Easter is fast approaching and while most view this as a time to relax, for e-commerce businesses this provides a key sales moment for the year.  According to studies conducted by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) there is a clear influx in sales over Easter, with revenue increasing by over 10% in April during previous years. Safe to say, Easter is a major business opportunity for the spring season.

On average around Europe, people will take four days off work and school whilst celebrating Easter; using their downtime to unwind, spending extra time on social media and browsing the internet. This is an increase in traffic that your ecommerce business needs to be prepared for in order to stand out from the crowd. The best place to start is with a bit of housekeeping. Ensuring your website has a fast load speed will assist in making the most of the increased traffic flow. Measuring the performance of your website’s top pages is always a good place to start; PageSpeed Insights is an easy and effective way of gauging how fast your load time is on mobile and desktops, providing you with opportunities of exactly how and where you can improve. Page speed is not only important for overall user experience but will also factor into your search engine ranking, with browsers favouring swifter sites and efficient load times. These benefits can also be seen lowering user bounce rates, with impatient online shoppers favouring faster and more accessible content, especially during the holiday seasons.

Easter is for the on the move shoppers

Over Easter, people generally spend a lot of time with family and friends being more likely to conduct searches and online shopping from a mobile device rather than a desktop – For Easter shopping success it’s vital to ensure your site is mobile friendly. Evaluate your website’s layout to ensure all content is accessible from a mobile device, while using a responsive design allows you to create a site that can be easily viewed across different platforms using flexible layouts and images that automatically adjust based on user device. Consumers who are shopping from a mobile device tend to have a shortened attention span in comparison to the desktop browsers so be sure to include plenty of high resolution eye-catching images and keep the text to a minimum. When it comes to mobile optimization, never stop testing your format. It’s important to assess performance across multiple devices and operating systems, putting yourself in the shoes of your customers.

Relevancy, Repetition, Results

With the increase in searches over the Easter, another way to increase traffic to your ecommerce store is through reviewing the meta data and descriptions of your site. Researching into close competitors and analysing the meta tags of those appearing higher in searches is an effective way to gain an insight into what is working and what is not. Keep a keen focus on relevancy, ensuring you are including the search terms that you would like to appear in and repeat, repeat, repeat. The more relevant your site appears to search engines, the higher you’ll appear receiving more clicks and more conversions over the Easter period.

Easter isn’t just about eggs

Looking back at the figures, it’s safe to say that Easter presents a major sales opportunity and not just for chocolate eggs. Optimising your site before the holidays will play a vital part in its success, be sure to evaluate the relevance, speed and format of your content before Easter is upon us.

Kelkoo Group has 20 years’ experience in ecommerce, digital advertising and consumer analytics. We can support your entire campaign, from set up through to tracking sales and conversion data to help you get the results your online store needs to succeed. Why not get in touch to find out more about how our product portfolio can drive quality traffic to your online store.