Missed those all important online holiday sales?

The traditional High Street has changed, with more and more people opting to eschew the city centre and shop online for their holiday presents.

Amazon reported that they expect December 25th 2015 to be their busiest Christmas Day in its 21-year history.
Post 2015 holidays, they reported that almost 70 percent of their customers shopped on a mobile device during the period – in the US alone, smartphone based purchases more than doubled from the previous year’s total.

In 2017 Deloitte predicted that e-commerce would outperform in-store spending during that year’s holiday season – 51% online (47% in 2016) vs 42% in store (47% in 2016).

Even before customers have landed on your site they are using smartphones and tablets to research the best bargains around. This includes when they are comfy on their sofa or even in-store.
A good proportion will also be checking if something is in stock, searching for your telephone number or mapping your address before making the journey to your store.

With all of this in mind, it seems evident that having a mobile-friendly online store is an absolute essential to ensure that your sales peak during these busy holiday periods. You don’t want users to click on to your page, only to find that the text is barely visible, images too small or navigation is clunky – or, worst of all, that email pop-up renders your site useless.

Your online store needs to work seamlessly on whatever device it’s being viewed. For it to work, you need to consider the font size you use, the resolution of images, the size of buttons, and how your site will look on a variety of different sized phones and tablets.

Importantly, you also need to ensure that mobile users don’t lose any of the features that they are able to enjoy on the desktop version of your site. There’s nothing more frustrating than visiting a mobile site, only to discover that half of the functions aren’t available – especially if it’s something that’s going to make or break a sale!

Lastly, we suggest giving users the option to switch back to the desktop version of your website whilst they’re browsing on mobile. It doesn’t matter how good your mobile site is, users like to have options and become accustomed to the way that sites are set out.

If you haven’t already, then make this the year that you go mobile.
The experienced team at Point and Stare are able to help you do just that, as well as with more general web development and design.

To find out how you can ensure your website is ready for the next holiday rush, get in touch today.