Happy woman using smart phone in city with background of festive Christmas decoration. Concept of Christmas, New Year and tourism on holidays.
For a lot of small businesses, the next eight weeks bring more visitors than any other stretch of the year. Shoppers look up gift cards, families book holiday dinners, and homeowners search for someone to fix the heat before guests arrive.
That’s the worst possible time for your website to be slow, broken or showing last year’s hours. The good news is that most holiday website problems are easy to prevent if you catch them now.
Here’s a 10-point check to prepare your website for holiday traffic. Most of it takes an afternoon, and you don’t need to be technical to do it.
1. Check your load time on a phone
Most holiday browsing happens on phones, often on cell data in a parking lot or a checkout line. Turn off wifi, open your site on your phone, and count how long it takes to load. If you’re waiting more than a few seconds, so are your customers.
For a more precise number, run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. Large, uncompressed photos are the most common culprit, and they’re usually the easiest to fix.
2. Test your forms and checkout from start to finish
Fill out your own contact form and make sure the message arrives, and not in spam. If you sell online, place a real test order, all the way through payment and the confirmation email. Then refund it.
A form that quietly stopped sending messages in October can cost you every holiday lead before anyone notices.
3. Post your holiday hours on your site and on Google
Add your holiday hours, closures and last order dates to your website. Then add the same holiday hours to your Google Business Profile, so the two match. Without them, Google shows your usual hours, and a customer may drive over on a day you’re closed.
Our Google Business Profile checklist walks through the rest of your listing.
4. Make sure you have a recent backup you could restore
Ask whoever hosts your website two questions: when was the last backup, and how long would it take to restore it? If the answer is “I’m not sure,” find out now, not on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
A backup is only useful if someone knows how to put it back.
5. Apply updates before the rush, not during it
WordPress, your theme and your plugins all release updates. Most are routine, but occasionally an update breaks something. Get everything updated and tested in early November, then avoid big changes during your busiest weeks unless it’s a security fix.
6. Confirm your security certificate is valid
Look at the address bar when you visit your site. You should see a padlock or a “secure” indicator, and the address should start with https. If a browser warns visitors that your site is “Not Secure,” many of them will leave, and they certainly won’t type in a credit card.
Certificates expire, so ask your host whether yours renews automatically.
7. Test your gift card and booking links
Gift cards, online ordering, reservations and appointment booking often run through a separate service, like Square, Toast or a scheduling app. Click every one of those buttons on your site and make sure each link still goes to the right place and works on a phone.
8. Add a homepage banner for your holiday offers
If you’re running a sale, selling gift cards or taking holiday orders, say so at the top of your homepage. A simple banner with one line and one button is enough: “Holiday gift cards are here. Buy online.”
Put an end date on it, and set a reminder to take it down in January.
9. Double-check your contact details
Make sure your phone number, email address and street address are correct everywhere they appear: header, footer, contact page and Google. Tap your phone number on your phone to make sure it dials. If you’re closing for a few days, say how customers can reach you.
10. Know who to call if your website goes down
This is the one most owners skip. If your site goes down at 7 p.m. on a Friday in December, who fixes it, and how fast?
If the answer is “my nephew built it” or “the hosting company’s help line,” consider managed hosting. With managed hosting, someone is already watching your site, keeping backups, applying updates and answering the phone when something breaks. We wrote more about keeping a website reliable during peak traffic.
Your holiday website checklist
Print this out or keep it open while you work through your site:
- ☐ Homepage loads quickly on a phone, on cell data
- ☐ Contact form and checkout tested end to end
- ☐ Holiday hours on the website and on Google
- ☐ Recent backup confirmed, and someone knows how to restore it
- ☐ WordPress, theme and plugins updated and tested
- ☐ Security certificate valid, with the padlock showing
- ☐ Gift card, ordering and booking links working
- ☐ Holiday offer banner on the homepage, with an end date
- ☐ Phone, email and address correct everywhere
- ☐ You know exactly who to call if the site goes down
A simple timeline
- This week: run the checklist and make a list of anything that needs fixing.
- By mid-November: finish updates, fixes and your holiday banner.
- Before Thanksgiving (November 26): test your forms, checkout and booking links one more time.
- Black Friday through the new year: avoid big changes. Only fix what’s broken.
- In January: take down the holiday banner and update your hours.
Common questions about getting your website ready for the holidays
How early should I prepare my website for holiday traffic?
Start in late October or early November. That leaves time to fix anything you find and test it before Thanksgiving, when traffic starts to climb.
My business isn’t a store. Does this still apply?
Yes. Restaurants, salons, home service companies and nonprofits all see more searches around the holidays. Holiday hours, working contact forms and booking links matter just as much as a checkout.
What’s the most common holiday website problem?
In our experience, it’s the simple things: a contact form that stopped sending, holiday hours that never got posted, or a gift card link that goes nowhere. They’re easy to fix, but only if someone checks.
What is managed hosting, and do I need it?
Managed hosting means a team looks after your site for you, handling updates, backups, security and speed, and fixing problems when they come up. If you’d rather spend the holidays running your business than troubleshooting a website, it’s worth a look.
The bottom line
An afternoon spent on this checklist now can save you a lost sale, a missed booking or a panicked phone call in December.
Want someone to go through it with you, or take it off your plate entirely? Learn about our managed hosting and maintenance, or schedule a meeting and we’ll look over your site before the rush.
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