Many businesses can profit enormously from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday craze but it’s important to evaluate this opportunity within a larger business context. Not every store should adopt deep discounts as a sales tactic, but this doesn't mean they can't ride the Black Friday wave. In fact, there are many alternatives besides discounts you can do to promote your online store or business during the holiday shopping season.
“If you build it, they will come.” The now eternal words that were ominously whispered in the popular 1988 movie Field of Dreams was great advice for the cornfields of Iowa. It even worked for companies like Google and Facebook, whose incredible appeal attracted thousands, then millions, and now billions. But if you’re selling digital content, you’ll likely learn the hard lesson that I learned: you can build it, but they won’t come.
Plenty of work happens behind the scenes of a regular website. But even more work is needed for the maintenance and development of a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress – the software that powers 34% of all websites on the web. New WordPress versions are released regularly to provide new functionality, security improvements, and all types of fixes. In the case of WordPress, which is an open-source software, a big part of the work is thanks to the voluntary support of dedicated individuals and companies within the WordPress community.
The team at SiteGround has a long history of WordPress involvement - we organize and sponsor both local and worldwide WordCamps, work on WordPress core and plugins, and are active on the WP.org security, community, marketing, and hosting teams. So we were stoked when our WordPress community manager, Francesca Marano was selected as a Release Coordinator for the latest major version, WordPress 5.3. On the verge of the official release, 12 weeks after she took upon that role, here is our chat with Francesca about her role and responsibilities in the process, and of course – what you can look forward to with the new release.
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As a WordPress Maintenance and Support Specialist at FixUpFox, I manage ecommerce websites on a daily basis. There are a few common mistakes that I see when people are starting up new ecommerce sites that I'd like to go over. Fixing these mistakes before your site is launched means that you'll be presenting a better experience to potential customers, leading to higher conversion!
It's never too early to start thinking about the holidays. If you are planning to offer website visitors seasonally-themed promotions or just want to add a festive landing page, now is the time to start.
The goal of a holiday landing page for your organization or business website is typically to convert. This is even more important for ecommerce sites. To boost your conversions, start with a focus for a holiday landing page that aligns with popular search terms for the season that fit the context of what you do. Use that page to help drive conversions that match your goals.
Not sure how to turn that idea into a great landing page for the holidays? We at Design Shack have a few tips to help you get started and make the most of the upcoming season.
Q4 is one of the most profitable times for businesses. Thanks to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas, people are spending a ton of money in the last three months of the year. In fact, according to statistics from eMarketer, holiday retail sales crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 2018 and holiday ecommerce sales were responsible for $126 billion.
But, your business can only take advantage of this awesome opportunity to generate sales if you’re prepared for it. That’s just one of the lessons we’ve learned after years of Q4 planning.
Check out these 8 tips to boost holiday sales and conversions.
This isn’t exactly a groundbreaking revelation—but Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are an enormous, critical time of year for eCommerce businesses. One study found Black Friday generated 3.6 times more eCommerce orders than the average day, and Cyber Monday generated 3.1 times more.
And with that, BFCM is also peak season for email marketing. There’s an increase of more than 50 percent in email volume on and around BFCM—it begins around 10 days before Thanksgiving and extends until Cyber Monday.
Everyone knows how important Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Christmas shopping period are to businesses, both online and offline. To help ecommerce webmasters make the most of this season, we’ve partnered with experts in the web industry and will be sharing informative and inspiring content over the next couple of weeks.
To kick things off, let’s talk about one factor often overlooked in preparation for the high-traffic shopping season: your website’s speed.
Your site’s performance and load time play a big role in the experience your customers have on your site. Website visitors can end up spending quite a bit of time on your site, browsing, comparing options, and checking out. Every extra second it takes to load images and complete actions on your site causes friction and can prevent customers from completing their order.
Luckily, there are several quick and easy customizations you can implement to improve your website. Read on to see three ways we recommend for any website owner looking to increase their site’s performance and their sales this season.