We are nearing what most e-tailers consider the MAKE IT OR BREAK IT part of their fiscal year. Here’s how you can optimize your e-commerce Volusion or BigCommerce site for the holidays…I feel a little like Bing Crosby minus the voice…oh, and the entire character.

Why do agencies/companies like us do this year after year? There are always people who never listen, there are always new people in this arena and recapitulation is good for your mind.

1. Do a quick SEO audit to make sure you are on point for the holidays. If we designed your site, it’s has already been done. No worries.
2. Bring your AdWords into Holiday mode. What the bleep does this mean? Contact us. It requires a deeper conversation.
3. Look at your search controls. Are you displaying more results than are necessary in a typical search query? Most users will re-search if they don’t see anything in 3-4 rows of results*. Which means you can cut your bandwidth by a decent % by simply displaying the most relevant results which usually stop being relevant in most e-commerce search indexes by about the 7th result.
4. Look at your images. Are they optimized for the some serious pageviews? Is there anyway you can get the file size down another 10-20%?
5. Based on last year or even last month, what sort of bandwidth do you need? I would double what you are doing now or last year during the holidays and put that into perspective. Contact Volusion and BigCommerce for upgrades if need be.
6. What specials are you going to run? Do you have a pre-season discount, a “we-are-in-the-thick-of-it” discount and a last minute (e.g. December 11th on..) discount? You should.
7. A nice holiday touch is to add some design assets to the site which are obvious elements of the holiday season. Users love that. I LOVE THAT!
8. Is your check-out funnel optimized? Have you added a “I don’t have Javascript enabled NOSCRIPT”? Have you removed all unnecessary chatter from the checkout process?

Does anyone have Anything to Add?

*All of this is based on colleagues and my e-comm experience. This is not Godspeak. I simply make decisions on what I have learned since 1996. Blah.