During the holiday season, online sales tend to skyrocket. To keep up with your competition during the holidays, here are three proven ways to boost your small business’ online sales.

No. 1: Concentrate on your target market. First and foremost, you need to focus on your target audience. Once you establish who your target audience is, ensure you consider their age, gender, income, etc.; i.e., truly understand what it is that they want and need, especially around Christmas. This also helps build brand awareness, which is imperative for the future success of any small business. You can achieve this by creating a buyer persona, which identifies a target consumer based on demographics, income, likes, dislikes, and other personal details.

No. 2: Add videos. Adding videos to your landing pages can potentially result in an increase in conversions of approximately 86 percent. Keep in mind that the human brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text. This means that visitors to your website will learn about your products and/or services much more effectively through videos rather than text. Video is a major trend in online marketing, and social media users are much more likely to share videos with their friends and family. Video is also considered “rich media,” which is more favorable to search engine algorithms so can help boost your SEO. Again, taking advantage of the holiday season, consider posting Christmas-themed videos to your site.

No. 3: Make offers time-limited. By creating a sense of urgency, such as scarcity or an end date for a promotion or sale, you will derive sales from consumers that would usually wait to buy your products and/or services at a later date. Keep in mind that urgency is one of the most powerful aspects of human psychology, as it causes people to act quickly. So hurry! Act now, before the holidays are over.