Is Your Website Ready for Christmas? 7 Things Small Businesses Should Do Now

I know. It’s September.

I’m not suggesting we put the tree up.

But if Christmas is an important sales period for your business, now is actually a really good time to start thinking about your website.

Every year I see businesses wait until November to start promoting Christmas offers, gift vouchers, festive workshops or seasonal services.

By then, you’re trying to create graphics, write social posts, send emails, update the website and actually run the business at the same time.

So, before things get busy, here are seven things worth sorting now.

1. Decide what you’re actually selling at Christmas

This sounds obvious, but start here.

Are you promoting:

• gift vouchers?

• Christmas workshops?

• festive products?

• party bookings?

• Christmas menus?

• seasonal packages?

• January bookings as Christmas gifts?

You don’t need to invent a Christmas offer just because everyone else has one.

But if there’s something people are likely to buy from you in the run-up to Christmas, make sure it’s easy to find.

2. Give important Christmas offers their own page

If Christmas is a significant part of your business, don’t bury everything in an Instagram post.

Create a page on your website.

For example:

Christmas Craft Workshops in Chelmsford

is much more useful than adding a small “Christmas workshops now available” banner to your homepage.

A dedicated page gives you somewhere useful to send people from social media, emails and adverts.

It also gives Google a clear page to understand if people are searching for that particular thing.

And yes, you can just hide it from your main menu and remove indexing after Christmas without deleting it completely.

3. Start thinking about Christmas SEO before December

SEO takes time.

If you want people to find your Christmas offering through Google, publishing the relevant content on 10 December probably isn’t your best strategy.

Think about the phrases people might actually search.

Things like:

• Christmas workshops Essex

• Christmas gift ideas Essex

• Christmas party venue Chelmsford

• Christmas gifts for mums

• small business Christmas gifts UK

You don’t need to stuff these phrases everywhere.

Create genuinely useful content around what you offer and use the language your customers are likely to search with.

Starting earlier gives Google time to find and understand the page.

4. Check what happens when someone buys a gift voucher

If you sell gift vouchers, go through the process yourself.

On your phone.

Can someone easily find them?

Is it obvious what the voucher can be used for?

Does it have an expiry date?

Can they choose an amount?

Can it be sent directly to the recipient?

What happens after they buy?

Christmas shopping is stressful enough. Don’t make buying from you complicated too.

And if your vouchers aren’t automated, make it very clear when and how they’ll be delivered.

Nobody wants an email on 24 December asking where their voucher is.

Including you.

5. Update your Christmas opening hours everywhere

This one is boring but important.

If your opening hours change over Christmas, make sure you update them on:

• your website

• your Google Business Profile

• your booking system

• your social media profiles, if relevant

If you’re closing completely, say so.

If you’re taking bookings but won’t respond until January, say that too.

Setting expectations properly is part of good customer service.

6. Look at your website on your phone

I bang on about this one, but for good reason.

A lot of Christmas browsing and shopping happens while people are doing something else.

Sitting on the sofa.

Waiting at school pick-up.

On their lunch break.

If your website looks beautiful on your laptop but is painful to use on a phone, you have a problem.

Check:

• Are buttons easy to tap?

• Is the text readable?

• Do pop-ups cover half the screen?

• Is checkout straightforward?

• Can someone easily contact you?

• Does everything load reasonably quickly?

Don't just resize your browser window.

Actually use your website on your phone.

7. Make a plan for January while you’re there

Christmas isn't relevant to every business.

For lots of service businesses, January is actually the bigger opportunity.

So while you're updating your website, think about what your customers will be looking for after Christmas.

A therapist might see people searching for support.

A personal trainer may see an increase in enquiries.

A business consultant might have clients wanting to finally sort out the thing they've been putting off.

And, yes, website designers get a fair few:

“Right. This is the year I finally sort my website.”

If January matters more to your business, start creating that content now instead.

You don't need to make your entire website festive

Please don't feel like your website needs snowflakes falling across the screen.

Unless that is extremely on-brand for you.

A Christmas website update can be as simple as:

• adding a seasonal landing page

• updating a homepage section

• creating a gift voucher

• checking your opening hours

• improving your mobile checkout

• writing one useful Christmas blog

• making sure people can actually find what you're promoting

Your website should support the marketing you're already planning.

Final thought

September might feel ridiculously early to think about Christmas, but that's exactly why it's useful.

You can make the changes now without doing them at 10pm one night in December while also trying to remember whether you've bought something for the teacher.

Have a look at your website this week and ask:

What will my customers need from this website between now and January?

Then make that as easy as possible for them.