It’s never too early to start preparing your website for the holidays. According to CNBC, 2021 Black Friday online sales reached a record $14 billion just behind Cyber Monday. Just because you do not have an eCommerce website, does not mean that you do not have to optimize for the holidays. Nowadays, shoppers research products online before making purchases at retail stores. This is so common that it is known as “research online, purchase offline” or ROPO. If you sell anything, chances are you sell way more of it between Halloween and Christmas. The holidays account for 20-40% of annual sales for retailers. You still have a few weeks to make some last minute website tweaks to cash in on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and the entire month before Christmas.
Marketing is constantly evolving, so it’s important to stay on top of what strategies work in the present moment. However, there are a few things that remain constant despite changing technology and means of connecting with consumers. Here are the most essential things to do to become better at marketing your products and increase sales.
I don’t want to sound like a politician but the short answer is that “it depends.” You can use a website builder or customize a premade theme and purchase web hosting yourself for as little as $200 if you have want to take the time to learn how to do it. You can also hire a creative agency and pay $20,000 or more just for web design and development for that same website.
A website conversion is when a visitor does something you want like subscribe to your newsletter, complete a lead generation form or buy a product. The percentage of total visitors that convert is called your conversion rate. You can spend thousands on SEO and Adwords but if your website doesn’t convert, who cares? A site with millions of visitors and a sucky conversion rate won’t pay your mortgage or fund your kids’ college educations.
If are using Adwords, you might be wondering why do I need a landing page if I already have a website? An optimized landing page that is relevant to your ad, drives more sales and leads than your homepage. Conversions are the percentage of leads you get based on your total clicks. For example, if you had 50 conversions from 1,000 clicks, then your conversion rate is 5%. According to WordStream, the average conversion rate across all industries is only 2%. Ideally, if your landing page is converting at 10% of higher, you are killing it. Here, we will share some insanely simple tips to improve your landing page conversion rate.
Back to school season is the second biggest shopping season behind Christmas and Black Friday engaging 29 million households and accounting for $84 billion in sales in the US. With over half of those purchases being made online, now is the best time to prepare your website for the peak back-to-school buying season in August. The top spending categories include school supplies, clothing, computers, and electronics.
