Optimize WordPress Sites Before the Holidays Begin

During the 2016 holiday season, shoppers spent $63.1 billion via desktop computers on retail e-commerce sites. In order for your business to get in on the holiday online retail action, you need to make sure your site is optimized ready to handle the demand. These tips will make it easy for your business to prepare itself for the weeks ahead.

Holiday Season Themes

Add a little holiday cheer to your site with themes, templates, and plugins for your WordPress site. These simple-to-use tools incorporate a festive feeling without redesigning everything. Plus, when the holidays are over, you can quickly remove these additions and return your site to its original design.

Build a Schedule Now

Shoppers generated billions of dollars during the top 10 desktop spending days from the 2016 holiday season. You don’t want to be playing catch up for Black Friday on Thanksgiving. Instead, develop a schedule now so your site and other digital channels are optimized and ready to make the most of important sales days on the calendar.

Optimize for Mobile

Holiday season mobile spending increased 19 percent between 2015 and 2016. If you haven’t optimized your WordPress site for mobile users, you are missing out on a massive portion of your target audience. Plugins such as WordPress Mobile Pack, Jetpack, WPtouch, and Any Mobile Theme Switcher integrate with ease into your site, so it’s mobile-friendly for visitors using smartphones and tablets.

Increase Social Presence

As the holidays draw nearer, people check out from their regular routines and spend more time surfing their social networks. Take advantage of these increased opportunities for awareness and engagement with WordPress social media plugins. Some of the best ways to leverage social media with WordPress plugins include:

• Enabling Facebook comments,
• Showcasing tweets,
• Featuring Instagram posts, and  
• Integrating Pinterest buttons.

Integrate Your Online and In-Store Experiences

Keep your WordPress site updated throughout the season, so shoppers are always in-the-know. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, make it easy for users to find everything they need to know about it for the holidays from hours to directions and parking. Be sure to call out holiday specials and services, such as gift wrapping or personal shopping assistance.

In stores, make sure customers know about your site and remind them about final e-shopping dates to ship in time for the holidays. Plan methods for combining the in-person and online shopping experiences, such as in-store Instagram photo booths or coupons delivered digitally to be used in-store only (and vice versa).

Set Up Autoresponders

Immediately connect with users when they have taken specific actions using the autoresponder features available on tools such as Vero, AWeber, and MailChimp. These tools fuse seamlessly into WordPress to streamline the entire lead nurturing process, so customers receive regularly messaging from your brand based on their behaviors.

Run Conversion Tests

Site traffic increases during the holiday season as people shop around for the best products. Ensure your site is running smoothly by running conversion tests before the holiday season begins. When testing your site, examine everything from headlines and page titles to graphic elements and calls to action. Tools you can try include Simple Page Tester, Nelio A/B Testing, and Optimizely.

Preparing for the holiday season is a huge endeavor involving dozens of tasks, from inventory management to employee scheduling. If you still need to optimize a WordPress site for the holiday season but won’t have the time to do it yourself, contact Proactive WP today. We can implement and execute an optimization strategy for your site with ease.