Halloween is next week, which means Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and the holiday shopping rush are right around the corner. For many small businesses, November and December bring the busiest weeks of the year, and more and more of that traffic starts online. Whether customers are looking for gift ideas, checking your holiday hours, or booking a seasonal service, your website is often their first stop.
The good news: there’s still time to get your site ready. Here’s a practical checklist to work through before the rush begins.
1. Test Your Site on a Phone, Not Just a Desktop
Most holiday shoppers browse on their phones, often while they’re out running errands. Pull up your website on your own phone and try to do what a customer would: find a product, get directions, call you, or complete a purchase. If anything is hard to tap, slow to load, or buried three menus deep, fix it now. A mobile-friendly site isn’t optional anymore. It’s where the sale happens or doesn’t.
2. Speed Things Up
Slow sites lose customers, and that loss is felt most during high-traffic periods. Compress oversized images, remove plugins you no longer use, and make sure your caching is set up properly. If your hosting struggled during last year’s peak, now is the time to talk about an upgrade, not on Black Friday morning.
3. Update Your Holiday Hours Everywhere
Few things frustrate a customer more than driving to a store that’s closed. Post your holiday hours on your website, and update them on your Google Business Profile too. Google shows those hours directly in search results and Maps, so keeping them accurate helps you show up and builds trust with local shoppers.
4. Put Your Offers Front and Center
If you’re running a holiday sale, gift card promotion, or seasonal special, don’t make visitors hunt for it. Add a clear banner or homepage section with a strong call to action, like “Shop Holiday Gifts” or “Book Before December 15.” Consider a dedicated landing page for each promotion so you can link to it from emails, social posts, and ads.
5. Double-Check Checkout and Contact Forms
Run a test order or form submission from start to finish. Confirm that payment processing works, confirmation emails arrive, and form submissions actually reach your inbox. A broken form during your busiest season means lost revenue you’ll never know about.
6. Tighten Up Security and Back Up Your Site
Online fraud and attacks tend to spike during the holidays. Update WordPress, your theme, and your plugins, confirm your SSL certificate is valid, and make sure you have a recent, working backup. If something goes wrong in mid-December, a good backup can get you back online in minutes instead of days.
7. Set Up Tracking So You Can Learn From the Season
Make sure Google Analytics and conversion tracking are working before traffic picks up. Use UTM parameters on your email and social links so you can see which campaigns actually drive sales. The data you collect this season is the roadmap for next year’s planning.
8. Plan Your Holiday Marketing Calendar
Map out your key dates now so you aren’t scrambling later:
- Black Friday (November 27) and Small Business Saturday (November 28)
- Cyber Monday (November 30)
- Last-day-to-order shipping deadlines in mid-December
- Last-minute gift card pushes the week before Christmas
- New Year’s promotions to carry momentum into January
Schedule your emails, social posts, and any Google Ads campaigns in advance so your marketing keeps running even when you’re busy serving customers.
Need a Hand Before the Rush?
At Solnet Web Design, we help small businesses make sure their websites are fast, secure, and ready to convert, especially when it matters most. From quick speed and security tune-ups to holiday landing pages, Google Business Profile updates, and PPC campaigns, we can help you make this your best season yet.
Contact us today to schedule a pre-holiday website check-up. There’s still time, but not much!
