The holiday shopping season may still feel a few months away, but for ecommerce businesses, now is the time to start preparing.
From website design and email marketing to paid advertising, shopping feeds, SEO, and social media, there are plenty of moving pieces to get ready before holiday shoppers arrive. And the earlier you start, the more time you have to test your strategy, optimize your campaigns, and build anticipation with customers.
In our recent Peak Season Playbook: Ecommerce Tips for Holiday Success webinar, Volusion teamed up with Marketing 360 experts Andrew Elkins and Tyler Rasdon to share practical strategies for getting your online store holiday-ready.
Here are seven key takeaways from the webinar.
1. Start Your Holiday Website Prep Early
Your website is often the first place shoppers will see your holiday promotions, so make sure it’s ready before the season is in full swing.
A good starting point is a prominent homepage banner that clearly communicates your holiday offer and directs shoppers to the appropriate promotion or product page. The goal is to make it immediately obvious what you’re offering and where shoppers should go next.
For paid campaigns, consider creating a dedicated landing page or “squeeze page” for a specific promotion. Keeping the page focused on one offer can reduce distractions and help shoppers take action.
The webinar experts recommended having holiday website designs ready to go by early October. But the real takeaway is simple: don’t wait until the last minute.
Having your graphics, banners, landing pages, and promotional creative prepared in advance gives you more time to review, test, and improve them before the holiday rush.
2. Build Anticipation With Email Marketing
During the holidays, your customers’ inboxes are going to be crowded. Instead of relying on one promotional email, consider creating a multi-email holiday journey that builds anticipation over time.
For example, you might:
- Introduce your upcoming holiday promotion
- Build excitement around what’s coming
- Reveal the offer
- Create urgency as the deadline approaches
- Send a final reminder
You can also use conditional email journeys to tailor messages based on customer behavior. Someone who clicks your first email might receive a different follow-up than someone who doesn’t engage.
And don’t assume the opportunity ends when the promotion does. A post-holiday email can help capture shoppers who missed the original offer, whether you extend the promotion or simply remind customers that there’s still time to shop.
3. Get Your PPC Campaigns Ready in September
Paid advertising can generate traffic quickly, but successful holiday campaigns require preparation.
For Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other major promotions, the webinar experts recommended beginning PPC preparation as early as September.
Before launching, review:
- Ad copy and creative
- Promotional extensions
- Free-shipping offers
- Holiday bundles and packages
- Campaign budgets
- Remarketing audiences
- Past and repeat shoppers
When creating your ads, make your promotions easy to understand. If you offer free shipping, highlight it in your headlines and extensions. You can also use structured snippets to communicate information such as return policies and holiday shipping deadlines.
Don’t overlook remarketing, either. Past customers, lapsed shoppers, and people who have already visited your website can be valuable audiences during the holidays.
4. Use Holiday Bundles to Increase Average Order Value
Holiday shoppers are already looking for gifts, which makes the season a natural opportunity to experiment with product bundles.
Bundles can help increase average order value while giving shoppers an easy solution for gift buying.
When creating holiday bundles, consider both the customer experience and your margins. Look at which products generate the most interest, which combinations make sense together, and which bundles have the potential to generate the highest profit.
You can also use your analytics to identify products that shoppers have already shown interest in and build complementary bundles around them.
The goal isn’t simply to sell more products. It’s to create a compelling offer that makes sense for the customer while increasing the value of each order.
5. Clean Up Your Shopping Feeds Before the Rush
Your holiday campaigns are only as strong as the product information behind them.
Before the season gets busy, review your shopping feed and make sure your product information is accurate and complete.
Pay particular attention to:
- High-resolution product images
- Descriptive, keyword-friendly titles
- Product descriptions
- GTINs and MPNs
- Product variants
- Colors and other attributes
- Inventory availability
It’s also important to make sure your products can be crawled and indexed by the search networks you’re using.
If you have limited time, prioritize the highest-selling and highest-margin products first. These are the products where optimizing your feed can have the greatest potential impact.
And don’t wait until the holidays are underway to submit your promotions. Merchant Center promotions can sometimes require approval or troubleshooting, so getting them set up early gives you time to address potential issues.
6. Give Your Holiday SEO a Head Start
SEO takes time, which means waiting until November to optimize your holiday content can leave you playing catch-up.
Start building your holiday SEO strategy now.
Create evergreen holiday content and landing pages that can continue providing value year after year. Avoid building an entire SEO strategy around a promotion that will disappear after one season unless you plan to reuse that offer.
When creating holiday pages, research the keywords your customers are actually searching for and incorporate them naturally throughout the page.
Pay attention to:
- URLs
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- H1 and H2 headings
- Page copy
- Image alt text
Keeping these elements aligned around the same topic helps search engines understand what your page is about.
And remember that SEO doesn’t stop on your website. Relevant backlinks, guest content, product reviews, video, social media, and email marketing can all help drive additional attention to your holiday content.
7. Meet Holiday Shoppers Where They Are on Social Media
Social media can play an important role in holiday discovery and sales, particularly when you’re using content that’s easy to shop.
The webinar covered several opportunities across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
On TikTok, consider partnering with creators to produce user-generated content, affiliate gift guides, shoppable videos, or live shopping events. Holiday product bundles can also give you something specific to feature during live streams.
On Facebook and Instagram, take advantage of product tagging, Reels, creator partnerships, and remarketing campaigns. User-generated content can help make your products feel more authentic while giving shoppers another path to purchase.
And don’t overlook Pinterest. Pinterest users often plan their purchases well in advance, making it a particularly valuable platform for early holiday inspiration. Start publishing gift ideas, product bundles, and upcoming promotions early enough for shoppers to save and revisit them.
Don’t Forget the Checkout Experience
Once you’ve done the work to bring shoppers to your store, don’t let a complicated checkout get in the way.
During the holiday rush, every unnecessary click or distraction can create friction.
Take some time to walk through your own checkout process from a customer’s perspective. Look for:
- Unnecessary pop-ups
- Slow-loading pages
- Extra steps
- Confusing navigation
- Anything that makes completing a purchase harder than it needs to be
The simpler the path to purchase, the better.
Protect Your Margins When Planning Promotions
One of the most important reminders from the webinar was that more sales don’t automatically mean more revenue or profit.
Before launching a discount, determine how much additional volume you’ll need to make up for the reduced margin.
You can also consider alternatives to a straightforward percentage-off promotion, such as:
- Tiered discounts
- Product bundles
- Exclusive offers for VIP customers
- Free shipping
- Discounting a lower-margin accessory with a higher-ticket product
For example, instead of giving an automatic discount to an existing customer who was already planning to purchase, you could offer an exclusive bundle or another perk that provides additional value without unnecessarily cutting into your margin.
Start Preparing Now
Holiday success isn’t about launching one great Black Friday ad or creating one compelling promotion. It’s about making sure all the pieces of your ecommerce strategy are working together before the season gets busy.
Start with your website. Build your email campaigns. Prepare your paid advertising. Clean up your shopping feeds. Get your SEO content underway. Plan your social strategy. And most importantly, give yourself enough time to test and make adjustments.
The holidays will be here before you know it.
Want more holiday ecommerce tips? Watch the full Peak Season Playbook: Ecommerce Tips for Holiday Success webinar replay to hear Andrew Elkins and Tyler Rasdon share additional strategies, examples, and answers to real merchant questions.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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