As we head into the festive shopping season, sales events become a more prominent feature in the calendars of the business world. In the past few years, the UK has inherited the hype that’s usually exclusive to its friends across the pond.

In fact, UK shoppers spent a record £1.1bn with online retailers on Black Friday, and it’s been predicted around £943m was spent on Cyber Monday in the UK alone. It’s clear that small businesses that are online have to be ready to jump on opportunities such as these dates. But how?

Get their attention

Consumers in today’s world have very short attention spans. If they don’t find what they need on your website within a matter of seconds due to poor user experience, your potential customer will leave your website — and they aren’t likely to return. This is especially true during the frenzy of Christmas sales. A great user experience both keeps visitors on your site and encourages them to engage with your content and brand, again and again.

We often judge a book by its cover – and this is particularly now true when we visit websites. Within a twentieth of a second we make up our minds about the quality of a website. How many times have you searched for a business online, skipping through websites until you land on the most professional-looking?

Think of your website as a shop window with an ‘open all hours’ sign on the front. Customers can visit whenever they want, so it’s vital that they are greeted with a user experience that is as good as it can be.

Christmas shoppers don't hang around online

This is particularly useful to a business that doesn’t have a large operating space, but is growing quickly and needs to cater for more customers, and an influx of orders – especially handy during intense sales periods.

For one day sale events, bold images will be more effective than copy-heavy content. An eye-catching banner showing discounts or offers in the build-up to the day will create a buzz around the business, and make it more likely that people will return when the sale begins. Numbers are very effective: therefore do not hesitate to display discounts – 30% off – or absolute prices to make a great first impression.

Ultimately, optimising your website for the Christmas sales is a simple way of generating business. Your business – however big or small – should not be hidden from the world. Opportunities arise from people seeking a service; if they can’t find you, they won’t engage with you. You work too hard for your business to be invisible.

Prepare for heavy traffic

During busy sales periods, your business’s website should (hopefully) experience a significant traffic increase. It’s therefore crucial that your website can take the strain. There are many stories about websites going down during peak times of business, in turn causing loss of revenue.

GoDaddy offers a range of modular solutions for businesses to expand capacity and handle growing traffic, with different monthly prices based on requirements. This allows you to tailor your server bandwidth based on how much traffic you predict you’ll get, meaning you don’t need to spend unnecessary money – and can upgrade according to heightened trade times.

Imagine all these guys on your website at once - would it cope?

Go mobile

Smartphone use in the UK is to break 50% barrier for first time this year. Sometimes it’s a challenge for small business owners to invest further to have their website viewable in a user-friendly mobile format, particularly as we should see a further proliferation in websites with mobile-first designs, where the desktop experience mirrors that of a phone or tablet.

Ensuring your website is designed for an excellent viewing experience is essential: responsive and mobile-friendly design trends are here to stay. And it’s not just small businesses; Google’s recent emphasis on the importance of mobile-friendly website design for higher search rankings drives home this point.

The importance of testing hasn’t been stressed enough. Make sure that you have personally tested all exposed functionalities clicking everywhere, and simulating purchases, signing up to the site, providing shipment details and every aspect of a typical shopping session.

Cyber Monday may be a new trend in the UK, but small businesses should jump on the bandwagon to drive people to their websites. If you can get their attention and the consumer experience is enjoyable, they’ll almost certainly return. Attracting customers is the aim; retaining them is what will help your business grow.

And if you missed this season, do not worry: e-commerce is here to stay and destined to grow in the years to come.