2 Ways To Maximize Online Sales Throughout The Holidays

So, were you able to take advantage of Cyber Monday a couple of days ago? Businesses that utilize their websites as online stores simply love this time of year. This past Monday was recognized as the year’s biggest day for online shopping sales. But we’re still smack-dab in the middle of the busiest shopping season of the year. That means that there are still plenty of days left for holiday shopping. And a lot of it will be done online!

If you’re yet to take advantage of an e-commerce solution so that your website can enable visitors to make purchases directly from it, there is no better time than now to begin accepting credit cards online. Contact Canadian POS Corporation to take advantage of our fantastic e-commerce solution! Then you can inform your customers that they can visit your website to order items of their choice.

Call us at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost so we can start the process. It’s important to remember, of course, that once your site is all set up to accept credit cards, you’ll need to do your part to get the word out about it. In our last blog, we offered some guidelines that can help you to maximize Cyber Monday sales. With that day now behind us, we’d like to offer up a couple of ways that you can maximize online sales throughout the holidays.

1. Know what your competition is doing. If there’s any way to outdo your competition, it’s to know exactly what they’re up to. By viewing their websites, you will be able to come up with ideas to lure customers away from them. Think of ways to advertise your products in ways that will entice online shoppers to your site. In our last blog, we suggested free shipping as one of those ways.

“You should already be signed up for your competitors’ e-mail programs,” insists Ryan May on BusinessDictionary.com, “Doing so will provide a clear picture of any advantage that the customer may see when deciding between you and the other guy. And being a small business, you can quickly change the course of your message, getting the word out through social media.”

2. Prepare for more traffic than normal. You’ll want to make sure that your website is capable of handling the influx of new shoppers. The more traffic your website gets, the better your chances are of increasing your sales. However, if your website crashes because it can’t handle all of the additional traffic you’re getting throughout the holidays, you will have defeated the purpose of opening your online store.

“Especially in periods of peak traffic, unprepared e-commerce sites can function improperly if they’re not equipped to handle heavy loads,” warns Mike Azevedo on Entrepreneur.com, “By leveraging a scale-out, fault-tolerant database, you can ensure that your e-commerce site can handle any amount of traffic in almost any situation, as well as provide customers with a seamless shopping experience, thus ensuring business success.”

May agrees that your website should be able to “handle the load”. “Whether you rely heavily on an e-commerce site or just use it as a supplement to your brick-and-mortar shop, check with your web host provider to ensure there will be enough bandwidth to handle a spike in traffic,” he advises, “Few shoppers will try to reload a page after receiving a 404 error page or similar problem.”