Before retailers enter the holiday season, product content needs to be researched, written, edited, optimized, and published before shoppers start searching for deals. Waiting until the holidays arrive can leave internal teams scrambling to populate stock keeping units (SKUs) or refresh outdated pages. It can also mean missing opportunities to improve organic visibility before peak shopping periods.
At Virtucom Group, we help major retailers and their marketing agencies prepare for these demands through our ecommerce solutions, content services, and data solutions. From creating search engine optimization (SEO)-focused product content to organizing and normalizing product data, our team can provide the extra resources needed to get ecommerce sites holiday ready. Use this checklist to identify what your team should prioritize before seasonal traffic picks up.
Key Takeaways
- Start holiday content planning early enough to research, write, edit, and publish before seasonal traffic increases.
- Review product and category pages for missing, outdated, or duplicated information.
- Normalize product data to create a more consistent shopping experience across your ecommerce site.
- Build landing pages, blogs, and buying guides around seasonal shopping needs.
- Use previous holiday performance and customer feedback to identify content gaps before the next rush.
- Rely on the assistance of Virtucom Group, a digital content and data solutions firm that can help your business create strategic content that grows your leads and customers.
Your Holiday Content Checklist: Start with Research and Planning
Holiday content planning needs to go beyond Black Friday landing pages and seasonal promotions. Retailers need to look at the entire ecommerce experience, from the way products are organized to the information shoppers see before adding an item to their cart.
Before the busy season, make sure your team has:
- Researched keywords for priority products and categories
- Identified SKUs that need attention
- Planned seasonal content
- Reviewed product data for inconsistencies
Your checklist should also include site taxonomy, product hierarchy, and enough time for writing, editing, and quality control.
Expert tip: Work backward from your target publish date. You should account for research, writing, editing, approvals, and implementation instead of treating the campaign’s launch as the content deadline.
Review Your Product and Category Pages
For major retailers with thousands of SKUs, product content can become one of the biggest items on the holiday to-do list. However, it doesn’t need to be.
Start by identifying high-priority categories and products, looking for missing descriptions, outdated information, and content pulled directly from manufacturer or supplier information. Rather than relying on the same copy available elsewhere, you should develop useful product content that reflects your brand and gives shoppers the information they need to make an educated buying decision.
Virtucom Group’s ecommerce solutions can support retailers that don’t have the internal bandwidth to tackle this volume themselves. Our team creates product and category copy at scale, while following your established brand, style, and SEO requirements.
Expert tip: Don’t wait until you can update every SKU at once. Instead, prioritize products and categories tied to your biggest holiday promotions, seasonal demand, and business goals.
Clean Up and Normalize Product Data
Writing better descriptions only solves part of the problem. Your underlying product data also needs to provide a consistent experience.
Supplier data can vary considerably. One manufacturer might format measurements one way, while another uses completely different terminology. Product titles, features, and attributes may also follow inconsistent structures.
Through our data solutions, Virtucom Group can help retailers cleanse and normalize product information and establish consistent standards for future SKUs. Better-organized data can support a more consistent ecommerce experience and make it easier for shoppers to find and compare products.
Expert tip: Never publish product data straight from the vendor or manufacturer. These sets of data can be inconsistent from SKU to SKU, meaning some details can look unprofessional or may be completely incorrect. Product data should undergo appropriate quality checks, including review by experienced specialists like the ones we have at Virtucom Group.
Build Holiday Landing Pages and Supporting Content
Next, consider the content surrounding your products:
- Promotion-specific landing pages give holiday campaigns a dedicated destination.
- Supporting blogs, buying guides, and other resources can answer questions while highlighting relevant categories and products.
This is where a broader content strategy becomes valuable. Every piece of content should accurately represent the offer, speak to the intended audience, and provide enough information to help shoppers decide what to do next through a clear call to action.
At Virtucom Group, we can help retailers connect product information and content, so customers have a more useful experience from their initial search to their final purchase. Best of all, we include SEO as part of the process from the beginning.
Expert tip: Think beyond individual keywords. You should build each piece around a clear topic and search intent so the content answers what holiday shoppers want to know.
Help Shoppers Make Decisions with Buying Guides
The holidays bring plenty of shoppers who know who they need a gift for but aren’t quite sure what to buy. That’s where buying guides can help.
A useful buying guide gives customers the information they need to compare their options and make an informed purchase. Depending on your assortment, that could mean explaining product features, answering common questions, or helping shoppers determine which option best fits their needs.
Expert tip: Create buying guides around real purchasing decisions. Consider the questions customers ask your sales or customer service teams when they’re comparing products.
Check Last Year’s Holiday Pain Points
Before finalizing this year’s content plan, look at what happened during last year’s holiday season. You should investigate:
- High bounce or return rates
- Shopping cart abandonment
- Underperforming organic traffic
- Customer complaints
While these problems aren’t always caused by your content, they can highlight places where clearer product information or better organization could improve the shopping experience.
Expert tip: Don’t review performance metrics in isolation. Instead, analyze your numbers with customer questions and feedback to identify where missing or confusing information may have created friction.
Get Your Holiday Content Ready with Virtucom Group
The biggest to-do on your holiday content checklist is simply starting early. Large ecommerce websites require considerable cross-department coordination. When thousands of SKUs need attention alongside landing pages, blogs, buying guides, and other marketing projects, even experienced internal teams can run short on time.
Virtucom Group provides ecommerce solutions, content services, and data solutions that support major retailers and their marketing agencies. Our writers and editors can help scale content production, while our data specialists support taxonomy, normalization, and other product data needs. Together, we can help your team address more of its holiday ecommerce workload without pulling internal resources away from other priorities.
Ready to turn your holiday content to-do list into a done list? Contact us today to discuss your holiday ecommerce needs.
Frequently Asked Questions About Holiday Content for Retailers
When should retailers start planning holiday content?
As early as possible. Retailers need enough time to research keywords and products, create content, complete editing and approvals, and publish before holiday shopping traffic starts. If you have larger SKU assortments, you may require an even longer lead time.
What content should retailers prioritize for the holiday?
We recommend starting with product and category pages connected to priority products and promotions. From there, retailers can develop promotion-specific landing pages, seasonal blogs, and buying guides that support their broader holiday strategy.
Should retailers avoid using duplicate product descriptions?
Yes. Copying supplier or syndicated content can result in the same descriptions across multiple websites, making it harder for retailers to differentiate their pages in search results, as duplicated content can hurt SEO rankings. Creating unique product content gives retailers more control over their brand voice and allows them to provide information tailored to their customers.
How can retailers improve product data before the holidays?
Retailers should review titles, measurements, attributes, and features for inconsistencies across their assortment. You should also establish clear formatting and terminology standards. This can make product information easier for customers to understand and give your team a consistent framework for future SKUs.
