Why should you optimise your website and email for Christmas?
Although your website and emails are supposed to be optimised for mobile throughout the year, there’s no better time to make sure that they are than at Christmas. This is for a number of reasons, primarily the increase in shoppers using mobile. In 2014, 67% of Australians used their mobile devices to shop during the festive season. The same year, the UK’s mobile sales shot up by 33.54% during Boxing Day.
What these figures show is that mobile’s popularity is not isolated. It’s global. In fact here is data to prove it.
It’s lucrative
Black Friday
Compared to 2013, mobile purchases were two times higher in 2014. This figure rose even higher in 2015 where shoppers spent a whopping $2.72bn online during Thanksgiving and Black Friday. A third of that ($906 million) was from mobile. Compared to 2014, that is a 70% increase.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Mondays sales didn’t disappoint. Compared to Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday generated $3.1bn online.
Customers want to use their mobile devices to shop online. And they want to do it seamlessly. Therefore, your online business needs to optimise its website and emails to facilitate the consumer’s needs during Christmas.
You’ve got competition
Besides optimising mobile for Christmas being profitable, you also need to do it because of the competition. As there are more shoppers using their phones to purchase Christmas goods, not having a responsive website will chase them away.
Data shows that 48% of users in 2012 saw unresponsive sites as an indication that the business didn’t care. That overwhelming figure could, as a result of an unresponsive site, leave to the competition.
Google prefers responsive design
If you’re not familiar with Google’s Mobilegeddon algorithm, then you should start reading up on it. It’s the search engines answer to mobile browsing. The algorithm gives more preference to websites that function and load faster on mobile, among other features. This means that an optimised site ranks higher than one that doesn’t. And for Christmas, you want your website to rank on search.
Prioritising mobile friendly web design won’t only benefit your business in December, but throughout the year. It’s an ongoing exercise that you should prioritise to ensure that customers enjoy a seamless experience when browsing your website on mobile devices.
