Is your website losing Christmas sales? 9 fixes to make before December

Probably a little, and almost always in the same few places: a delivery date nobody can find, a checkout that asks too much, or an ad that lands on the wrong page. None of them needs a new website. Here are the nine fixes I'd make first, so that the visitors you already have, and the ones you're about to pay for, turn into orders and enquiries.

1. Put your last order date where people decide

Royal Mail has published its last recommended posting dates for Christmas: second class on Friday 18 December, Tracked 48 on Saturday 19 December, first class and Tracked 24 on Monday 21 December, and Special Delivery Guaranteed on Wednesday 23 December. Couriers set their own, so check yours.

Your last order date is the posting date for each delivery option, minus the time it takes you to pack an order. It belongs on every product page and in the basket, not on a delivery page nobody opens. If you sell through Google Shopping, Merchant Center builds its delivery estimates from your cut-off, handling and transit times, and Google's help says that "if you leave it blank, then the default time will be 8:00 am PST", which is 4pm in the UK.

This week: work out your last order date for each delivery option and put it next to the buy button.

2. Tell Google your Christmas hours

On Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, Google says a warning may appear on your Business Profile "that tells users that your opening hours might differ". When you set special hours, customers see your real times instead of that doubt, and Google suggests confirming them even when they're the same as usual. I went through the detail in whether Christmas hours on Google are worth the few minutes.

This week: set special hours for every day from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, including the days you're open as normal.

3. Take the effort out of buying, or asking

Every extra field, forced account and surprise at the last step is a reason to give up, and in December your customer has plenty of other tabs open. Let people check out as a guest, show the full price early (a fee added at the end brings problems of its own), and cut an enquiry form down to what you need for a first reply.

This week: on your phone, buy something or send an enquiry through your own site, and remove one step you'd skip if you were in a hurry.

4. Sell the gift, not just the product

A gift buyer needs things a normal buyer doesn't: a gift message, delivery to a different address, a receipt without prices. After the last posting date, the only thing left to sell for Christmas morning may be a voucher, so have a digital one ready and say plainly on the page how long it lasts and how it's used.

This week: add one gift option and a digital voucher, with its terms written next to the button.

5. Make it fast on a phone

Google's Core Web Vitals ask for the main content to load "within the first 2.5 seconds", measured on real visits, phones separately from computers. A shopper on a train, with a signal that comes and goes, won't wait for a picture the size of a poster, and a slow phone page is one of the homepage mistakes that quietly cost you enquiries.

This week: run the page your ads land on through PageSpeed Insights on mobile, and fix the biggest problem it names.

6. Show proof, honestly

Put your reviews where people decide, next to the button that takes the money. Just don't pick only the good ones: Google doesn't allow businesses to "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers", and if you publish reviews, the CMA's short guide for businesses is clear: "You should have a published policy that clearly prohibits fake reviews." I made the case for asking everyone in should you only ask happy customers for reviews.

This week: put your three most recent reviews beside your main buy or enquiry button, and ask every December customer for one.

7. Land ad clicks on the page the ad promised

If the ad says "hampers delivered by 23 December", the click should land on hampers and that date, not on your homepage. Someone who has to hunt for what they clicked on often gives up. The structure of a landing page that converts is the same at Christmas, with the dates moved to the top.

This week: click each of your own ads and check the first screen says what the ad said.

8. Advertise where your buyers are

Google Search and Shopping come first for people already looking, but several other networks are open to UK advertisers.

• Microsoft Advertising reaches Bing, and Microsoft says eligible ads are "automatically opted in to serving in Copilot". It's a sensible second search network, and getting your business on Bing and Copilot covers the free half of the job.
• Pinterest lets UK advertisers set up accounts directly, and is worth trying for gifts, food and homeware.
• Meta and TikTok suit products that sell on sight in a few seconds. Meta offers sales ads and lead ads; TikTok lets UK businesses create ad accounts themselves. Choosing between Meta ads and Google Ads comes down to whether people already search for what you sell.
• Amazon ads are for sellers and vendors on Amazon, so they're only worth a look if you sell there already.
• LinkedIn is for business buyers: corporate gifts and year-end services.
• Reddit and Snapchat both take UK advertisers, but they're only worth it where your buyers already spend their time.
• Inside AI assistants, it's early. OpenAI lists the UK as available for its Ads Manager, but its ads page says only that it's rolling ads out "in select regions" and doesn't say UK users see them. Google's ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode aren't offered in the UK, though ads above and below AI Overviews are, as I explained in whether you can pay to be recommended by ChatGPT.

So which mix should you choose? If you sell gifts online, start with Google Search and Shopping, run Microsoft alongside them, then add Pinterest or Meta for products people buy on sight. If you're a local business selling vouchers or bookings, use Google Search and your Business Profile, with Meta for the area around you. If you sell to other businesses, pair LinkedIn with Google and Microsoft search. I'd leave AI assistant ads for a test in the new year rather than build a Christmas plan on them.

This week: choose one network beyond Google that fits your buyers and give it its own budget for December, so you can see what it brings in by itself.

9. Pay for sales, on the right days

Maximise clicks does what it says: it gets you clicks. If you track sales or enquiries, bid for those instead, with Maximise conversions or Maximise conversion value, so December's budget follows the people who buy. Google's seasonality adjustments are for "short events of one to seven days", such as a weekend sale, and Google says Smart Bidding "already manages seasonal events", so they're not a switch to flip for the whole of December. If the ads still bring visitors and no sales, why your Google Ads aren't working is where I'd look next.

The calendar that matters most is your own. Put your budget behind delivered gifts until your last order date, then switch the ads to vouchers, collection in store or your January offer.

This week: write down your last order date and set a reminder to change the ads the day after it.

If you'd like someone to go through your ads and the pages they land on before December, that's what our paid ads work is for.