10 ways to supercharge your website for Black Friday traffic and how to sell more of everything

Generating more sales is the only common goal of all business owners. Holiday season typically sees an increase in online sales, but this is even more true this year, with most households opting to shop online owing to the Covid-19 crisis.

While you may well be satisfied with the performance of your existing website, there are a number of techniques that can help you attract even more customers and make more sales. With Black Friday around the corner, and holiday season not far behind, now is the time for you to implement these techniques to make sure your business doesn’t miss out on the holiday season sales boon.

1. Revamp your website 

A festive-ready website should stand out from how your website looks all year round. But you don’t need to hire a professional web designer to add holiday spirit and joy to your website.

With GoDaddy’s Website Builder, you can easily redesign your website, even if you don’t have any coding skills. Whether this is in the shape of a new logo, custom banners, or other eye-catching elements that inform visitors of the latest products, promotions, etc., the Website Builder can help you tweak your site to spark the interest of visitors as soon as they land on your homepage.

You can also create special member only areas to offer special discounts and offers to registered users, or create new sections, or pop ups to highlight special promotions to repeat visitors.

2. Be mobile friendly 

Mobile devices amount to a large share of internet use, and according to recent studies, now add up to almost 50% of all E-commerce sales. So, it’s not enough to have a snazzy looking website on the desktop. You must provide the same user experience no matter the device it’s accessed from, if you want to convert mobile visitors into paying customers. 

You can use GoDaddy’s Website Builder to create mobile-friendly responsive websites. This means that the content on your website, especially images of products and other elements such as banners, etc. render flawlessly on all devices irrespective of the underlying software or the device’s screen size. 

3. Use pictures/reviews to entice visitors 

With GoDaddy’s Online Store, you can add as many as 5000 products with 10 images per product onto your website. This is especially helpful for products that are selected for their appearance, such as shoes, clothes or handbags, etc.

You can also use the Website Builder to add Featured Products to your website. For each product you add to your store, you’ll be able to show the sale price against the regular price, modify visibility so as to control when the products are visible to visitors on the website, keep track of inventory and even sort products into different categories.

Reviews and ratings are used to gauge a product’s worth. GoDaddy’s Website Builder will help you add reviews about your products to your website. You can opt to include reviews from external sources such as Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, etc. 

4. Make the most of Search Engine Optimization 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a popular technique used to attract visitors to your website. GoDaddy helps you improve the ranking of your website on popular search engines such as Google and Bing. It analyzes the content on your website and makes recommendations about which keywords or phrases you can use to improve your ranking. The higher your website features in the search results, the more likely it is for users to engage.

GoDaddy also lets you optimize your products for search engines by adding a SEO title and SEO description for all your products. The title will be displayed in the search engine results and the description will be shown below the hyper-link increasing the chances that users will click the link.

5. Connect with social media 

Internet users spend little more than two hours daily on social media platforms. GoDaddy’s Website Builder and Online Store can help you integrate these platforms into your website. This allows you to promote your products on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and others.

Another advantage is that your customers can follow your social media accounts, leave reviews and let their connections know about which sites they like, and why.

The Website Builder and Online Store give you the option to add like and share buttons and even the option to let your customers email your products to their connections.

You can further boost visibility for your business by using GoDaddy’s Website Builder to connect your website with Google My Business. 

6. Leverage social media marketplace 

If you are a business owner, chances are you already have a business page on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You can use GoDaddy’s Website + Marketing service to connect your website with your social media accounts. 

Any updates to the products, such as description, price, photos, etc. on the website will automatically sync with all the connected social media platforms. This ensures that customers always see current information, whether they visit your website or find your products elsewhere on the internet.

With your social media pages linked directly to your website, you’ll be able to directly sell your wares on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, without requiring customers to step away from their favourite social media hangout. 

7. Engage with your community 

There’s a lot you can learn from studying traffic on your website and social media accounts. But making sense of all that information is a tall order. A proper analysis of this information can help you identify areas that require attention to help bolster your business even more.

GoDaddy Insight is a technology system that’s designed to study and analyze different metrics such as website traffic, social media activity and online sales. It then provides recommendations to help you improve your online presence. 

GoDaddy also offers a range of monitoring tools to help you gauge your customers thoughts about your products and services. A unified interface will display your website’s Google search ranking, list Facebook likes, views and posts, provide recommendations on how to improve your online presence and more.

8. Reach more people with email marketing 

Whether it's sending a welcome email to new subscribers, wishing customers on birthdays and anniversaries, or just promoting your products, emails are an integral part of any online business.

GoDaddy’s Website builder lets you easily add a subscribe option to your website. You can then use the drag-and-drop email editor to quickly put together emails. GoDaddy also generates detailed reports to let you know which emails are opened, or get shared by your subscribers to help you gauge the effectiveness of your email strategy.

You can also configure your site to send emails that are tailored to the subscribers by analyzing their  past purchases and social media engagement with your products. You’ll also be able to keep subscribers interested by informing them about new products, upcoming sales, offers, promotions and seasonal discounts.

9. Quick checkout and multiple payment options 

The lack of flexibility in supported payment options can be a major hindrance in converting visitors into paying customers. Your business site needs to be able to securely accept payment from as many payment options as possible.

Websites designed with GoDaddy are equipped to securely handle payments from most credit cards, in addition to PayPal and Apple Pay. Mobile users have a very short patience and expect near instant performance. With GoDaddy, the checkout process is simplified and minimizes the number of taps and swipes required to checkout. 

With the Online Store, you can also the shipping method and define whether your products are eligible for free shipping, or use a flat rate, weight-based pricing. While the advantage of setting up a digital venture is that your customers aren’t confined to your geographical location, you can also configure In-person Pickup of your products for local customers. 

10. Follow up with emails 

The worst mistake a business can make is to forget about customers after completing a transaction. The second worst mistake is ignoring visitors who abandoned the site after adding products to the cart.

You can address both issues by reaching out to customers through emails. Using Website + Marketing, it’s easy to create email content that’s tailored to specific customers. You can design a cart abandonment email to get customers excited about the products they are interested in. 

Smartly designed emails can also be used to reach out to customers after they’ve completed a purchase. In addition to giving a summary of the purchased product, copy of tax invoice, etc. you can also ask customers to write a review, share the product or otherwise make a recommendation on social media platforms of their choice.

Generating tailored emails with GoDaddy go a long way in converting subscribers into paying customers, and existing customers into loyal ones.

You can also reach out to GoDaddy’s award winning support teams through email, chat or even Whatsapp (in select regions) for advice on how to get the most out of GoDaddy’s products to prepare your website for Black Friday and the holiday season.

Once your website is primed for handing the rush of the holiday season, you’re already one step closer to making more sales in 2021.