 

Focus on Exemplary Customer Service  

Even if you do everything you can to smooth over tense situations with upset customers, there are still bound to be issues that arise — especially during the stressful, busy holiday season. Before the holiday rush, develop a plan with your team on how to handle these instances and keep the customer on track toward making a purchase. Focusing on making sure that your customer service is the best it can possibly be can help keep the customer happy and loyal. For more tips on how to handle angry customers during the holidays in a positive way, check out our blog here!

Work on Your SEO  

In a mall or brick-and-mortar store, your physical presence makes you instantly visible — customers can see your storefront, displays, etc. For obvious reasons, you are not as visible online. Applying effective SEO (Site Engine Optimization) practices is what will draw your customers to your website. Customers will use certain words or phrases to search for businesses or products like yours when browsing online. Heavily incorporating these keywords or phrases within your site will help increase website traffic and lead to more sales.

 Use High-Quality Product Photos 

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You eat with your eyes first”? Whether it’s a meal at a restaurant or the product photos you display on your website, presentation is everything. It’s the key to nailing a customer’s first impression of your product, enticing them to buy it, and heavily influencing their overall customer experience. Don’t spare the opportunity to show off your product in a way that tells the customers why they need it now.

Responsive Design 

With the ability to access the web, social media, mobile ads and even their preferred payment options (via apps or virtual wallets) on mobile devices, more customers are making purchases from their smartphones more than ever before. Isn’t it exciting to realize that when a customer sees your product somewhere just in their daily life, they could go to your website and choose to purchase your product right then and there?

Developing your website by leveraging responsive design is the key to making sure customers have the same ease in shopping on your site from their phone as they would from a computer. For instance, you don’t want a customer seeing images that look normal on their computer, but huge and distorted on their phone. The customer experience may need to flow differently according to the device being used. And you obviously have less space on a smartphone screen to help the customer navigate their way through your site. Responsive design allows your site to conform to the screen size, platform and orientation of whatever device your customer is using at that moment to browse or shop on your site. The goal should always be to make the customer experience with your business a seamless one.

Utilize Social Media 

Social shopping has also increased in the last few years. Most platforms are now linking directly to stores and providing a smooth experience for the customer in that space as well. If you want to grow sales online, social media is one place to start. Look to utilize tools such as Instagram’s selling feature or linking directly to your shop on a social media ad. This will give customers yet another easy path to your product as they browse through their favorite social sites — and eventually, they may see your company’s ads appear in their feeds more frequently.

Showcase Customer Reviews 

We can’t stress this enough: Because word-of-mouth is your greatest sales tool, peer reviews can make or break a customer’s decision to purchase your product. Customer reviews are a vital piece of data for your business, so making them easy to find on your website helps to keep the customer on the page, engaged and ready to buy.

Don’t be shy about adding reviews to your site so that your customers can “research” the product (i.e., read the reviews) without having to leave the page. This not only simplifies the overall experience for your current shopper, but the customers who bought your product and took the time to leave a review will feel heard and have a direct connection to your brand.

Connect with Customers through Email 

Email is a great way to connect your existing customers directly to the specific products, sales or other exciting opportunities you want to tell them about. Then, simply linking to those specific products or opportunities in the email to your website, once again, simplifies that customer experience. Creating a sales pathway within emails allows your customer to see that link and increases the odds that they’ll buy your product.

Offer Your Customers the Best Gift of All: Acima Leasing 

The holidays can be stressful both emotionally and financially — for customers, retail workers and businesses alike. For many consumers who are unbanked, underbanked or simply struggling to afford holiday gifts for their families, it’s even more nerve-wracking. Why not let Acima help you help these customers during the holiday season and beyond, and thereby reduce that stress while giving you a chance to increase your site traffic and sales?

When you offer Acima’s lease-to-own solution* — which provides an alternative to financing — you help your customers get the gifts on their list and have the happy holidays they deserve. It’s easy to get started, even during the holiday rush! You not only give your business an opportunity to make more sales, but you potentially gain an untapped audience that will hopefully become loyal customers all year long.