A guide to holiday eCommerce readiness

Businesses with an eCommerce presence look forward to the holiday season. Not only is it a time for peak sales, it’s also an opportunity to gain new customers. Being ready for the extra digital traffic by having a site that’s ready for the extra demand, customer service or chatbots that are prepared to answer questions, and technology that’s able to support connectivity and security are essential for getting the most out of holiday spending.

Holiday eCommerce readiness is an important part of making more sales during the holidays.

Fortunately, there are actionable steps you can take to set up your business for the holiday eCommerce surge before holiday shoppers start filling their online carts.

Many eCommerce businesses rely heavily on holiday sales to carry their businesses through the year. In fact, holiday eCommerce sales peaked at more than $280 billion in 2024.¹ But without the proper readiness, risks like business site downtimes, inventory shortages, and poor customer service can eat away at your holiday sales and customer opportunities.

Yes, you need to have enough inventory, but your tech foundation to move that inventory must be strong. You need to pressure test your site, operations and business before the season begins. But it’s more than assessing your website’s viability. You have to think about what can happen during peak digital traffic that may not show until after the holidays. Examples include customer returns and data security. These are just a few of the core areas to consider.

The majority of enterprises test their websites regularly, especially ahead of peak traffic periods, like launches, promotions, and the holiday season. Smaller companies, however, may not have the staff, skills, or resources to test at the same level of thoroughness. But even for enterprises, it’s not unheard of for there to be site crashes, issues with checkout, inadequate customer service, and other issues.

No matter the size of your business, it’s good to have a reality check of where you really are in peak season eCommerce readiness, especially for the holidays.

Website performance and network security

Few things are more frustrating to a customer than struggling to navigate a website while shopping. Poor website experiences contributed to an average of a 70.19% global average cart abandonment rate in 2024.² If a customer can’t even get that far because of website issues, your odds of making a sale fall even further.

An improved site search experience also makes it simpler and easier for consumers to access the relevant results they are looking for. Consider adding filters and sorting options to remove barriers to accessing the information and products potential customers are looking for.

You can prepare for the holiday surge by ensuring your site can handle increased traffic while it maintains fast load times, processing, and expected functionality. A base-level solution is to use a testing tool to stress test your site well ahead of the event. It’ll simulate peak traffic so you can see how your site handles it. It can also help you learn if you need to optimize your backend processes, like IT support, to prevent crashes, slow load times, and navigational issues.

A critical part of this stress test is making sure your network is stable, and it and your site are cyber secure with layered defense that starts at your network. And, it’s critical to have a failover for your network and internet operations in case of a failure.

More traffic can mean more opportunities for a bad actor to exploit a vulnerability and hack your site and customer data. Consider consulting with an expert for an unbiased evaluation for your cybersecurity solutions. It’s also worth considering using cybersecurity managed services to help your team keep an eye out for any strange activity.

[Read: How to build defense in depth into your business]

Inventory and supply chain management

Once you have a stable website that has been tested to sustain your increased traffic, estimate your sales and make sure your inventory is appropriate to best understand which products or services will be more and less popular during holiday eCommerce sales periods. Backorders and slow shipping times can deter potential customers from finalizing their sales.

Use previous holiday data to forecast your inventory needs ahead of time to help you maintain adequate stock levels. And coordinate with your suppliers to make sure your orders arrive on time. It’s best practice to do this process well ahead of peak holiday shopping; your suppliers can run out of inventory as well.

Customer experience optimization

Cart abandonment is one issue, but overall site navigation is another. Evaluating and testing site performance is an ongoing process. If you’re planning big changes to improve navigation and the customer experience, don’t wait until the last minute before the season, leaving you without validated changes.

Hold focus groups, have voice of the customer sessions, review customer service feedback, and use on-site tools to see what works and what your customers are asking for. Don’t forget to A/B test new features before confirming them.

By making your site easy to navigate, you encourage potential customers to go from the “browsing” stage to the “buying” stage. It’s also vital to make sure your site and checkout options are optimized for mobile traffic. More than 60% of overall web traffic comes from mobile devices, including your holiday eCommerce customers.³

Marketing and promotions

Though the holidays can bring in some customers looking for gifts, you still must compete for their business with other eCommerce businesses during this time. Targeted campaigns and promotions can lead to more site visits, converting to more sales. You can reach a broad audience with a combination of direct email marketing, social media campaigns, and paid advertisements to generate more traffic to your already-optimized site and fluid checkout process.

Shipping incentives and exclusive offers can also encourage customers to click “place order.” Alongside a transparent pricing structure, customers are more likely to finalize their purchase—and make bigger purchases, at that—if they feel they are getting a bargain with free shipping or holiday discounts. Plus, sticker shock from shipping prices is a leading cause of cart abandonment. Eliminating that option reduces friction in your customers’ buying experience. You’ve done the work on the back end to make your site work well; marketing can attract more customers to the site to increase your sales.

Assessing past performance

For each core area of focus, assessing your previous holiday performance tells you where you can improve the most. Customer feedback and website analytics, for example, can tell you which items and promotions were the most popular or where customers tend to leave your site prior to making their purchase. You can also look at past inventory numbers to prepare your most-purchased items ahead of time.

These core areas are designed to make sure your customers’ browsing experience leads to more sales for your company—not just during the holiday eCommerce rush, but throughout the year. But that’s not all you can do to give your business a boost. There are a host of smaller tips that can give you the final edge over your competitors when prepared customers reach your site.

While you can make substantial ground in increasing your sales by focusing on the holiday eCommerce core areas above, there are some extra steps you can take to push potential customers across the finish line.

Alongside your holiday promotions, offering customer support and live chat features can provide prompt responses to consumer inquiries that enhance their shopping experience. It’s important to remember that it can feel like a big ask to get customers to spend their hard-earned money on your products—creating a seamless and satisfactory browsing experience with diligent customer support and promotional offers can reduce that barrier.

You might also consider looking into creating an omnichannel to create a more seamless shopping experience for your customers while providing you with more data to work with. Omnichannels are designed to create a single experience for customers regardless of how they choose to shop. That means that a cart they compile online can be purchased in-store, should they wish to do so. It also means you can collect data on customers regardless of how they shop, like whether they’ve visited the site/store before and what they purchased. That data informs your inventory, site usage, and targeted marketing campaigns to make sure your personalized experience reaches more customers.

To get the most out of your eCommerce business this holiday season, prepare accordingly. This preparation can help you generate more sales both through the holidays and onward. To get the most from the potential surge in sales:

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1 "Holiday Season E-Commerce in the U.S. - Statistics & Facts." Statista. Accessed October 16, 2025, https://www.statista.com/topics/9622/holiday-season-e-commerce-in-the-us/.

2 “7 Checkout Abandonment Rate Statistics for eCommerce Stores”, Opensend, April 20, 2025, https://www.opensend.com/post/checkout-abandonment-rate-ecommerce.

3 "Global Mobile Traffic 2025," Statista, Accessed October 16, 2025, https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-data-traffic-forecast/.