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More than half of holiday shoppers have already started researching their holiday gift purchases and nearly 9 in 10 of those shoppers research products online. 54% of holiday shopping website traffic came between November 1 and 23.

21% of holiday shoppers are looking for furniture/home décor gifts. Is your furniture 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

This may sound like a no-brainer, but how a retailer handles its online products impacts sales. Holiday shoppers are looking for product images, product information and reviews.

• 50% of consumers spend between 3 days and 2 weeks gathering info to enable a mattress purchase decision (Internet search and visiting retailers’ websites are among the 5 most-used research methods).

• Mobile searches related to "best furniture" and "furniture reviews" have grown over 50% year over year, and 8 in 10 home furnishing shoppers viewed product images.

• 31% of furniture purchasers research online then buy in-store (webrooming), almost twice as many as the 19% of furniture shoppers who showroom, or look at products in-store and buy online for a lower price elsewhere.

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 both holiday shoppers and furniture shoppers in general. The right incentive will boost sales.

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

• Furniture ecommerce increased 50% from 2013 to 2016.

• Free shipping enticed 64% of holiday shoppers to make a purchase last year. Other reasons holiday shoppers were convinced 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

3. Look for Lists

Lists add both value and convenience for holiday shoppers. They should be easy to find and use.

• 63% of holiday shoppers want to utilize more retailer online wish lists/registries for purchasing gifts in the future.

• 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.

Holiday Prep Checklist:

•  Prepare gift/wish lists with ideas and gift suggestions
•  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.

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