May 3, 2023
The holiday season is the busiest time for WooCommerce store owners. With the surge in online shopping during the holiday season, preparing your WooCommerce store in advance is crucial to ensure a seamless shopping experience for your customers.
In this article, I will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to prepare your WooCommerce store for holiday sales. From enhancing user experience and optimizing website performance to improving customer support and boosting sales, I will share proven strategies that can help you increase your sales and maximize profits.
Whether you’re an experienced WooCommerce store owner or starting a new WooCommerce store, this article is a must-read for you if you want to make the most of the holiday shopping season.
So, let’s get started.
How to prepare WooCommerce store for holiday sales?
To kick off your preparations for the holiday season, consider implementing the following strategies that can help you optimize your WooCommerce store for increased sales and revenue.
Enable new order notification
Order fulfillment is another challenge faced by WooCommerce store owners during the holiday season. Order fulfillment delay leads to shipping delays. Shipping delays lead to unsatisfied customers. Even sometimes, customers cancel orders due to the shipping delay.
You must process orders instantly after receiving them to fulfill your WooCommerce store’s orders quickly. Sometimes store owners delay processing the orders, leading to shipment delays. That’s why store owners must process orders quickly after getting new orders.
You can enable new order notifications for your WooComerce store to avoid delays in order processing. When consumers place a new order, you will get a notification alert on your computer.
The best way to enable new order notification alerts on your WooCommerce store is by using a plugin. There are some dedicated plugins for enabling new order notifications for the WooCommerce store.
You can use the Order notification for WooCommerce plugin. It allows you to set rules for new order notifications, set alert tones, and more. The best thing about this plugin is you don’t need to refresh your store to check for new orders. It automatically refreshes and checks for new orders.
Use countdown timer
The countdown timer is a great tactic for increasing sales in your WooCommerce store, as it can significantly improve your store’s conversion rate.
During holiday seasons like Black Friday, using countdown timers can help you make the most of the season.
There are several ways to use countdown timers in your store. You can use a universal countdown timer that informs customers of holiday offers available for a specific period in your WooCommerce store.
Additionally, you can add a countdown timer to the product page to create a sense of urgency among your customers. For instance, you can inform them that if they order the product within an hour, it will be delivered by tomorrow.
Moreover, you can use a countdown timer in the cart section to display how long the product will remain in the cart. By doing so, customers will feel a sense of urgency to complete the purchase before the timer runs out. This simple technique can significantly increase the chances of converting a visitor into a customer.
To use countdown timers in your WooCommerce store, you can use the Open Close WooCommerce Store plugin. This plugin is an excellent tool for displaying countdown timers and scheduling your WooCommerce store.
Give your WooCommerce store a festive look
You may have heard the saying that the first impression is the last impression. This is especially true for eCommerce stores, where failing to make a good first impression can result in lost sales.
To increase your WooCommerce store’s sales, it’s important to give your customers a great first impression. One effective way to do this is by redesigning your store to match the holiday event.
Creating holiday-themed designs for your website can be a great way to capture the attention of your customers and increase their engagement with your store. You can create unique designs for different holidays and use them during the corresponding sales periods.
There are several WordPress holiday themes available that you can use for your WooCommerce store. These themes are specifically designed for events such as Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and more, allowing you to choose a theme that matches your event.
To give your WooCommerce store a complete holiday event look, you can also redesign your store’s header and footer. Additionally, you can design holiday-themed banners to provide a delightful user experience for your customers. By creating a unique and engaging holiday design, you can increase the chances of customers making a purchase from your store.
Create a sense of urgency for increasing sales
Today’s world is full of distractions. If your customers don’t buy quickly from your store after visiting, chances are high that they will be distracted by something and finally forget to buy the product. As a result, your store will lose sales and revenue.
Here, a sense of urgency comes into the game. Sense of urgency is a popular marketing technique many businesses use daily. It can increase your sales by 332%. And the interesting fact about this marketing strategy is anyone can use it to increase their sales.
Sense of urgency marketing strategy creates a sense of urgency among consumers so they buy quickly without delay.
You can follow some proven tactics to implement a sense of urgency in your WooCommerce store.
The best way to use the sense of urgency is by setting deadlines for sales. For example, you can offer discounts and set a deadline for that. In addition, you can offer discount codes and set deadlines for that. Moreover, you can promote the date and time when sales will end.
Another great way to use the sense of urgency is by showing that the current price will increase after a certain period. For example, you can show that the current price will increase after today, and it will force consumers to buy the product today.
Improve WooCommerce store loading speed
Website loading speed is crucial for conversion. As website load time increases, the rate of website conversions drops alarmingly. In fact, for every additional second of load time, there is a decrease of 4.42% in website conversion rate.
Loading speed is more important for WooCommerce stores as it directly impacts sales and revenue. 70% of online shoppers acknowledge its influence on their purchasing decisions.
Here the question comes what is the ideal loading time for a WooCommerce store?
Load times between 0-4 second is considered ideal. However, the highest eCommerce conversion rates occur within the 0-2 second load time range.
You can use sites like Pingdom and Google page insight to test your WooCommerce store loading speed. If your WooCommerce store loading speed is more than 5 seconds, then you must optimize your store loading speed.
To optimize your WooCommerce loading speed, you can choose a fast hosting provider. In addition, you can use a fast and minimal theme for your store. Here are some more effective ways to optimize your store loading speed;
- Try to use fewer plugins, as they use more resources and slow down the store
- Ensure that your plugins and theme are up to date
- Compress images
- Use lazy loading for images
- Use a CDN
- Install a caching plugin
- Increase memory limit
Ensure that your WooCommerce store can cope with a certain increase of visitors
During holiday seasons, server overload can cause a significant negative impact on your eCommerce business.
Most of the WooCommerce store has a standard setup which means they use shared web hosting. Shared hosting is great for handling a low amount of visitors at a time. For example, if a website gets 150,000 visitors per month, that means 225 visitors per hour. Shared hosting can handle this amount of visitors.
However, things change when you get thousands of visitors in an hour.
Website crashes!
And if it happens to your store during the holiday season, you lose sales and money.
That’s why you should ensure that your WooCommerce store can handle a certain increase of visitors.
To make your WooCommerce store ready for the holiday season, you can take a few steps;
- Choose a dedicated hosting that is capable of handling a good number of visitors at a certain time
- Remove unnecessary files, images, videos, pages, and posts from your store
- Create a minimalistic store that uses less resources
- Use CDN for your WooCommerce store
- Get rid of unnecessary themes and plugins
- Use caching plugin
- Optimize Javascript and CSS code
Simply checkout process
The complex checkout process is one of the culprits for cart abandonment. Almost one in five consumer abandon carts for complex checkout processes. A lot of forms make the checkout process complex.
You should ensure a simple checkout process for your WooCommerce store so that consumers don’t abandon carts.
You can decrease cart abandon by simplifying your store’s checkout process. To make your store’s checkout process simple, you can;
- Remove unnecessary or less necessary fields from the cart page
- Offer multiple payment options
- Simplify the account creation process, or you can enable sign-in using different platforms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, etc
Optimize account creation
Creating a consumer account during checkout can significantly affect cart abandonment. Customers are more likely to purchase if the process is streamlined with minimal friction. On the other hand, if the process is complicated and time-consuming, customers are more likely to abandon their cart and not complete the purchase.
A complex account creation process on your WooCommerce store can lead to a high rate of cart abandonment. In fact, 24% of consumers are deterred from making a purchase due to the account creation process.
Because of that, you should optimize the account creation of your WooCommerce store.
The best way to reduce cart abandonment for account creation is to enable guest checkout on your store. In this way, consumers can checkout without creating an account. Later, you can send emails and ask to create an account.
Another way you can streamline the account creation is through sign-in using platforms like Google and Apple. This way, consumers can sign in with one click and continue the checkout process.
Improve customer support capacity
Customer support is crucial for eCommerce business. The success or failure of an eCommerce business heavily depends on the quality of its customer support. 4 out of 10 customers will stop doing business with a company after experiencing bad customer support, according to NewVoiceMedia. Annual losses due to bad customer support is 62 billion dollars.
During the holiday season, your WooCommerce store will get many support messages. If you can’t solve them in time or can’t solve them, you will lose consumers. And the bad thing is they won’t come back to your store again.
That’s why you must ensure your store’s customer support is good enough to cope with the holiday season.
You can enable live chat to improve your WooCommerce store’s customer support. Live chat is a great way to provide customer support in real-time. Customers can chat with a person through the live chat system. Also, you can use the chatbot to provide live chat customer support.
Moreover, you can create self-help resources for your WooCommerce store. For example, you can create FAQs, instructions, and tutorials. Also, you can create video tutorials. Self-help resources help minimize support requests to the chatbot, live chat, or other customer support channels.
Manage product returns and refunds effectively
During holiday sales, fulfilling a large volume of orders can lead to mistakes in preparing and delivering products. To mitigate any negative impact on your customers, it’s crucial to have an easy return policy in place. It helps to ensure that your customers don’t have to suffer the consequences of any errors or mishaps that may occur.
Additionally, processing refunds quickly is essential to satisfy your customers. When a customer receives a refund on time, it can help build trust and loyalty with your brand. It is particularly important during busy holiday sales periods when customers may have less patience.
By having a streamlined return policy and processing refunds quickly, you can demonstrate your commitment to providing excellent customer service and help maintain positive customer relationships.
Offer free shipment
Shipping is one of the most crucial parts of the eCommerce business. If you ship products fast, your eCommerce business will get more satisfied customers, generating more sales and revenue.
Conversely, you will lose clients if you fail to ship products on time or charge more money for shipping. As a result, you will lose sales and revenue. 48% of shoppers abandon their cart for extra costs, which include shipping costs.
You can offer free shipments during the holiday season to increase your sales and decrease cart abandonment. 90% of shoppers would shop online if they got free shipping.
Recommend more related products
For WooCommerce store owners, increasing sales is always a top priority. However, persuading customers to add more items to their carts can be challenging.
Luckily, there are effective marketing techniques you can employ to encourage customers to add more items to their cart. One such technique is recommending related products, which can significantly impact your sales.
To make the most of this strategy, you can display related products smartly and visually appealingly. Implementing a related product strategy on your WooCommerce store can be accomplished in just a few minutes and can yield significant results.
Using this technique, you can effectively boost your sales while providing your customers with a more personalized shopping experience.
Make product bundle
When making a purchase, customers often require additional items to complement their main product. It presents an excellent opportunity for online store owners to boost their sales by offering relevant products that meet customers’ needs.
For instance, someone buying a golf club may also need a golf ball, bag, range finder, ball washer, etc. Offering these complementary products at a discounted price can entice your customers to purchase more.
Another effective technique is offering bundled products that complement the main purchase. If done correctly, bundling products together can significantly increase the average order value. Additionally, incentivizing customers to purchase bundles by offering extra rewards or loyalty points can keep them engaged and encourage repeat purchases.
By implementing these strategies in your WooCommerce store, you can effectively increase your sales and provide a better shopping experience for your customers.
Improve WooCommerce store security
For any business, security is first, let it be offline business or online business. Online business security is more important as hackers from anywhere can attack your business.
What happen if hackers hacked into your WooCommerce store during a holiday sales event?
It will be a disaster!
You will lose sales due to the downtime. In addition, you will need to refund for unfulfilled products. Moreover, your business will lose its credibility.
That’s why the security of the WooCommerce store is so important. To improve your WooCommerce store security, you can;
- Host your WooCommerce store on a secure hosting
- Use an SSL certificate for your WooCommerce store
- Only install safe plugins and themes
- Ensure that your store’s PHP version is up to date
- Use a secure username and password
- Change the store’s login URL
- Enable two-factor authentication
- Block brut force attack
- Scan your store for malware
- Enable login limits
- Monitor the store’s downtime
Conclusion
The holiday season is a time of increased online shopping, and as a WooCommerce store owner, it’s essential to be prepared. By implementing the strategies I have discussed in this article on how to prepare your WooCommerce store for holiday sales, you can optimize your WooCommerce store for holiday sales, improve customer experience, and increase sales.
Remember to use countdown timers, create a festive look, optimize website speed and checkout process, offer free shipping, and create products bundle to boost sales.
Additionally, prioritize customer support and ensure easy product returns and refund policies to satisfy your customers. By following these strategies, you can set your WooCommerce store up for success during the holiday shopping season and beyond.
