Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute. And today we're talking about how to make sure your local website captures the vital holiday shopping rush instead of sending customers right to your competition. It sounds a little dramatic, but for businesses all across the central coast, you know, from Pasa Roblaes down to Santa Maria, the stakes really couldn't be higher. We're doing a deep dive on your digital storefront, because I mean, the date is pretty stark. Something like 93% of small businesses say the holiday season is just absolutely vital to their success. So if a shopper, especially a stressed out holiday shopper, finds a slow, broken or confusing website, that money just walks right out the digital door. Okay, so let's unpack this and give our neighbors here in Essela County, a quick checklist. The mission for this deep dive is to make sure our local businesses capture their full share of that buying frenzy, right to really leverage the fact that they're local and accessible and have that polished, trust worthy digital storefront that's ready for the rush. That is exactly the goal. And we have to start with the absolute foundation, the thing that causes people to leave immediately, we call it performance and accessibility. You can't lose them before they even start exactly. You just can't. I think the number one, the mandatory checkup has to be mobile performance. This is just it's non-negotiable. Now I've seen the numbers for peak shopping days. And here's the fact that keeps me up at night. 70% of holiday shopping traffic comes from mobile devices. 70% if your site doesn't work perfectly on an iPhone or an Android, you're literally turning away seven out of every 10 potential customers. And you know, the bar for what works perfectly even means is just incredibly high on mobile. It's not enough that the site just loads. You have to really test the experience. What do you mean by that? I mean, pull out your own smartphone and use your site like your frantic shopper. Can you actually read the text without pinching and zooming? Are the buttons big enough so you don't fat finger the wrong one? Is it easy to navigate on that small screen?
[2:00]
And more importantly, can you find the critical information? We talk about that three second rule all the time. Can someone find your phone number or say your shop address in downtown San Luis Obispo or a royal grande in under three seconds? If the answer is no, you are actively creating friction. And you have to think about the psychological costs to the customer. They're already stressed. Right. They hit a small button or they can't find your hours and they immediately just default to the path of least resistance. And that's usually the competitor whose site is just easier to use. That convenience factor. It outweighs almost everything else during the rush, which brings us straight to the site's overall health. Load speed time is literally money during the holidays, especially when people are browsing on, you know, spotty Wi-Fi or maybe weak cell service out on the edges of the county. It absolutely is. I mean, the data just keeps reinforcing this idea about 53% of users. That's more than half will just abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Wow. So half your customers are gone before they even see what you're selling. Exactly. You've lost them before they even see your beautiful holiday offerings. That fact alone should force every local business owner to prioritize speed. But how does a business owner who isn't, you know, a web developer, how do they fix a sluggish site? They don't have time for complex coding. That's a fair point. And you don't need to learn JavaScript. The most common culprit. And I mean, by far is large images. You might have these gorgeous high resolution photos of your handmade items or your food. But if they haven't been properly optimized for the web, they're just dragging the entire site to a screeching halt. So we're not talking about making the pictures smaller on the page. We're talking about the file size, the actual data weight of the image. Precisely. You want the smallest file size you can get will keep in the quality. A quick practical step is using free tools online like tiny PNG. Or if your site supports it, save your images in a modern format
[4:01]
like web P, they load incredibly fast. The goal is just fast pages period. Right. Respect the customer's time, especially when they're in a rush. Okay. So we've covered performance. The site loads fast. It works on mobile. Now the customer is there. But if the information is confusing or outdated, that speed won't matter. That brings us to credibility and trust. Trust signals are everything. And they start with the absolute basics. If a customer needs to know of your open on Christmas Eve, their first stop is your contact info. We have to verify that it's current and easy to find. That sounds so simple. But I see this missed all the time. What's that like the crucial checklist for that? Well, you have to double check every detail. Are your special holiday hours clearly posted, maybe in a banner at the top, not buried in some blog posts from last year? Does the phone number on your site actually ring the right line? Is the physical address accurate on your contact page and your Google maps listing? And here's the one people forget. If someone actually checking the contact email quickly during the busy season, the risk there is huge. If a customer tries to call your shop down and grow her beach and the line is busy, or they email and get no response for two days, they don't just wait. No, they don't. They move on immediately to someone who is easier to do business with. It just signals that the business is well neglected. And speaking of a neglect, let's talk about forms. Any interaction with a customer has to type something in a contact form, an appointment request, an online order. It has to be tested today. Why is that so critical? If it worked last month, shouldn't it work now? Forms are, they're surprisingly fragile. They can break from a small software update or server changes or even aggressive spam filters. You have to submit a test. Does it actually go through? Or do you receive it? And for trust, this is critical. Does the customer get an immediate confirmation email that says we got your request? A broken form just screams this business isn't paying attention. And that negative first impression sticks, which feeds right into the overall
[6:03]
first impression of the site. I read this fascinating research. We judge websites even faster than we judge people. Something like 94% of first impressions are design related and they're formed in 0.05 seconds faster than a blink of an eye. It's true. Before they read a single word, they've already decided they trust you are not. That tiny fraction of a second determines whether they stay or hit the back button. So it doesn't have to be flashy. No, not at all. But it has to look current. It has to look trustworthy. It can't look like it was designed in, you know, 2008. So if your site has old fonts or clashing colors or things just look clunky on a modern screen, you're failing that 0.05 second. Trust test. Exactly. It needs to be clean, simple and professional. I mean, think of it as your digital storefront for your boutique in Pismo beach. You wouldn't let your physical store look rundown and dusty during the holidays. Your website is no different. And visuals are everything for holiday shoppers. So my next point is reviewing your photos and images, not just for speed, but for quality for sure. High quality professional images are non-negotiable. If you're selling jewelry or custom crafts, those photos need to be bright, well lit. They need to show detail. Shakey, grainy, cell phone pictures, just signal low quality. And you need to check for those little technical failures that signal neglect. Yes. Verify that images load correctly on both desktop and mobile. A pixelated photo or worse, a broken image link with that little missing file icon. It's an instant trust killer. It tells the shopper your whole business might be mismanaged. Okay. So we fixed the speed. We've built some trust and the customer is now ready to buy. Let's shift from credibility to action, marketing and conversion. We've got them to the site. How do we make sure they become a paying customer? By making the next step completely brainless, the goal is to eliminate any decision fatigue. You need a clear call to action or CTA that requires absolutely no hunting around.
[8:04]
So the business owner needs to first decide what's the number one goal for this page? Is it call, visit, buy or book? Precisely. And that goal has to be immediately obvious. If you're a restaurant or a spot, that book online button needs to be visually dominant, maybe even sticky. So it stays on the screen when you scroll, not buried at the bottom of a long page of text. Oh, that's an extremely common and very expensive mistake. If the customer has to search for five seconds just to figure out how to give you their money, you've made it too hard. Think of that hurried shopper in a parking lot in a taskadero trying to buy a gift card. They need that button now. And now for the holiday specific advice. This one is easy to forget, but so damaging promotions. You have to update and retire them effectively. This is so critical. First, your current specials, your gift bundles, your extended holiday hours, they need to be front and center. But the most important step for trust is taking down expired promotions immediately. Can you give me an example of that trust breakdown? I see it every single year. Imagine landing on a local businesses site on, say, December 15th. And there's a huge banner for their Black Friday mega sale. Oh, that's bad. It's a terrible signal. It says nobody has even looked at this website for weeks. You've just broken all that trust we worked to build. The shopper will assume all the other info hours, inventory prices might also be weeks at a date. That's a great point. It just signals nobody is home. So to make shopping easier and really capture those sales, what about adding like specific holiday pages or gift guides? That's a brilliant conversion strategy, especially for those time pressed shoppers who are just suffering from decision fatigue. You know they want to buy a gift, but they don't know what to buy. You have to solve that problem for them. So how does that look for, say, a product business versus a service business? If you sell physical items, create a simple curated gift guide, organize it by how people shop gifts under $50 for the home shift, something like that. For a service provider like a spa, highlight gift card packages or holiday bundles,
[10:07]
you're just simplifying the path to purchase for them. You're not making them browse 50 different things. Exactly. You've handed them a beautifully wrapped list of 10 ideas that dramatically increases the chance they buy from you. Okay. Finally, let's talk about the absolute high stakes week. Planning for the last minute shoppers. The procrastinators are also the most desperate and let's be honest, often the most profitable. That week leading up to Christmas is pure gold. These shoppers have extreme urgency and they're willing to pay for convenience and for certainty. Your site has to be their lifeline. So what information do these frantic shoppers need to see immediately? Certainty. You need to clearly clarify three things right on your homepage. One, shipping cutoffs, state the date and time. Two, in store pickup options. If they can order online and pick up your storefront in Moro Bay, make that process crystal clear. And three, you're extended holiday hours. Don't make them dig for it. Absolutely not. And you should even create a distinct last minute gift section. Curate a list of items that are guaranteed to be in stock or only for local pickup. You're actively converting those frantic visitors because you saved the day when all the national shipping guarantees already failed them. That is a fantastic comprehensive list. I know for a busy owner here on the Central Coast, this might sound overwhelming. It covers everything from file compression to psychology. It can feel like a lot. But here's the good news. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be better than everyone else. And the data actually supports that, right? It does. Studies show that something like 65% of major retail sites fail basic mobile performance tests during the holidays. And these are companies with entire web teams. They're sending customers away. And the people here in SLO County are hungry for good local options. So by just making sure your mobile site works, your pages load fast and your info is clear. Local businesses can actually get a huge competitive advantage over the big national chains. The bottom line is this. Your website is your hardest working employee this holiday season.
[12:08]
It's either working for you, collecting revenue and building trust or it's actively working against you. There really is no middle ground. And if this all feels like too much, that's okay. Not every business owner should also be their own web person. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache, here's the better way. At yougrow.pro, we build it, we manage it, and we handle every update for ever all for just $79 a month. And there is zero set up fee, no contract lock in. And it is strictly month to month. So there is zero risk. We're local here in AG and we can have you live in days, not months. Want to see what your site could look like. Go to yougrow.pro right now and we'll design three custom mockups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. And before you go, just think about this. If 70% of traffic is mobile, how much of your actual revenue do you think still comes from desktop users? The future of sales on the central coast and everywhere else is literally in the palm of your customer's hand. Thanks for listening and keep growing.