You can’t move into the holiday season without applying these optimization tips.
Here, I have created a checklist for preparing Magento stores for the holiday season; perfectly optimizing it will leverage your store to see traffic and convert it into customers.
18 Tips to Optimize the Magento 2 Stores For The Holiday Season
1. Optimized Home Page
Showcase the special deals and discounts that you are offering in an attractive way. Your homepage gives your customers a direction.
Use relevant images, update the content, and design the homepage to make the visitors realize that you offer products that will delight them during their holidays.
2. Optimize for Holiday Keywords
For holiday shopping, the search patterns do change. Identify the keywords and optimize the metadata, image alt tags, and your content to target more sales.
You may use tools like ChatGPT, Google Trends, or Google Keyword Planner to narrow down relevant keywords based on your products.
3. Optimize Load Time
Site speed should be your top priority during the holiday season. Not only is Google concerned about the speed factor for ranking, but it is also essential for a smooth shopping experience. So, first, check your site speed and, if needed, optimize it for it to work effectively.
Resource: Use our FREE Magento 2 Defer Parsing of Javascript extension to automate the defer parsing of Javascript in the store.
4. Don’t Compromise on Your Store’s Security
In an Accenture report, 62% of holiday shoppers are concerned about their security while shopping online.
Make sure to upgrade your Magento 2 store with the latest security patch APSB24-73 or opt for Magento 2 Security Extensions to timely optimize your store.
5. Optimize for Mobile Devices
Shopping on the phone is the new normal, as 79% of smartphone users have purchased online using their mobile device in the last 6 months. So, make optimizing it for mobile devices your priority.
6. Manage Your Inventory Correctly
During the holiday season, you can forget your inventory management and take measures to avoid any mismanagement.
Here are a few quick tips for inventory management for the holiday season:
- Check the history of bestsellers and repeat that success by promoting them and managing their stock accordingly.
- Prioritize the top overstocked items for featuring them in your first festival blast.
- Automate the reorder process to reduce the chances of backorders
If you want to make inventory management and accounting easy and automatic in the Magento 2 store, opt for the Magento 2 QuickBooks Online Integration extension.
7. Revised Shipping & Payment Methods
With a proper shipping strategy in place, eliminate on-time package delivery anxiety.
Implement a store shipping strategy and make sure to offer a convenient payment solution to see a decrease in the cart abandonment rate. Note down the countries you target and make changes in your payment and shipping provider accordingly.
8. Optimize Your “Thank You” Page
The thank you page is a great opportunity to nurture the customer relationship that has just been created.
Use the thank you page as an opportunity to showcase other discounts or showcase your product page section to spark interest in your customer’s minds and bring them back to specific product pages.
While manually implementing this is time-consuming, here is a ready-to-use Magento 2 Success Page extension!
9. Run Targeted Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns
Your customer’s email inboxes would be filled with email campaigns by other competitors. Make sure to stand out with your email campaigns and personalize them as much as possible.
Here are some email campaign tips for you:
- Speak about your offer and discounts
- Include personalized content in your email body copy
- Make your email mobile-friendly
10. Stay Active on Social Media Platforms
Social media is a great way to keep your customers continuously engaged with your store. Run a contest on your social media pages, create interactive stores, and add fun reels and more to capture your customers’ attention while they scroll through.
With your social media, try to create as much visual appeal as possible.
11. Run Retargeting Ads
It is essential to actively engage with the potential audience who has connected with your store before. This is a great way to find audiences who are already interested in your store.
This way, you can boost the click-through rate and skyrocket your sales.
12. Actively Manage Your Customer Support
During this time, you can see an increase in queries and questions; it is a good idea to connect with tools that can help them connect more quickly, like Facebook chat or WhatsApp chat.
With these, they can instantly drop a message, and you can get back to them without wasting time, improving their customer satisfaction.
13. Set Urgency in Your Tone
Creating and promoting time-limited offers radiates a sense of urgency. Customers who see flash deals or soon-expiring sales may experience the fear of missing out. Leverage the FOMO and add a countdown timer to increase the demand for whatever you offer! You would like to include terms like “hurry up”, “few hours left”, “offer ends tonight”, etc.
14. Keep Leveraging Your Content Efforts
Keep creating content that matches your search intent. You could write a detailed blog post about how they can make the most of the festive season with offers and discounts.
With timely content, you can:
- Drive traffic
- Convert traffic into leads
- Establish authority
15. Revise the Return Policy if Necessary
If there is any change in your return policies, make changes accordingly. This way, you can keep your communication more streamlined and open. A better communicated return policy gives your customers the confidence to shop more confidently.
16. Revise the Product Suggestions
As search tends to change, there is a chance that product popularity will change as well.
You can offer relevant recommendations on your website and keep them irrelevant depending on the holiday season. Try not to mix Christmas with Halloween or vice versa.
17. Efforts to Reduce Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart abandonment means all your efforts to bring a customer to the cart in vain! To avoid it, follow this checklist to reduce cart abandonment rate during holidays:
- No mandatory registration (with the competition piling up during holidays, people prefer switching rather than registering! )
- No surprisingly extra costs at checkout
- Single and clean checkout page
- Flexible payment options
18. Try Eye-Catchy Exit Popups
Popups are a simple but effective way to capture your customer’s attention when they are leaving your site or while they are still scrolling through.
Attractive pop ups with just the messaging create a sparkle in your customers’ minds and lead to a purchase. Here is an easy way to create a Magento 2 Popup in your store.
Bonus Tips to Prepare the Magento 2 Stores For This Holiday Season:
- Continue your off-page SEO efforts
- Allow customers to add product reviews to improve social proof on your site.
- Try opting for multi-channel selling
- Add lucrative deals and discounts to your store, such as Buy X Get Y Free
With these tips, your store will be ready for the holiday season. Make sure to take action on these and see a boost in sales at the most favorite time of the year.
Happy holidays and happy selling to you!
