If you own an ecommerce business, the time has come to prepare for the holiday season. It’s never too early to stack the deck in your favor so that you can take advantage of the avalanche of sales that can cascade into your coffers in November, December, and even early January.
In an ecommerce climate of increased globalization and consumers who are ever savvier and more bargain-conscious, it is important that you become an active participant in your own success this year by taking some very concrete, proactive steps.
1. Optimize your site infrastructure.
As an online merchant, your website is the face and mouthpiece of your business that communicates what makes you special and persuades casual visitors to become regular customers.
For this reason, it is vital that you take the time to ensure that your website is up-to-date, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. What’s more, it should include your most recent contact details and showcase holiday-related content that helps guests get in the buying spirit of the season.
Take some time to focus on your payment processing company. What might have been top-shelf a few years ago could be substandard today. Therefore, be sure that your company has furnished you with systems and updated security measures that make the shopping and checkout experience as safe and seamless as possible.
If they haven’t done so, it might be time to shop for a replacement.
2. Take advantage of Black Friday.
For many businesses, this one single day right after Thanksgiving represents a significant portion of their annual profits. It also sets the stage for the final two months of the year and helps to create a buzz about your brand that can carry far into the future.
Make the most of this event by planning for it in advance. Know who your target customers are, determine the ideal products and marketing strategies to woo them, and create social media and other types of advertising campaigns and contests that will stimulate interest and prompt people to visit your website.
Sweeten the pot by offering once-in-a-lifetime savings opportunities, and festoon your website with holiday-related images and product highlights that help to set the mood and create a sense of urgency that compels people to press that all-important “buy now” button.
This will improve conversion rates and reduce those pesky shopping cart abandonments.
3. Spruce up your social media presence.
Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are fertile ground for sowing the seeds of your holiday success. At little or no cost to you, these pages can become home to product demos, customer testimonials, compelling videos, and engaging dialogues with new and potential customers.
They can be the jumping-off points for fun contests and can contain links that take interested buyers directly to your website where you can accept payments online.
In order for this magic to happen, you first need to know which social media platforms your customers prefer to visit. Focus on these, creating and regularly updating your business pages to specifically attract and cater to customers in these niches.
Think of social media sites as direct extensions of your own web page that you can use to reach out to and engage with current and future customers in numerous ways.
The time you put into creating text and video content for your pages and in publicly conversing and sharing your passion for your store and your brand will be repaid many times over.
4. Offer enhanced delivery strategies.
Many retailers have discovered that one of the best ways to improve customer experience and boost sales is to make shipping and delivery as efficient and economical as possible. After all, as an ecommerce merchant, you need to overcome the obstacles that automatically come with sales that are not conducted in person.
In difficult economic times, your customers are more cost-conscious than ever, and offering free shipping can help to reduce the financial sting that comes with making a purchase.
If your profit margins are critically thin and making this concession seems difficult, consider only offering it for purchases above a certain threshold. What money you lose in offering no-cost deliveries will almost certainly be surpassed by what you ultimately make with the increased sales this campaign will make possible.
5. Provide curated gift guides.
One of the most daunting challenges faced by customers is deciding what to buy for the person who has everything.
When you remove this pain point by providing carefully curated gift suggestions for specific types of recipients, you can enhance the buyer’s experience and increase the likelihood of one or more additional sales.
No one knows the full spectrum of your product selections as well as you do. Consequently, take some time to create gift guides that cater to specific groups of people: teen girls or boys, tech aficionados, fitness enthusiasts, travel buffs, etc.
Then make sure you put links in a prominent place on your website so that distracted visitors don’t miss them.
Finally, be sure that the product descriptions on your website are complete, and provide clear images so that people will know exactly what they are buying. This will reduce the number of returns and chargebacks you experience in the upcoming weeks.
6. Cross-sell and upsell.
Your website is a treasure trove of interesting products, but how can you let your customers know what they are? One way is to employ cross-selling and upselling strategies when they make a purchase this holiday season.
Cross-selling refers to the technique of suggesting merchandise that is complementary with or that augments the merchandise that the person is already buying. Upselling involves offering the option to upgrade or improve the item to a higher level or tier.
Another highly effective idea is to entice buyers with product bundles that offer a way to combine traditional favorites into an attractive package that lends itself to gift-giving.
Succeeding in the ecommerce marketplace is difficult at best regardless of the quality of your products or the commitment of your staff.
Boost your likelihood of success this Black Friday and beyond by employing these advanced strategies, and your chances of rising above your many rivals will be increased.
