A long wait from the starting phase of the summer & finally here’s the knock of…
Yes!!…”The Holiday Season”
A Collection of days which brings with it a cluster of excitement, joy, Family togetherness & for Business owners- A chain of Boundless Opportunities. But without having effective planning, what can be the use of these opportunities?
Remember “Difference between a Successful & a downsizing business is nothing but a lack of Proper Planning“. A well-prepared roadmap for boosting eCommerce holiday sales will make you successful in the long run.
15 Ways To Hike Up Your eCommerce Holiday Sales In 2019!
1. Assess Previous Year Data To Explore Targets
The first most essential approach is to have a deep analysis of the previous year’s data. By knowing the previous year’s holiday sales estimates, you can easily set your priorities.
Explore which days were the most diligent sales period, which product was in high demand among every group of consumers, what type of discounts & incentives were seem more enticing to customers etc.
- According to the previous year trend, Black Friday sales amounted to the revenue of 2.55B US dollars.
- As per the recent survey, 60% of Consumers say that they like to do advance purchasing before the start of eCommerce holiday sales.
- A Study conducted by Rjmetrics, says that around 92% of online shoppers will look for online discounts to have the best bargain.
2. Captivate Customer’s Attention With Best Website Layout
Your website is the first place the consumer visits as soon as he gets aware about your products & services. 38% of people never engage with a website whose layout is unattractive (Adobe). Here are some key points to grasp your customer’s attention towards your website:
- Optimize your site & make it user-friendly to be used on any device. As per the KoMarketing survey, 40% of smartphone & tablet owners search for B2B products on those devices. Your website should be relevant enough to reflect the image of eCommerce holiday sales excitement.
- Add attractive banners, borders, call-to-action (CTAs) to push customers to buy your products.
- Create a separate category of products for a separate range of customers.
- Give a wide range of internal links on your website to land your customers on your product pages.
3. Customize Your Shipping Services
Shipping is one of the most important aspects of any eCommerce business. When it’s about holiday sales, then one should be very careful about customizing these services as per the customer’s benefit. Clarify your shipping deadlines on your website page to assure your customers for the timely delivery of their orders. Around 75% of customers make repeat purchases if they get the best delivery services at a reasonable cost.
- Give complete information to your customers about return policies. 35.5% of customers prefer those companies who offer hassle-free return policies during holiday seasons (statista.com)
- Organize special overnight sales offers to facilitate those customers who haven’t been able to make orders at the last moment. The study conducted by statista.com says that the number of overnight shoppers is going to reach around 7.09 billion by 2023.
- Free shipping compels users to spend more. If you offer free shipping on a set amount, online shoppers will be more likely to spend more to get eligible for free shipping.
4. Offer Trending & Appealing Products
According to a study conducted by Adobe digital insights:
- Black Friday & Cyber Monday generated around $5.03B & $6.59B respectively in 2017 whereas Back to school days were ranked at $58.1B in online sales in 2018.
- It was predicted that Apparel, Computers & Sporting Goods will offer more discounts to customers on Thanksgiving Shopping days.
During Super Bowl weekend in the US, merchandise, decorations, televisions, food & beverages will be highly trended. Candy, chocolates, fizzy drinks, confectionery will remain to be in a high range of demand for Christmas sales like that of the previous year.
Offer special gift packages to your customers so that they can deliver the same to their relatives & friends. Make your display showcasing your discounts & incentives to be given to your customer this holiday season.
5. Convert Abandoned Carts Into Reminders
Sale Cycle study says that consumers abandon approx. 75.6% of carts amid their online shopping. On 2015 Black Friday sales, 72.81% of all online shopping carts were abandoned(statista.com). This generally happens sometimes due to high prices, poor site navigation, lengthy check out process, complex return process, etc.
Have a look over Why Users Abandon you and 12 Ways to revive from Shopping Cart Abandonment
In order to avoid these odd situations during the eCommerce holiday sales:
- Convert your abandoned cart rates into compelling emails that force your customers to come back & make purchases. Use intensifying subject lines & a strong CTA that evokes the emotional element of the consumers like…
“Hey, you left out something…”
“Come Back! Your Purchase cart is waiting for you…”
“Don’t miss out on your favorite items”
- Provide them save to cart facility, enhanced product page, progress indicator, etc.
- Track how much time your customer spends with your product carts by calculating the customer conversion rate.
- Provide easy payment options like PayPal, Debit cards, Mobile payments & eliminate the repeatable signing up processes.
6. Create Adhering Upsells
Whenever you visit restaurants, you might’ve been serviced with such words as “Would you like to try our combo pack?” This is nothing but just one of the ways of suggesting your customers purchase an additional product which makes your original product more expensive.
Whenever you add some extra quality over your premium products, you are able to create an upsell for your customers. Create your upsells keeping in mind the essence of holiday sales. Show them a comparison between premium products & non-upgraded products.
Return of investment in acquiring new customers takes almost 1 year while upselling takes only around a quarter which means less than a year (Insight Squared).
Learn about Top 10 Upselling strategies you should bag this festive 2018
7. Enrich Your Strategies With Informative Blogs & Publications
HubSpot says, that around 55% of marketers prefer blog content creation as one of their top Inbound Marketing priorities. B2B businesses that refer to blogging 11+ times per month engage more traffic than those blogging only 0 to 1 time per month. So, start adding blogs & publications as one of your tactics to boost eCommerce holiday sales.
- Analyze which content or blogs were more trending over last year during eCommerce holiday sales & create by focusing on the main elements of the festive season.
- Use highly engaging CTAs in your blogs to make your readers stick to your content.
- Shape up your content in the form of CRM ads & advertise your products across social channels.
- Relate your blogs to different festive blogs & include SEOs keywords to rank up your blog in web crawlers.
Go through- 15 SEO tips to increase Festive season sale of e-commerce
8. Make Best Use Of Social Media
In the new era of social channels, marketing & promotion has become a child’s play. 59% of Americans believe that customer service through social media has made it easier to get their issues resolved (Lyf Marketing 2018). Therefore, make the best use of social platforms during the eCommerce holiday sales season.
- Update the company’s profile page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & include special seasonal theme-based social campaigns.
- Automate your social channels by using various automation tools that help you in knowing whether your message is delivered to your target audience at the right time during the busy holiday sales period.
- Run contests for your customers like uploading their pictures with the company’s product & give special coupon codes or discount codes to the selected ones.
For more details check- 7 Strategies to Drive more Holiday Sales with Social Media
9. Find Out Prospects Via E-mail Marketing
In recent days, E-mail marketing has emerged as one of the most important strategies for boosting eCommerce holiday sales. So Customise your e-mail alerts now keeping the upcoming festive season in mind.
- Start sending emails to your customers even before starting of holiday season. Let them know about your offers & discounts pre ahead so that they don’t even think of going towards your rivals.
- Ask your customers to subscribe your emails in return of taking special cashback or discounts. Don’t send too many emails to the customers. HubSpot found that almost 78% of consumers unsubscribe from the brand which keeps on sending repeated emails.
- Give well-timed reminders to your customers via emails about new contests you are going to organize on social media.
10. Launch Strong Loyalty Program
Loyalty Program for your loyal customers can play a constructive role to enhance your holiday sales during this festive season. Gift cards, coupon codes, discounts can be used as your loyalty tools to enrich the festivity sense of your customers.
Launch special holiday-based loyalty programs on Cyber Monday, Christmas, Black Friday. According to the market survey, the Best loyalty program is likely to retain approx 70% of consumers.
11. Send Gift Cards To Make Them Feel Special
Nothing’s more special than binding your customers with exclusive Gift cards in this eCommerce holiday sales season. As per the market survey of around 2000 customers, 70% of consumers said that they plan to spend $400 on Gift cards.
Nowadays, the instant receivable nature of e-gift cards is making them more trending & popular. The average e-gift card user spends around 30% more than a gift card’s worth. These gift cards are also helpful in increasing referrals & hence establish a good customer relationship.
Learn- Why You Should Opt Gift Cards In Your Business?
12. Include A Sense Of Urgency
Inculcate a sense of urgency in your website pages if you don’t want your eCommerce holiday sales to end up in nothing. Around 45% of consumers buy products if urgency is included in the offer. Specify a particular deadline for your offers so that customers become serious towards it & accordingly make their purchases like “Hurry up! Offer is limited”.
Put countdown timers on your website like “10 days for Christmas” etc. to make them believe that yes this is the right moment to make purchases.
13. Create Post-Holiday Contests
Focus on post-holiday sales as it always happens that as the holiday sale season ends people stop doing purchases & sellers still remain left with extra stocks. During post-holiday survey of January 2018, 61% of respondents aged between 18 to 27 reported having completed their holiday shopping after Cyber Monday and before Christmas(statista).
Get rid of these situations & make yourself prepared for post-holiday sales. Conduct special post-holiday programs & keep providing good quality customer service.
14. Make The Shopping Compact
The more compact you make shopping for users, the more you uplift your chances to boost sales. With a compact shopping, I mean mobile-friendly shopping. 31% of users prefer online shopping with their mobile devices and it’s much handier than laptops or desktops.
Optimize your website for smartphones and tablets to make holiday shoppers shop from anywhere they want. Personally, I too like mobile shopping and do most of my shopping from my smartphone. Enhancing customer experience is the key to grow a business and a mobile-optimized website can help you in that for sure.
15. Make Your Product Pages Credible
Credibility is what makes a user trust your brand. And honestly, it’s not an easy cookie to crack. Well, the good thing is that you’ve several tools to make your pages credible. Maybe this is the reason that the honchos of eCommerce Industries also use these tools.
Product Page Enhancement is a plugin that is bent on making your product pages more credible. It shows the best selling products, the number of product sold in a month, ratings and reviews of a product, potential savings, stocks, etc. all on the same page.
Trust me, these things really help a customer believe in a product. When they see how much rebate they’ll get on a product or how many products have already been sold, they get an idea of the product popularity. If users trust your products, they’ll choose you over your competitors. So use the plugin to build credibility and trust to sell more in this eCommerce holiday sale.
Final Words
Holiday sale season isn’t only an opportunity but also a perfect time to trigger up your stagnant sales growth. Make a complete analysis of previous trends, try to focus more on retaining customers rather than generating new leads, use effective loyalty programs, and make the best use of social platforms. These approaches will help you to reach up to your goals for sure.
Please share your comments below if there are still more techniques in your mind.
