12 Best Tips for Your eCommerce Holiday Planning 2025

eCommerce holiday planning is essential because customers actively look for deals and promotions.

93% of shoppers use a coupon or discount code during the year ~ Statista

Stand out in the competitive online selling landscape with the power of eCommerce Holiday Planning. These unique occasions provide the perfect excuse to offer exciting deals and promotions, delighting your customers and outperforming the competition.

From traditional holidays to quirky celebrations like Chocolate Cake Day (27 January), embrace these opportunities to bring a burst of excitement to your store.

In this article, we’ll guide you through eCommerce Holiday Planning and explore a treasure map of lesser-known strategies with examples and resources to spark your creativity.

Let’s Dive in…

Mark, as you go…

a) eCommerce Holiday Planning: Planning Before Holidays

The festive & holiday season is around the corner. So, your site will experience an unusual surge in traffic, making your hands busy for a while. That’s why any changes you want to make to your website should be done now for successful holiday marketing campaigns.

1. Prepare For A Spike In Demand

As the holiday season approaches, preparing your eCommerce website to handle a massive influx of traffic is crucial for a successful sales season. A sluggish website can lead to frustrated shoppers, abandoned carts, and missed sales opportunities. This is where eCommerce mobile optimization and the importance of mobile optimization for eCommerce websites play a key role.

First, conduct a detailed website performance audit to identify any potential bottlenecks. Address issues like large image files, excessive plugins, and outdated scripts that may slow down your site.

Next, optimize your server capacity. Check with your hosting provider to ensure your server can handle the anticipated increase in traffic. Consider upgrading your plan or switching to a dedicated server if necessary.

Implement caching mechanisms to store frequently accessed data temporarily. Caching reduces server load and speeds up page loads.

And don’t forget to optimize your eCommerce website for mobile devices with a responsive design.

To do:

• Perform load testing to simulate heavy traffic and identify performance issues in advance. This allows you to make necessary improvements before the holiday rush.
• Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute website content across multiple servers globally. This ensures faster loading times for users, regardless of their location.
• Enable lazy loading for images to prioritize critical content and reduce initial page load times.
• Minimize redirects and broken links, as they can negatively impact user experience and website performance.
• Finally, enable Gzip compression to reduce file sizes and speed up data transmission to users’ browsers.

Also, facilitating effective user navigation through website structure improvement ensures that visitors can shop without frustration.

2. Add “Coming Soon” Pages

Have you ever thought about how your site’s landing pages affect Conversion Rate Optimization CRO? Remember, personalization and newness bring eCommerce site conversion. Create coming soon pages to inform visitors about the new product launch or any upcoming deals and offers.

Let your customers sign up or subscribe to get the latest updates. As their interest is piqued, it will greatly increase the engagement and conversion potential.

3. Analyze Last Year’s Holiday Marketing Keyword Performance

Analyze keyword performance for the perfect eCommerce Holiday Planning from last year. You will need to review the keywords that rank well in 2025, while also keeping an eye on the latest trends in holiday marketing campaigns for local businesses.

To-do:

• Use Google Search Console to filter out the last 12 months of search volumes.
• Measure your keyword performance in Google Analytics.
• Focus on getting authority backlinks through email marketing insights and guest blogging.
• Post fresh, high-quality content and comment on other blogs for better reach.
• You can also get backlinks from your affiliates and channel partners.

This ensures you’re ready to launch the best holiday marketing campaigns that drive results.

4. Select A Responsive Template Or Theme

Optimize your website on mobile devices for free by selecting a responsive template or theme. These templates automatically adapt themselves to the display of the visitor’s device.

To make your website mobile-friendly, you need a responsive design template, dynamic website versions, and a mobile app.

To-do:

• Choose a responsive website template; you can browse Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, and Themeforest.
• If your website is old or non-responsive, you can switch to fit the width by adding this one line of code inside the <head> tag. <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″>
• Avoid heavy text (except blog posts), and use light images and CSS.
• Use video embeds from third parties. Add ?autoplay=0 and rel=0 after the video URL.

b) eCommerce Holiday Planning Tips For Prepping Your Operations

Simplyfying operations is crucial for the holiday season in eCommerce to handle increased order volumes efficiently, ensure timely deliveries, and maintain high-quality service, maximizing customer satisfaction and sales potential.

Here are the eCommerce holiday Planning Tips for optimizing your store’s supply and fulfillment chain.

5. Expand Pickup And Delivery Options

Expanding pickup and delivery options can significantly boost holiday eCommerce sales. By offering more convenient delivery options, such as same-day or next-day delivery, you cater to last-minute shoppers seeking quick shipping solutions.

With the ongoing demand for online shopping during the holiday marketing campaigns, accommodating diverse delivery preferences creates a competitive edge, attracting more customers to your eCommerce store and ultimately driving higher sales volumes. For example, international travelers looking for quick connectivity solutions often plan ahead by using eSIM Japan or similar digital options, which shows how convenience and flexibility directly influence purchase decisions.

6. Check Your Return and Exchange Policies for the Holiday Season

92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the returns process is easy. This point in the eCommerce holiday planning will help you keep an eye on your return and exchange policies.

Make sure your refund and exchange portal is all set to handle all the bulk requests and provides a hassle-free refund and exchange process, whether it’s a return, refund, or exchange.

To-do:

• Create clear product descriptions.
• Select an automated tool to ensure smooth RMA Authorization.
• Get an automated refund and exchange system.
• Notify your customers via email about each step of the refund process.
• Give your customers the facility of an advanced e-wallet to ensure a faster payment process.

7. Optimize Your Checkout Page

Checkouts are the most desirable pages for every online retailer, especially in Holiday Sales 2025, when traffic is huge. Also, there are various checkout tools and plugins available in the market.

These tools simplify the checkout process and also reduce the overall shopping cart abandonment rate of your website. For better performance, ensure your design supports facilitating effective user navigation through website structure improvement.

To-do:

• Use a minimal number of CTA’s, and don’t let your customers feel distracted.
• Display trust signals, with custom trust badges, testimonials, and happy customers.
• You can go for one-click checkouts.
• Avoid shopping cart abandonment by making guest user sign-ups compulsory.
• You can optimize those pages by adding multiple fields to them.
• You can use interactive, responsive, and high-converting checkout templates.

Also Read: Holiday Checkout Optimization Strategies

8. Enable Faster Payment Processing

A slow or glitchy payment gateway may cause more harm to your business than a slow internet. People can bear the loading time, but when money is involved, their patience is as thin as paper.

That’s why having a reliable payment option is the essential step in eCommerce holiday planning

An in-house digital wallet would do the trick. For that, you need the Wallet system for WooCommerce. It is an internal payment processor that renders every function of a digital wallet, but within your store.

Customers can conveniently recharge their wallets and use the balance to purchase goods & services in your store.

This offers a quick and seamless payment method, encouraging more spontaneous purchases during the festive season. Using holiday gift financing options available in the plugin like Buy Now Pay Later can make it even more attractive.

c) Offer Goodies & Boost Festive Sales

Boost your festive sales by offering value beyond products to customers. Provide special promotions, discounts, and freebies during the eCommerce holiday season, so you can create excitement and attract more shoppers to your eCommerce store.

Include the following offers in your holiday prep checklist:

9. Show Gratitude And Say Thank You

Use email and your social media posts and channels. And wish all the folks a happy New Year and post-Christmas wishes. Post what is real. Therefore, share your real team photos over social media channels.

Also, let your customers see the people behind the brand and the gratitude for a great holiday season.

10. Provide Better Product Recommendations

Suggest better products, deliver predictions, and provide smart recommendations to your customers based on their budget, taste, and shopping behavior.

To-do:

• Showcase your best sellers under the “Best Sellers”, Or “Most Popular” category.
• Show recommendations based on customers’ ratings and reviews.
• Target products based on the visitor’s location using geo-targeting.
• Analyze customer behavior with a visitor tracking script and cookies via HubSpot forms.
• Pin the most trending and fresh arrivals under the first scroll.

Check out smart upselling strategies for holiday sales in 2025.

11. Show And Increase Urgency And Fomo (Fear Of Missing Out)

Timing and a sense of scarcity. Specifically, it relates to the difference between decent sales and jaw-dropping sales, while limiting its availability.

Give the holiday shoppers exactly what they desire. In conclusion, understanding your customers from the inside out is crucial.

FOMO is an ultimate psychological trigger that humans can’t stop themselves from responding to. To implement FOMO in marketing, it is very important to understand the buyer’s state of mind. So, how will you use FOMO in your Holiday Marketing campaigns?

To-do:

• Use terms such as “few hours left”, and “COD available”.
• Highlight the missed opportunities with “limited editions” and “ends tonight”.
• Run the timer to show urgency, and make your customers feel they are losing a big deal.
• Use images like “Don’t miss out” to trigger FOMO.
• Show social proof on your website.
• Let your customers know how much more they need to spend to get Free Shipping.

12. Offer Product Bundles With Hampers

Product bundling is an effective marketing strategy to sell products in bulk. It also simplifies the purchasing decision.

There are various product bundle tools available in the market that can help you create product bundles with gift wrap.
To-do:

• Help your customers pick items to create a custom product bundle of their choice.
• Create product bundles and upselling strategy opportunities wherever possible.
• Give your customers an easy way to create their own gift sets, with similar and complementary items.

On A Final Note

After ensuring every little detail, look through all the rules and laws, plus customs duties, taxes, and regulatory requirements of your targeted sales regions, to allow you to position your products effectively and appropriately.

There are no SHORTCUTS.

I have tried to cover important aspects of what an eCommerce business needs with this Holiday sales checklist. Therefore, I’m in full confidence that this eCommerce holiday checklist will surely assist you in getting more sales in 2025.

If you like the essence of the blog, please comment and share your views. I’d love to hear from you.

All The Best….

FAQ’s About eCommerce Holiday Planning

1. What is mobile commerce?

Mobile commerce, often called m-commerce, is the practice of buying and selling products or services through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It enables shoppers to browse, compare, and purchase items directly from mobile apps or responsive websites, making it an essential part of holiday shopping where convenience and speed matter most.

2. What is a holiday campaign?

A holiday campaign is a seasonal marketing strategy designed to attract customers during festive shopping periods like Christmas, Black Friday, or New Year’s. These campaigns typically include special promotions, discounts, themed advertisements, and personalized offers that aim to increase customer engagement and boost sales during the busiest retail months of the year.

3. What are the 5 C’s of eCommerce?

The 5 C’s of eCommerce refer to the key pillars of online selling: customer, content, convenience, communication, and cost. Together, they highlight the importance of understanding your audience, delivering engaging and informative content, ensuring an easy shopping experience, maintaining clear and effective communication, and offering competitive pricing to drive conversions and loyalty.

4. What is the best promotional strategy for Christmas season?

The best promotional strategies for Christmas focus on creating urgency and delivering value. Limited-time discounts, product bundles, free shipping offers, gift card promotions, and festive-themed email or social media campaigns tend to perform well. Personalization, countdown timers, and upselling opportunities further help maximize sales during this peak season of consumer spending.

5. What are some catchy campaign slogans?

Catchy campaign slogans are short, festive phrases that connect emotionally with shoppers while promoting holiday deals. Examples include “Unwrap the Joy of Savings,” “Gifts That Sparkle, Deals That Shine,” “Make Spirits Bright with Big Discounts,” “Holiday Cheer Starts Here,” and “Festive Finds, Merry Prices.” Such taglines not only grab attention but also help reinforce brand identity during the competitive holiday rush.