The winter holiday season calls for meets, greets, and gift exchanges.
But will the holidays be the same in this post-COVID reality?
Well, the new normal is all about digital commerce, and people are embracing how it has brought convenience to their shopping experiences. The recent spike in eCommerce sales proves that we are forming a digital economy. Looking at the current scenarios, eCommerce is expected to see a recurring growth in the upcoming holiday season.
Why Is Post-COVID Holiday Season Important?
As per Adobe, the COVID-19 situation caused consumers to purchase things online worth over $153 billion during April and May 2020, which is 7% higher than the holiday season of 2019 ($142.5 billion during November and December 2019). Here’s an exhibit from Adobe Analytics containing the holiday season predictions.
According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast, eCommerce sales will grow by 25% to 35%, year-over-year, during the 2020-2021 holiday season, compared to sales increasing by 14.7% in 2019, E-commerce holiday sales are expected to generate between $182 billion and $196 billion this season.
Another data shows that over 50% of the consumers admitted to being engaged digitally more than usual during the pandemic. In comparison, 88% of the shoppers plan to continue using digital mediums to shop for gifts and send them directly to the recipients.
That is not it; we have more! A study from eMarketer has put together survey results saying that around 47% of the respondents are interested in shopping online, while 32% will prefer options like ‘click and collect’.
Moreover, when we talk about the age groups, the same study shows that adults who plan to do more than half of their holiday shopping digitally fall under 26-38 years.
All these numbers direct towards a fruitful holiday season for the digital commerce industry, and a massive online shopping wave is seen in all the predictions by the industry leaders.
Every year eCommerce store owners undertake special measures before the holiday season. This year, the holidays are going to be challenging and rewarding both at the same time. The surged awareness and inclination towards online shopping will drive more and more visitors to eStores. A well-crafted eCommerce store can make or break your customers’ shopping experience, ultimately reflecting in your revenue.
How to Prepare Your eCommerce Store for the Holiday Season
Digital commerce is on the rise, and shoppers will utilize their new-fangled interest by purchasing holiday stuff online while avoiding crowded places. For eCommerce store owners, this time of the year is crucial. Wildly when digital retail is penetrating into day to day lives, holiday shopping is something that we all can look forward to. Here is the list of a few important holiday dates:
Thanksgiving — November 26, 2020
Black Friday — November 27, 2020
Cyber Monday — November 30, 2020
Christmas Period — December 3-22, 2020
Now the holiday shopping preparation game has different perspectives for the beginners and the established businesses.Here are some of the essential aspects of preparing your business for the upcoming holiday season. Read on…
1. Checkup on the infrastructure
The first thing to ensure ahead of the holidays is your eCommerce store’s site infrastructure. The established eStores can study their historical data to get an idea about their traffic. On the other hand, the newly launched stores can run load tests to determine the server capacity for the surged online footfall. It is important to check that your online store is ready to handle the increased traffic and transactions. Your eCommerce store needs to be able to take a surge in traffic and commerce. Reach out to service providers like Magento certified Developer to perform load testing and determine the traffic patterns.
2. Site speed
The ideal page load speed is three seconds – after that, the visitor might lose interest and leave your store, which will lead to an increased bounce rate. You can test your score on Google PageSpeed Insights and fetch recommendations to get the optimal site load time. Use such tools to optimize your website load speed in order to match the ideal time.
Extra Pointer – Page load speed is a vital Google ranking factor too.
3. Third-party integrations
Integrated third-party apps can sometimes create havoc due to surged usage. Make double-sure that your apps are up to date and can handle more than usual online traffic. During the holiday season, marketing efforts are at their peak. If your crucial transactions and navigation run on third-party integrations, pay extra attention to their performance well in advance.
4. Optimize your mobile commerce
The usage of mobile and other smart devices is exponentially increasing. Gone are the days when people fancied big screens to search and shop. On-the-go browse and shop patterns demand not only responsive websites but also an optimized mobile shopping experience at every stage. M-commerce is on the rise and is here to stay! During holidays, people are going to browse on their mobile devices, giddy up your eCommerce store to deliver an above-par mobile shopping experience for better sales. The exhibit below displays a steady growth in mobile order share.
Source – Salesforce Holiday Insights
5. Shipping and fulfillment
Holiday shopping is celebrated in all sales channels, including the online marketplaces, social commerce, physical stores, and even cross-border arrangements. If you are engaged in more than one channel, make very sure that you put up a unified and consistent front for all your visitors. Try and make the customer experience as smooth and quick as possible. For instance, BOPIS (Buy online pickup in-store) has witnessed a staggering hike (a 195% YOY increase in May 2020) due to the pandemic. Retailers can enable BOPIS to eliminate shipping and processing while delivering a convenient and safe shopping experience. Make the other necessary arrangements for logistic management to meet the holiday shopping delivery ETAs.
6. Holiday marketing strategy
Holiday marketing starts way early before Halloween and stays till mid-January after the New Year. Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend (BFCM weekend) is considered to be the busiest and most revenue-generating weekend for the online retailers. Even though the entire Q4 of the year comes bearing holiday order revenue, shoppers eagerly wait for the discounts and offers on BFCM weekend. Utilize social media, email marketing, direct marketing, affiliate marketing, paid promotions, and any other channels to drive traffic on your website. A well-defined marketing strategy is what you need to stay ahead of your competition.
7. Special arrangements for customer service and support during Holidays
85% of retailers are expecting increased sales this holiday season, and 61% anticipate higher engagement/orders via social media channels due to COVID-19. To address the consumer queries and problems during the holidays, allot a dedicated support team. A positive customer support experience in the time of mishap can lead to better service experience and, eventually, loyalty. You should be ready with support teams working on cell, email, socials, and website — be sure to respond to all inquiries within 24-48 hours.
8. Measure your success
Lastly, enable the website tracking, cookies, pixel (for Facebook), social media insights, referral traffic integrations, and other required tools that can measure the success of your marketing and sales efforts. It is imperative for online stores to collect and constructively utilize the gathered data for future predictions and operations. A few measures to consider are,
- Conversion Rate
- Average Order Value
- Website and Referral Traffic
- Bounce Rate
- Mobile Traffic
- Cart Abandonment Rate
Over to you
Decoding the new normal in this era of digital retail is not rocket science. The holiday season rush stays pretty much the same because shoppers are going shop; the only difference is they are going digital. As an eCommerce store owner, you need to look up to the mentioned aspects and fix the broken links, if any.
Is your store ready for the holiday season? With the Magento B2B and B2C Accelerators powered by Krish TechnoLabs, retailers and merchants can now launch an holiday optimized eCommerce store in just four weeks.
Contact us If you are looking for Best Digital Commerce Agency. You’d like to learn how we can help you multiply your Digital Commerce growth by offering strategy, creativity, technology, customer experience, managed services, and conversion-optimized digital marketing with data-driven marketing analytics. Be ready to welcome digital consumers with a seamless online shopping experience. Happy holiday preps you all!
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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
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