Cyber Monday is less than a week away. December 2, your eCommerce site will likely be overrun with traffic – mostly people looking for a good deal online!
For any eCommerce business, Cyber Monday is an opportunity you can’t afford to botch. In 2012, this massive online shopping day emerged as the heaviest online spending day on record, drawing $1.46 billion. We know you want a piece of that action!
Check out our checklist to make sure your website is ready for Cyber Monday.
1. Audit Your Site: Spend some quality time looking at your site as a user. What is the experience like? Is the content fresh? How does your site compare to your competition?
You should also check out how your site works on mobile devices. Four of every five smartphone users — 85.9 million people — accessed retail content on their device in July 2012, according to comScore’s Mobile Metrix 2.0 service. Every online eCommerce platform should be optimized for mobile users.
Also, check your content. Go through your entire website to ensure all available information is up-to-date and valid. Monitor your inventory levels and update the website as needed. You also need to check to make sure all of your links work!
2. Check Your Analytics: Have you embedded Google Analytics code on every page? Do you know where people come from, how long they stay, what they buy and if they buy again?
Real-time analysis can help you win the e-business war. If you aren’t using Google Analytics, you should start immediately. The standard version of the service is free.
3. Traffic capacity: Is your website designed to handle spikes in traffic or will it crash your server? A slow-loading website is a major problem as well. Customers will only give you a few seconds and then you could potentially lose them forever.
Make sure you have a solid IT infrastructure. Also consider cloud services such as Google Compute Engine or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
4. Pricing and Promotion: On Cyber Monday, eCommerce shoppers are looking for a deal! It’s easier than ever to price compare.
Are you able to offer free shipping? According to a recent study in the Journal of Marketing, free return shipping offers can increase online purchases by 357 percent. Are some of your popular products discounted?
If you have some great pricing lined up, make sure to promote it! So many eCommerce sites are going to be trying to get a piece of Cyber Monday, you don’t want to be overlooked. Share your deals in advance! Send out e-mails and post on social media sites. Read this article for more info on how to use social media to take advantage of Black Friday and apply it to Cyber Monday!
One final note, make sure you are capturing your shoppers information! Cyber Monday will be a prime opportunity to build your database of customers you will talk to throughout the year.