Hello everyone, and welcome back to our “Give me 5!” series, where we share with you five useful eCommerce tips that will help improve your strategies and get on the road to success.
In this episode, we’re going to focus on how to increase online holiday sales.
The holiday shopping season is definitely the most wonderful—and the most challenging—time of the year for e-commerce websites.
Once you’ve decided to target the holidays, it’s time to get into the game!
I’m here to make things easier by proposing five great ways to boost your eCommerce Holiday Sales:
1. Give your website a holiday makeover
Show consumers that you’re in the holiday spirit by using your homepage to feature special deals and holiday-themed products.
You should strategically show off your best products and make the offerings as appealing as possible.
Prepare for this year’s holiday season by making sure your website is optimized for mobile. Also, don’t forget to check that your web and app hosting servers are up to the challenge of receiving a sudden influx of traffic and transactions.
2. Get your discounts right
If you only offer small discounts, you shouldn’t expect any miracles. During the holiday shopping season, customers are counting on getting crazy good deals.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean an 80% discount – it can involve cross-selling and up-selling, bundle deals and so on. You can add exclusive or time-limited deals which can create a sense of urgency.
You should always calculate the magnitude of your discounts based on your financial model, previous sales results, and ROI forecasts. Make sure the deals will actually generate profit instead of net losses at the end of the holiday period.
3. Make sure your analytics are running smoothly
If you’ve promoted your campaigns well, you’ll likely receive a lot of traffic over the holiday season.
Make sure everything’s working fine with your analytics, so you can monitor your website’s performance, the traffic, purchase flows, and so on. For instance, if shoppers are abandoning their shopping carts, you want to know immediately so that you can take corrective action in real-time.
4. Get personal
It’s more important than ever for brands to provide personalized experiences.
You can leverage shoppers’ previous browsing behavior to personalize the offers shown to them on your home page. You can build campaigns that focus on customers who haven’t purchased in a while, or those who engage well with emails.
By analyzing behavioral customer data, merchants can surface relevant products to inspire customers and encourage them to make a purchase.
5. Provide stellar customer support
During the holiday season, companies might get overwhelmed by the increased number of orders and customer service tickets and requests. Narrow down the main channels that customers are using to ask for support or send complaints – email, social media, your helpdesk platform?
Make sure your customer support team is very well trained and prepared to deal with difficult customers and stressful situations, and that your escalation infrastructure works properly.
One last bonus tip: try to “under-promise” and then “over-deliver.” This will help manage your customers’ expectations and always provide them with a positive experience.
Thanks a lot for watching, we hope you enjoyed this video! Feel free to share any suggestions or other tips in the comments below, and we’ll see you next time, with more awesome content!
Want some extra tips on how to grow your eCommerce business?. Then don’t miss out our previous episode!
