With the festive season just around the corner, many of us are already thinking about — or starting — our holiday shopping. However, the process of finding the perfect gifts, deals and discounts isn’t always a smooth one.
Peak season can be challenging for retailers; from surges in traffic volume, maintaining stock levels with increased demand to competitive pricing, retailers have additional considerations in peak season to ensure a positive shopping experience for their customers. So, how can you optimize your website performance and avoid those festive shopping ‘fails’?
We’ve unwrapped our top tips to help you avoid shopping pitfalls and ensure your customer shopping experiences are merry and bright!
1. Optimize Your Website with a Reliable CDN
Using a reliable Content Delivery Network (CDN) is essential to ensure your website functions smoothly during peak season. Increased traffic can lead to slow loading times or worse, website crashes. A robust CDN enhances content availability and ensures uninterrupted shopping, even with increased traffic volumes. So, when you experience spikes during peak season, your site still performs at its best!
2. Perfect Your Product Images
Clear and sharp product images are crucial for engaging customers and converting them. Image optimization prevents blurry visuals and slow page load times, enhancing the overall shopping experience. In preparation for peak season, consider implementing a media optimization solution that supports various channels and formats to ensure top-notch images.
3. Schedule and Preview Content Changes
Misleading or inaccurate discounts in marketing campaigns has got to be one of the most frustrating shopping experiences, especially during peak season when customers are eager for promotions. Choose a solution that allows you to schedule and preview content changes before publishing to avoid inaccuracies. This will allow you to make sure that any content updates are directly reflected in the customer experience, preventing any nasty surprises. Amplience’s Content Management System give retailers the power to schedule and publish in real-time, any time – previewing the experience at all stages of the customer journey to make sure that what you see is exactly what your customers will get.
4. Ensure Accurate Product Availability Information
You don’t want your customers to be recommended products that are out of stock. To prevent this disappointment, utilize an Order Management System (OMS) to maintain up-to-date product availability information. Consider integrating tools to recommend relevant, in-stock products, enhancing the customer’s shopping experience.
5. Leverage AI for Image Validation
In the digital-first era, image manipulation can lead to misleading product representations. Image validation is crucial, and AI plays a significant role in this process. Retailers must disclose image manipulations in advertising for transparency. AI can be utilized to identify and rectify images that do not comply with laws and regulations, ensuring accurate product information.
As you prepare for the busy holiday season, remember these valuable tips to create a delightful shopping experience for your customers. By optimizing your website with a reliable CDN, perfecting your product images, scheduling and previewing content changes, ensuring accurate product availability information, and leveraging AI for image validation, you can say goodbye to shopping woes and welcome a seamless and successful peak season.
Want to know more about what it looks like when retail therapy goes wrong? Watch the second episode of our Bad Shopping webinar series.