What Your Online Store Needs Before April Hits

March is ending and with April come the big commercial dates in Chile and Latin America: Mother's Day, CyberDay (Chile's biggest online shopping event, similar to Cyber Monday but spanning several days), and the traffic that comes with them. I have seen too many stores arrive at May scrambling to put together last-minute discounts. Now is the time to prepare.

Technical Checklist: Can Your Site Handle It?

Before thinking about deals, make sure your store is not going to crash or frustrate visitors.

• Page load speed: Open PageSpeed Insights and test your homepage and your best-selling product page. If the mobile score is below 50, you have a problem. Uncompressed images are the most common culprit.
• Working checkout: Place a complete test order. Do all payment methods work? Does the confirmation email arrive? You would be surprised how many stores have a broken checkout without knowing it.
• Updated inventory: Review your catalog. Out-of-stock products still visible, variants without prices, empty descriptions -- all of that kills conversions.
• Mobile first: Over 70% of online traffic in Latin America comes from mobile devices. Browse your store from your phone as if you were a customer. If something bothers you, it bothers your customers too.

Logistics: The Invisible Bottleneck

The sale is only half the equation. If you cannot ship fast and error-free, peak commercial dates will generate more problems than revenue.

Questions you should be able to answer today:

• Do you have enough stock for a 3x spike in orders?
• Does your shipping carrier have capacity, or do they get overwhelmed during peak events? (Ask now, not in May.)
• Do you have a backup fulfillment plan if your main carrier fails?
• Are your preparation times clear to everyone on the team?

Marketing: Less Is More

You do not need 47 different offers. The best campaigns I have seen from small businesses are simple:

• One clear discount that the customer understands without reading fine print.
• Free shipping above a threshold that raises your average order value.
• Email your existing list before spending a single dollar on ads. Your previous customer list converts 3x to 5x better than cold traffic.

The most expensive mistake: launching discounts without calculating margins. If your margin is 30% and you offer a 25% discount, you are working for almost nothing. Do the math first.

Do This This Week

1. Run the speed test and fix images.
2. Place a test order.
3. Call your shipping carrier and ask about capacity for peak season.
4. Define two or three simple offers with calculated margins.

Four tasks. One week. The difference between improvising and being ready.

Need help getting your store ready for peak season? At Mi Primera Tienda that is exactly what we do.