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Now that Halloween is right around the corner, it’s time to get serious about the holiday shopping season. A quarter of all holiday shoppers started researching gift ideas in October and 89% of those shoppers research products online. Over half of holiday shopping website traffic came between November 1 and 23.

12% of holiday shoppers are looking for home improvement/tools to purchase as gifts. Is your hardware retail website ready for holiday shoppers?

We outline 4 ways to get your website ready for holiday shoppers and provide a brief checklist for each so you can ensure your customers have a great shopping experience.

1. Put Products Prominently on Display

Hardware holiday shopping doesn’t need to be hard. Holiday shoppers are looking for product images, product information and reviews.

• 58% customers say the company’s website is their preferred method to engage with the company. It was the #1 choice, surpassing telephone, email, in-person and Social Media.

• 47% consumers visit a company’s website to research products online before deciding to purchase online.

• 96% of holiday shoppers read product reviews on retailer websites; 25% said these reviews helped make gift purchase decisions

Holiday Prep Checklist:

•  Incorporate holiday décor into website images
•  Use high-quality image galleries for each product
•  Make the product catalog easy to navigate

2. Enable Ecommerce

Ecommerce is growing in importance for holiday shoppers.

• Internet shopping was the #1 holiday gift shopping channel in 2016, surpassing department stores, outlet stores, and toy stores.

• Free shipping enticed 64% of holiday shoppers to make a purchase last year. Other reasons holiday shoppers were convince d to buy a gift:

• Limited-time sale/promotion motivated 50%

• Buy online and pick up in-store encouraged 33%

• Free gift with purchase convinced 25%

Holiday Prep Checklist:

•  Ensure that ecommerce functionality is bug-free
•  Designate personnel to regularly monitor transactions and order fulfillment
•  Put up new promotions throughout the holiday shopping season
•  Consider offering free gift wrapping as an incentive to purchase online and pick up in-store

3. Look for Lists

Lists add both value and convenience for holiday shoppers. Remember that holiday shoppers still have personal shopping lists!

• 63% of holiday shoppers want to utilize more retailer online wish lists/registries for purchasing gifts in the future, which is almost 2/3 of all shoppers.

• The majority of holiday shoppers bought an item that a retailer recommended, with 58% of men and 51% of women more likely to do so.

• Over 70% of holiday shoppers bought gifts for themselves during the holiday season.

Holiday Prep Checklist:

•  Prepare gift/wish lists with ideas and gift suggestions (think about bundling gift sets together)
•  Distribute your gift lists to your customers as gift inspiration via your digital marketing channels
•  Make sure your customers’ shopping list website function is bug-free & is easy to add items from your recommended gifts and promotions

4. Responsive-Ready

Smartphone use is becoming more prevalent in all stages of customers’ shopping experiences. That’s why it’s important to ensure your website is responsive (automatically adjusts to the device used to view the website). 

• Almost 2/3 of customers used a mobile device to look for holiday gifts in 2016, an 18% increase in mobile product searches from 2015. More than half of customers use a smartphone to monitor deals, which is a 15% increase from 2015.

• Conversions fall by 12% for every 1 second delay in site load time and 53% of people will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

• 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site after a negative experience. 40% will go to a competitor’s site.

Holiday Prep Checklist:

•  Designate a team member to view your website from a mobile device
•  Double-check that product information, list functions and ecommerce are easy to use from a mobile device
•  Check your mobile website’s site speed