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Holiday shopping has changed quite a bit. Customers can buy gifts from their phones while waiting for coffee, compare prices from the couch, and arrange delivery without setting foot in a store.
For small businesses, that’s a tremendous opportunity. It also means your online store has to work harder than ever.
A customer who can’t find what they’re looking for, encounters a painfully slow website, or gets stuck at checkout probably isn’t going to call and ask for help. They’ll simply shop somewhere else.
And your competitor will be delighted.
At Digital Tea, we’ve been helping businesses build and improve their websites since 1999. One thing hasn’t changed much in that time: people want shopping to be easy. They don’t particularly care how complicated the technology is behind the scenes, and frankly, they shouldn’t have to.
Whether you’re preparing your business for the holiday rush, launching your first online store, or wondering why your existing website isn’t generating more sales, these nine improvements are worth considering.
1. Speed Up Your E-commerce Website Before Customers Lose Patience
Nobody enjoys waiting for a website to load. During the holidays, when shoppers are juggling wish lists, shipping deadlines, and approximately seventeen other things, patience can be especially limited, and when there is more demand on a system, it’s often the time when something on an e-commerce platform will act up.
Large product photographs, outdated plugins, excessive scripts, and poor-quality hosting can all slow down an online store.
Mobile performance deserves particular attention. A website might look fantastic on a desktop computer but become awkward and frustrating on a phone.
Start by checking your website’s performance using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Look at image sizes, unnecessary plugins, server response times, and how quickly customers can interact with important pages.
Speed improvements can also involve optimizing your hosting environment, caching, and reducing unnecessary code.
We often remind businesses that a beautiful website isn’t particularly useful if customers leave before they can see it.
2. Make Finding Your Products Ridiculously Easy
When you walk into a well-organized store, it’s generally pretty easy to find what you’re looking for without much trouble. Products are grouped logically and tend to be with similar items; signage and pricing make sense; and if needed, someone can point you in the right direction.
Your website should offer the same experience to your online customers.
Clear categories, useful filters, intuitive navigation, and a good search function help customers find products without wandering through endless pages.
And if someone searches for “winter boots,” your website should probably show them winter boots.
For small businesses, it’s worth taking a closer look at how real customers shop. What terminology do they use? Do they search by product type, brand, size, or intended use?
Don’t organize your website exclusively around how your business categorizes inventory internally. Customers have their own ideas, and they’re the ones holding the credit cards.
3. Simplify Checkout and Give Customers More Ways to Pay
You’ve done the hard part. Someone found your website, liked your product, and added it to their cart.
Now would be a particularly unfortunate time to make things difficult.
Complicated checkout processes are a common source of abandoned purchases. Unexpected shipping charges, mandatory account creation, confusing forms, and limited payment options can all send customers elsewhere.
The Baymard Institute’s research consistently finds that about seven in ten online shopping carts are abandoned. Not every abandoned cart represents a lost sale, but unnecessary checkout friction certainly doesn’t help customers stay engaged and interested in continuing to shop.
Some ways you can make it simpler and quicker for shoppers include considering offering a guest checkout option, making sure shipping costs and timeframes are clearly displayed, and supporting convenient payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal where appropriate.
The fewer unnecessary decisions customers have to make during checkout, the better.
This is also where the right e-commerce platform matters. Shopify, WooCommerce, and other solutions offer different capabilities, costs, and integration options. The right choice depends on your business, not whichever platform happens to be getting the most attention this month.
4. Make Online Shopping Secure Without Making It Complicated
Customers need to trust your business before they’ll hand over their payment information.
That means proper website security, encrypted connections, reputable payment processors, and regular software maintenance. Out-of-date software and plugins cause security holes where malware and other malicious actors can find their way in. Regular updates are one of the easiest ways to make sure your website and customer information stays secure.
For WordPress and WooCommerce websites, outdated plugins can (and often do) introduce vulnerabilities. Weak administrator passwords and neglected backups add more risk. These can be mitigated by Managed WordPress Hosting services, where your website host provides plugin, software, and security updates, as well as monitors your website for threats.
Your website should use HTTPS (not HTTP), follow applicable payment security requirements, and rely on established payment providers instead of storing sensitive card information.
Behind the scenes, regular backups and security monitoring help protect the business when something goes wrong.
Security rarely gets much attention when everything is working. The moment customer information is compromised, however, it becomes everyone’s favourite topic.
Usually for all the wrong reasons.
5. Get Inventory, Delivery, and Pickup Working Together
Selling something online is relatively straightforward.
Making sure you actually have it available, getting it to the customer on time, and keeping your inventory accurate across multiple sales channels can be considerably more complicated.
Small businesses often operate a combination of physical stores, online shops, warehouses, and manual inventory systems.
If those systems don’t communicate properly, customers may purchase products that aren’t available.
That’s a headache nobody needs in the middle of December.
Depending on your business, an integrated e-commerce system can connect inventory management, point-of-sale equipment, shipping services, and accounting software.
You might also offer backorders, product waitlists, local delivery, or curbside pickup.
And e-commerce isn’t exclusively about shipping physical products. Businesses can collect membership dues, accept donations, sell subscriptions, book appointments, and process payments for services.
Sometimes the biggest opportunity is simply making it easier for existing customers to pay you.
6. Start Your Holiday Digital Marketing Before Everyone Else Does
There’s an annual tradition among businesses that sell online.
December arrives, sales aren’t where they should be, and someone decides it’s time to launch a holiday marketing campaign.
Ideally, that conversation should have happened considerably earlier.
Search engine optimization (SEO), Google Ads, social media advertising, and email marketing can all play important roles in attracting holiday shoppers.
But they work best when there’s a strategy behind them.
Start by identifying the products or services most likely to appeal to your customers. Consider seasonal search terms, realistic advertising budgets, promotional offers, and the landing pages visitors will see after clicking an advertisement.
For businesses serving Edmonton and surrounding communities, local SEO can also help customers find nearby shopping and pickup options.
An effective campaign should connect the advertisement to the customer’s actual shopping experience. Sending someone who clicked an ad for Christmas gift baskets to your general homepage isn’t doing them any favours.
Don’t forget analytics, either. Knowing which campaigns generate sales is far more useful than celebrating thousands of clicks that don’t produce a single order.
7. Make Customer Service Easy, Even When You’re Busy
Holiday shoppers ask questions.
Lots of questions.
Will this arrive before Christmas? Can I pick it up today? Does it come in blue? Can I send the purchase directly to someone else, or do I have to ship it to myself? What happens if it doesn’t fit?
If customers can’t find answers, some will contact you. But it’s more likely that during the holiday rush, most will simply leave.
A well-written FAQ section, clear shipping information, accessible contact details, and straightforward product descriptions can eliminate much of that uncertainty.
Live chat and carefully configured automated assistants can help with routine inquiries, provided customers can still reach an actual person when needed.
There’s a fine line between helpful automation and a chatbot that repeatedly insists it understands your question while clearly demonstrating that it doesn’t.
Make sure your contact forms work, messages reach the right people, and customer service staff have access to accurate information.
Technology should make their jobs easier, not create another system they have to fight with.
8. Prepare for Returns Before the Holidays
Product returns and exchanges are an unavoidable part of selling online. This is particularly true during gift-giving season, when the recipient and the shopper are often not the same person.
Customers want to understand your return policy before they buy. Unclear terms and conditions or a complicated process for returns and exchanges can undermine their confidence.
Make your policies easy to find and explain return timeframes, eligibility, shipping responsibilities, refunds, and exchanges in plain language.
For businesses processing substantial order volumes, integrating return requests and tracking into the website can reduce administrative work.
It’s also worth reviewing your entire order management process. Can customers easily access receipts? Are order confirmations sent automatically? Can your staff quickly look up purchase information?
The smoother these processes are, the less time your team spends sorting out preventable problems.
9. Plan Beyond December: Build an E-commerce Business That Lasts
Holiday sales are exciting, but January arrives whether you’re ready for it or not.
A successful e-commerce website should support your business throughout the year.
That might mean developing customer retention campaigns, improving product recommendations, offering subscriptions, or reviewing which holiday promotions actually made money.
It’s also a good opportunity to examine whether your current technology is keeping up with your business, or whether it might be time to look at expanding.
A few great questions to ask yourself about your current setup are:
- Can your website grow as your product catalogue expands?
- Does it communicate properly with your inventory and accounting systems?
- Are staff spending hours manually transferring information between platforms? (For example, do staff need to move orders from your website to a warehouse or shipping order system?)
Those little inefficiencies add up.
The right e-commerce solution should fit the way your business operates today while allowing room for tomorrow.
Before investing in major changes, talk to the people who use your systems every day. Your staff, customers, accountants, and website developers may have very different perspectives on what’s working.
They’re all worth hearing.
Choosing the Right E-commerce Platform for Your Small Business
One question we hear regularly is whether a business should use Shopify, WooCommerce, or another e-commerce platform.
There’s no universal answer.
Shopify offers a hosted environment with many built-in commerce features. WooCommerce provides extensive customization within WordPress and can be particularly attractive for businesses that want more control over their website.
Other platforms may make sense depending on your existing technology, budget, inventory requirements, and long-term plans.
The important part is considering the entire operation, not just the online storefront.
A cheaper initial setup can become expensive if it requires workarounds, duplicate data entry, or complicated integrations later.
At Digital Tea, we prefer to understand how a business works before recommending the technology. It usually leads to better decisions and considerably fewer surprises.
Frequently Asked Questions About E-commerce Websites
What is the best e-commerce platform for a small business to use?
Both Shopify and WooCommerce are popular choices, but the best platform depends on your needs. Before you decide on a platform, consider your budget, product catalogue, customization needs, existing website, and integration requirements.
How can I increase sales on my e-commerce website?
Starting with the fundamentals is a great place to begin. Fast-loading pages, easy navigation, clear product information, competitive delivery options, and a simple checkout process. Then use analytics and targeted digital marketing to identify where customers are finding you and where you’re losing sales.
Can a small business sell online without shipping products?
Absolutely, they can! E-commerce websites can support local customer pickup options, appointment bookings for things like massages, hair, and esthetics services, subscriptions and subscription boxes, membership payments, donations, and other transactions that don’t necessarily involve shipping physical products.
When should I start preparing my online store for the holidays?
The sooner, the better, so ideally, you would start planning and preparing at least 2-3 months beforehand. Website improvements, inventory integrations, SEO, and advertising campaigns all benefit from advance planning. Testing early also gives you time to fix problems before sales volumes increase.
Do I need a completely new website to add e-commerce?
Not necessarily. Many existing websites can be expanded with online payment and shopping functionality. The right approach depends on your current platform, the age of your website and associated software, technical condition, and what you want customers to accomplish.
Ready to Make Your E-commerce Website Work Harder?
Running a small business involves enough moving parts without having to become an expert in payment gateways, inventory synchronization, website performance, and digital advertising.
That’s where an experienced development team can make a difference.
At Digital Tea, we help businesses choose, build, improve, and market e-commerce websites that suit their actual needs. From WordPress and WooCommerce development to SEO, Google Ads, managed hosting, and ongoing website support, our Edmonton team brings over 27 years of experience to the table.
And we’re quite good at translating technical jargon into plain English.
If you’re planning improvements before the holiday rush, or simply want your online store to perform better throughout the year, let’s talk about what’s possible.
Contact Digital Tea at 780-473-4600 or [email protected] to discuss your e-commerce website and digital marketing needs.
