All Systems Go: Your 4/20 Dispensary Website Checklist

When April 20th rolls around, the last thing you want is for your website to be lost in space. Instead, turn it into a rocketship that will help your dispensary have a truly out of this world holiday.

Just like mission control oversees a carefully orchestrated routine before liftoff, taking certain steps to optimize your dispensary’s website before the holiday ensures a smooth launch as you get closer to the day. By following this checklist as 4/20 approaches, you can get your site ready for a successful takeoff.

1. Consult a Navigation Plan: Think about how people will place orders

Conducting space travel without plotting a course is a recipe for failure. Your customers need clear direction of where and how they can buy cannabis products from your dispensary.

If your website’s homepage doesn’t already have clear guidance on the payment methods you accept and the pickup options you offer, now is the time to add this information. If you’re able to offer pre-orders online for pickup, make that super-clear, too. Is delivery on the table? Mention that for the people celebrating 4/20 already in couchlock.

Considering how your customers will place their 4/20 orders is good for your in-person operations too. You’re probably familiar with the long checkout lines on 4/20 and all the stress they bring. Educating your shoppers on your other pickup options cuts down on the in-person shopping line, since some folks will already have pre-ordered.

2. Fuel Up Your Rockets: Create 4/20 content for your website

Without propellant, rockets won’t go anywhere. Without 4/20 content on your website, your customers won’t know what you have planned for the holiday.

People are always looking for a sale, and they’re especially looking for 4/20-related deals. Make it easy for searchers to find what you’re offering. This can be a deals page, a dedicated page for all things 4/20, or new blog content all about what readers can expect. 

If your dispensary’s website already has a deals page and that’s where you want to send traffic, take a moment to confirm that everything on this page is fresh and up to date. Consider adding a temporary section that highlights all your 4/20-specific offers, alongside a temporary homepage section that calls out all your 4/20 deals.

3. Run a Systems Diagnostic: Look at the user experience and make adjustments

It’s mission critical to ensure that all systems are go before launch.

Visit your website, and look at it from the customer’s perspective. How easy is it to find the most important elements of your website? If you think customers might struggle to find your menu, their cart, or your deals page, you have some work to do. Same goes if you find that the steps involved in ordering products on your website aren’t all that intuitive. 

If you, the person who knows your dispensary in and out, is struggling to navigate your website, everyday people will too, and that’s no way to drive sales. Consider how you might fix any problems you’ve identified, then work with web developers and designers — or a cannabis marketing firm — to iron out these kinks.

4. Check Visibility: Confirm your site’s mobile view

The weather may look clear from one angle, but double checking the visibility can be the difference between a successful launch and catastrophe.

At the start of 2024, the percentage of global website traffic coming from mobile was 59.34%. By the end of 2024, that figure had reached 62.54%, which is double the percentage of global website traffic coming from mobile at the start of 2015. Mobile website visits are absolutely peaking, and your dispensary’s website must be mobile-optimized so that you meet your customers where they’re at.

An excellent desktop experience doesn’t inherently translate to a user-friendly mobile interface. In fact, mobile and desktop views behave very differently, and the most random little thing can disrupt either experience. Responsive layouts, compressed images, and website speed improvements all help.

5. Establish Coordinates Tracking: Optimize for near-me searches

During spaceflight, an understanding of the local cluster helps guide progress. Similarly, optimizing your site for local geographic search terms can help drive customers from nearby areas to your store. 

Whether your dispensary is a single storefront or an MSO, it’s a local business. After all, your customers must pick up their orders in person, or if they’re having it delivered, it must be within driving distance of your storefront. As with any local business, your chances of attracting new customers are highest if your website is optimized for near-me searches. These searches leverage the customer’s location to find relevant results near where they live.

Ask yourself: Where are local shoppers coming from to visit you? Are they driving from 45 minutes away in an adjacent county, or are they taking public transportation to you from a few neighborhoods away? Think about what it takes to reach these communities online and get to work. 

6. Confirm Crew Readiness: Double-check accessibility

Before the crew boards the ship for takeoff, it’s important to make sure they have everything they need. For dispensaries, this means ensuring every user can access and navigate their website successfully. 

Accessibility is a must for dispensary websites before, during, and after 4/20. You always need to be certain that anyone who visits your website is able to view your content and browse the menu. On 4/20, while so many more eyes are on you, you’ll almost certainly have more people heading to your site.

An accessible website is navigable for people with disabilities that limit how they browse web pages. These disabilities may include epilepsy, visual impairment, or physical impairments that limit one’s ability to use a mouse or type. An accessible website is also a legal requirement as per the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) spell out what you must do to make your website accessible. You should aim to achieve WCAG’s AA-level criteria as you make your website more accessible, though targeting AAA-level criteria makes for an especially accessible site. 

7. Establish Communications: Confirm your data is tracking

Mission control requires a constant stream of data to ensure the safety of the crew and success of the mission. The same is true for your dispensary on 4/20 (and year-round.)

Any website owner — as in, any dispensary owner — must prioritize obtaining and reviewing website data. Analyzing this information is how to determine your visitor quantity, how visitors are finding your site, how long they spend on it, and what they do while on your site. You can leverage these observations to assess what’s working well on your site, what needs fine-tuning, and what’s missing. Suffice it to say that, if your data isn’t tracking, you’re missing out on essential information.

Check your cookies to confirm that you’re indeed garnering web traffic data. Ensure that, assuming you’re using Google Analytics, all your web pages have the appropriate JavaScript measurement codes. Make sure your menu is set up to track in these tools as well.

Don’t just assume these systems are in place if you’ve already set them up — they can unexpectedly get disconnected, so always double-check. And if everything is indeed connected, check that your setup is effective for obtaining and analyzing user data.

8. Test Rocket Thrusters: Check site speed

When so much time, money, and effort goes into preparing for a launch and the rockets fail to ignite, it’s disappointing to say the least. Make sure your web pages load quickly to ensure customers don’t bounce and look elsewhere for 4/20 deals. 

Think back to the last time you tried to load a website, and, well…it just didn’t load. Or, it didn’t load right away. What did you do? You probably went to another website. Your customers will do the same if your dispensary’s website loads slowly or doesn’t load at all. Achieving as fast of a site speed as possible is the name of the game.

Your site speed is somewhat a function of how much traffic you’re getting and how many people are on your website at the same time. With more traffic and more active visitors, the server hosting your site takes on more of a burden, leading to slower load times. It’s not entirely this simple, though, as web development and design factors also play a huge part.

SEO specialists understand these technical aspects, which may feel like a foreign language to you, and will review them to maximize your site speed. After all, site speed directly affects how your website ranks in search results, so it’s a priority for anyone working in technical SEO.

9. Finalize Flight Path: Confirm online listing details for all locations

The ship is prepared, all systems are green, and the crew is ready — one last review of the mission details is all that’s left to do. Make sure your online listings, like your Google Business Profile, are accurate and up to date.

In September 2022, Google reported that searches for the phrase “open now near me” have increased by more than 400% year over year. The first items that appear in these searches’ results are Google Business Profile listings that display each business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) and hours. If any of this information is incorrect, you’ll confuse would-be customers, potentially resulting in lost sales. 

Furthermore, lots of people conducting these local searches will open your Google Business Profile with the direct intention of visiting your website, which appears in your profile. Discrepancies in your NAP between your website and your Google Business Profile can be a major turn-off: How can someone trust a dispensary that’s giving them different answers to the same question on different pages? Ensure consistent information across these touchpoints to build enough customer trust to earn a visit to your dispensary or an online order.

10. Prepare for Liftoff: Run final promotions

All your 4/20 marketing efforts have led to this moment: the final days before the holiday. It’s time for one last push to drive traffic to your newly optimized website and get as much attention as possible from customers before the day arrives. 

The engines are rumbling, the rockets are primed and ready to go — and with the work you’ve done throughout this checklist, you’ll be ready for a smooth launch that sends your dispensary’s sales soaring to stellar levels with ease. 

Propel your 4/20 marketing out of this world

In the vast digital universe of cannabis dispensaries, your website is your primary launch vehicle. A well-engineered, meticulously maintained site doesn’t just attract customers but transforms casual browsers into loyal patrons.

If you’re ready to invest in an optimized website for 4/20 and beyond, CannaContent is here to help. Contact us for a free consultation to discover how we can optimize your website — and achieve so much more for your dispensary.