It is Christmas time once more here in Hawaii, as it is everywhere else.
Those outside the Islands often make remarks about how celebrating here must be difficult; after all, it’s warm year ’round. Wrong.
I can say that the absence of cold and snow might put up a hurdle, but Islanders figured out how to vault over that barrier long ago.
Having lived on the Mainland for some time in between Hawaii residencies, I can say from personal experience that Christmas is alive and well here.
You can see at least 8 Holiday parades within a 30 minute drive from where I am in Waikiki.
Food here is important to social bonding everywhere – with your neighbors, in the workplace, or with anyone you want to be friends with; it’s the best way to introduce yourself or mend broken fences.
And at Christmas time Islanders take it up yet another notch. Those mainlanders who complain about the extra 5 or 10 pounds they gain at this time of year? Pikers.
To get back on track, though – every year Jim Nabors, a long-time resident, puts on his Christmas show at Hawaii Theater.
Everything about it is first class, from the Hawaii singing stars that join him, to the sets and the costumes.
Sadly, he has announced that this will be the last year he will do the show. After this season, he, and his show, will be greatly missed.
After my wife and I got our tickets, I went to Jim Nabors’ official site. I was curious if he had a program or even videos of past Christmas shows for sale. He did not.
But what struck me most was that, unlike the show, his website was not First Class.
The site was rarely updated, the content was shallow and the online store was buggy. It also sold only one item – at least when I stopped by. It was a lesson in self-sabotage.
Mr. Nabors has done well in life – he lives in a beachside house here next to Doris Duke’s famous ‘Shangri-La’. That’s some of the most expensive real estate on the Island. And that is saying something.
Because of that, maybe he doesn’t need, or really care about, more income. But that’s not where most of us are right now. Are you leaving money on the table like Nabor’s site does?
If you are, the search engines are probably having a problem with your pages. And that’s a big problem for you.
Add content, check any scripts you are using to see if they are slowing down, or even stopping, search engine bots. Those scripts might be doing the same thing to your human visitors.
Ask yourself some questions:
- Is it easy to navigate your site?
- Is there Java, or JavaScript, on the pages that’s turning back potential business, or holding down your search engine rankings?
- Is the purchase process simple and straight ahead? Adding unecessary steps to that process is the top cause of shopping cart abandonment.
See things from your visitor’s perspective – both robotic and human – and you will do yourself a huge favor.