Introduction
A report by Insider Intelligence has revealed that 2023 holiday retail sales are expected to increase 4.5% after US shoppers touched a record USD 211.7 billion in online sales during the 2022 Holiday season, up 3.5% from 2021.
Did you notice how retail eCommerce is expected to grow to USD 260.56 billion in 2023?
It shows that holiday retail spending will soon be a trillion-dollar industry. Of course, there’s no denying the intense competition during this season, but you cannot overlook the opportunities it brings along. So, you ought to keep your Holiday season arsenal ready well in advance.
Here are 23 tips that will help you overhaul your eCommerce storefront and make it huge during the Holiday season.
23 Tips to Optimize Your eCommerce Store for Maximum Conversions
1. Carry Out Competitive Research
The first step to website optimization is carrying out competitive research. You can subscribe to their emails and follow their social media handles to keep track of the content they are creating. It is not necessary to ‘copy’ each and everything. Just take inspiration and build a more compelling strategy that would work during the peak season.
2. Ascertain Your Budget
When it comes to your finances, allocate enough budget to every Holiday. Holidays start right from October and go till 1st of January (next year). So, it’s almost 4 months of rigorous marketing. Determine the budget for Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and the New Year. You can even shell out some money for small Holidays like Small Business Saturday and Giving Tuesdays.
3. Plan Out Your Promotional Strategy And Schedule The Price
How do you want to offer discounts? Are you planning to go for storewide sale or category-wise discounts? Some brands even offer additional discounts to early-bird shoppers and VIP customers. There are several apps, extensions, and modules that can help create a dynamic pricing strategy.
4. A/B Test Your Ads To Determine What Resonates The Most With Your Audience
It is advisable to A/B test your ads in summer and gather data for your Holiday season. This data will help you retarget your existing audience during the Holidays. It is a more cost-effective approach. In case you have not done it already, go for it NOW. Create a couple of ads and A/B test them. See how they resonate with your audience and retarget them to get conversions.
5. Build Tracking Links
Create UTMs for every campaign so that you can track how people are engaging with the content posted on your social media handles and newsletters. It will help you understand the source of your click-throughs and traffic so that you know where to invest the marketing budget.
6. Activate Live Chat
In case you don’t have live chat on your eCommerce store already, activate it right away. By enabling this feature, you will be able to address the concerns of your customers on the go and boost customer loyalty. You can activate live chat by using various plugins available on different eCommerce platforms. It is an extremely useful feature when you want to scale up your business and expand its reach to a larger audience, especially during the Holidays.
7. Work On Customer Segmentation
No one appreciates random ads in their feed and irrelevant emails overflowing in their inbox. That’s why segmentation is important. Sort out your customer data based on basic parameters like age, sex, and demographics. If you want to build hyper-personalized marketing campaigns, take into consideration advanced parameters like past purchases, browse history, and average order value.
8. Create Discount Codes
Each eCommerce platform gives you the feature to create discount codes. Create the right discount code along with an attractive marketing campaign to increase business sales from Holiday shoppers. Just make sure that the promo codes are easy to remember and not too complicated. Also, keep it creative enough so that it stands out from the competition.
9. Explore Shipping And Fulfillment Options
How disappointing would it be if your customer’s gift did not reach the destination on time? Even if you are dealing with the same vendors and shipping resources throughout the year, it is advisable to get in touch with them to set clear expectations for the Holiday season. eCommerce businesses with physical shops should consider curbside pickup to accommodate the changing customer preferences.
10. Keep Provision For Easy Returns
Holiday return rates range around 17.9% every year. Therefore, easy returns is one of the most essential policies. You can either refund the purchase price to the customer after receiving the product or offer exchanges. Certain brands also choose to offer a gift card for redemption on a future purchase.
11. Have Free Shipping Terms And Conditions In Place
Offer free shipping to increase the likelihood of conversions. Often, it is observed that a product is priced at the higher side. In such cases, a “no shipping cost” offer would encourage the customers to complete the purchase. However, you must set out the free shipping terms and conditions clearly to avoid any later conflicts. For example: Let the customers know whether the items can be returned or exchanged. Inform them about the reimbursement options and whether they have to pay for return shipping. Have logical guidelines for return eligibility — like tags intact, invoice bill, etc.
12. Ideate A Cross-Sell And Upsell Strategy
Cross-selling and upselling help in boosting online sales like nothing else. While upselling encourages customers to purchase the same product with additional features or a more sophisticated and premium version of the same product, cross-selling prompts customers to buy complementary items based on previous purchases.
13. Offer Gift Cards
Gift cards are the most convenient gift option. No wonder around 50% of consumers purchase gift cards. Recent research has revealed that the 2023 Holiday season will shape up to be the year of the gift card. Nearly 1-in-3 U.S adults say it is ‘very likely’ they will be giving gift cards this year, up 12% from 2022. So, make it a point to include gift cards in your eCommerce store.
14. Utilize A Cloud-Based POS
In case you have both physical and online stores, use a cloud-based POS for your brick-and-mortar clients. The advantage of this technology is that it will allow you to access data and information from anywhere, provided there’s Internet connectivity. Lightspeed, Square, Shopify, Shift4Shop, and Revel are some of the best POS systems with strong eCommerce platforms.
15. Engage Your Customers With Interactive Posts
Engaging your customers becomes all the more important during the Holidays as every brand is competing for attention. Craft interactive posts that will encourage two-way communication and participation from readers. For example: You can create giveaway posts or Tag-a-friend posts to drive engagement and increase brand visibility during the Holidays. You can also use gamification to entice more users to convert.
16. Strive To Deliver A Delightful Customer Experience
Imparting a delightful customer experience should be your topmost priority throughout the year, especially during the Holidays. Besides having a useful product, you should also have a responsive customer support team that addresses the consumer’s concerns on time, with a satisfactory resolution. Let the users know about the availability of your customer support. If you are offering 24*5 support, inform the users when the customer support executive will be available.
17. Invest In Cart Recovery And Re-Engagement Programs
The Holidays can get quite overwhelming for your buyers. Amidst all the chaos, it is natural that shoppers might forget to complete the purchase even after adding the products to the cart. So, it is important to invest in cart recovery programs and convince the cart abandoners to buy. Send out a series of cart abandonment emails, text messages, and push notifications to bring back the cart abandoners.
Apart from cart abandonment, you must also re-engage the dormant customers and try to win them back during the Holidays. Send a series of re-engagement messages incentivizing the inactive customers to make the purchase. Let them know how you have upgraded your product since their last purchase.
18. Ask Customers For Feedback And Be Prepared For Iterations
Create a customer satisfaction survey to figure out if something is not working out. Send a short survey with 5 questions at the most as too many questions can repel them. You can either send out exclusive feedback emails after the purchase or survey links with the order confirmation message. In case you receive any grievances, respond to the complaints and make the necessary iterations at the earliest. It is advisable to have a dedicated staff member and set protocols to address these concerns.
19. Send Last-Minute Deals To Seize Conversions
While early-bird offers are important for enthusiastic shoppers, last-minute deals would help you seize conversions from procrastinators. Deploy reminder emails, retarget your customers with social posts, and take help of remarketing tactics to advertise last-minute offers. Tap on the FOMO instinct and incentivize the customers to compel them to make the purchase.
20. Alert Customers With “Back in Stock” Notifications
Besides last-minute reminders, send back-in-stock notifications to inform the customers about the availability of the products. It will not only increase the likelihood of conversions but also build trust with the customers.
21. Allow The Customers To Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS)
Your customers expect choice, flexibility, and accessibility in eCommerce order fulfillment, especially during the Holidays. BOPIS is an important feature that helps deliver convenience and enables customers to order online and pick up in store. The users get real-time local inventory visibility so that the users can select when and where to pick up the items.
22. Leverage The Power Of Social Commerce Rather Than Simply Relying On Websites And Apps
In 2022, around 4.6 billion people (58% of the population) are active social media users. 64% of digital buyers discover brands and/or products through social media. The global social commerce industry is set to grow three times as fast as traditional eCommerce, from USD 492 billion in 2021 to USD 1.2 trillion by 2025. On a global scale, live shopping is gaining immense momentum. McKinsey has predicted that live commerce will account for up to 20% of all eCommerce by 2026. Establish your presence on relevant social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to increase your sales beyond websites and apps.
23. Formulate A Post-Holiday Strategy
You must have increased your customer base during the Holidays. That furnishes a golden chance to take the help of retargeting. Even after the Holidays, your customers are open to purchasing. So, rather than putting a break to all the advertising campaigns post-Holidays, use this time to leverage the low pricing of advertising platforms. Build an upselling strategy for your holiday bestsellers. In addition, you can even share coupon codes to entice customers to shop beyond their budget.
Wrapping Up
Your eCommerce site is a treasury of profits and Holidays hold the biggest opportunity to generate money. However, eCommerce stores don’t give you the liberty to be in store and help customers. So, you must focus on the look, feel, mobile responsiveness, and user-friendliness of the eCommerce site. Upgrade to the latest technologies and switch to a powerful eCommerce solution with headless features to drive maximum sales during the Holidays and even otherwise. Follow the tips shared here to win over your potential customers and make your Holidays merriest.
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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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