Get your online store ready for summer (1)

14/07/2022
  • If bicycles are made for summer, preparing your online store to face this curious and specific period of the year is also for this season.

  • In summer, activity in most sectors tends to decrease. It is a peculiar period, with its own characteristics, that you can turn into opportunities if you know how. Today, we would like to recommend that you spend some extra time before going on vacation to get everything ready for what is to come back to school.
     
    On this blog we have talked, for example, about preparing eCommerce for Christmas in summer; but there is much more to discuss from a tactical and strategic point of view. So let's get down to business and break it down.
  • Recommendations to get your online store ready for the summer

  • The idea is not to make a checklist exactly, but we are going to list certain aspects to take into account and certain actions to take. So that you can better prioritize them, next to each one of them we will indicate the level of impact we consider it has.
  • #1 – Make sure you have stock for when you need it

  • This is advice that can be applied to any year, but in the context we are living in, with the supply chain so affected by COVID and the armed conflict in Ukraine, this 2022 will be more critical than ever.
  • Try to have your purchases of materials and products closed in advance: going to market in the middle of the campaign may mean that your margin will suffer or, in the worst case scenario, that you will not be able to meet the demand of your customers.

    PRIORITY: High
  • #2 – Check if your store is scalable

  • A typical and logical part of peak traffic times is to find that the site is not able to absorb these extra visits with solvency.
     
    We recommend that you work in summer to test how flexible your site and hosting are. You need to be sure that the experience for your customers is always going to be equally positive, no matter how many there are.
     
    Talk to your provider and also find out about their ability to adapt to seasonal expansion of the infrastructure if needed. And remember that with Oleoshop you will have no problem accommodating that additional traffic.

    PRIORITY: Medium
  • #3 – Check your processes

  • In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it is much more difficult to take that moment of calm to review what, how and why you do it.
     
    During the summer you can take the time you do not usually have to audit your processes. You will always find some that are not optimal, things that have started to be done in a certain way but that could be more productive if done in another way.
  • Every minute you can gain now by solving bottlenecks, you will be grateful to yourself when the number of orders to manage increases. Your ability to be efficient will grow exponentially.

    PRIORITY: High
  • #4 – Renegotiate with your suppliers

  • It is similar to the previous point, but in this case we look more for profitability than productivity (although they usually go together).
     
    As with processes, the daily dynamics makes us prioritize the operational. For this reason, you may not have realized to what extent you enjoy the best conditions (or not) with your suppliers. Check the rates and conditions of suppliers, manufacturers, logistics, distribution...
     
    You can probably "squeeze" them a little to have a higher margin. Obviously, it will be better to do it now than in the middle of the campaign, when they have the upper hand.
     
    PRIORITY: Medium-high
  • #5 – Evaluate adding new tools

  • If you are thinking of adding some new solutions into your business ecosystem, it is better to implement them now rather than at a time when the activity will cause a mistake to have much more serious consequences.
     
    This affects what works directly with your eCommerce, such as modules or plugins, and also what works at another, more enterprise level, such as ERPs (enterprise resource planning systems) or CRMs (customer relationship managers).
     
    Summer is ideal for testing the implementation of third-party tools.
     
     PRIORITY: Medium
  • #6 – Review and prepare your content

  • ere again we act at two levels: transactional content (texts and product images) and more informative and aspirational content, such as blog posts, glossaries or the FAQ section.
     
    Start by auditing what you already have by looking at aspects such as:
    • Does this text obey a specific search intent?
    • Do I have several pages fighting for the same intent?
    • Is it of appropriate length or should I complete it?
    • Is the information hierarchical with appropriate headings?
    • Is it readable or too dense?
    • Are these photos the right size?
    • Am I using images? How many? Are they the best possible?
    • Do the photos have all the attributes such as Alt Text?
  • Looking ahead to the content to generate in the coming months, I have to recommend once again that you build an editorial calendar.

     PRIORITY: Medium
  • #7 – Let's be legal

  • This is another issue that you need to keep up to date, but as regulations change and are updated with some frequency, you had better do a little audit on that aspect.
     
    Just make sure that you are operating within a secure legal framework, that the minimums are guaranteed in the legal texts and that the procedures you use are in line with the current data protection framework, for example.

     PRIORITY: High
  • I think these tasks are enough to get you started, but we are not done yet. Do you want a second part of this post? Do not miss it!

  • Images: Unsplash.

Miguel Nicolás


Miguel Nicolás O'Shea is a life-long copywriter (more than 15 years working in agencies) and a specialist in Search Marketing (SEO and PPC). From now on, he will contribute with his online marketing experience to Oleoshop, publishing regularly.

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