During the holiday season, online businesses have a chance to make money beyond just the festive decorations and lights.
The trend of online shopping has continued to grow over the years, with no signs of slowing down based on the statistics from the first four months of 2024.
Truly, Adobe witnessed a 7% rise in eCommerce expenditures compared to the previous year, totaling $331.6 billion. As a business owner, it is essential for you to secure your portion of this remarkable surge in revenue!
In order to achieve that, you must make sure your online store is prepared to persuade visitors to make purchases, particularly during Black Friday.
Let’s examine different ways to improve your online store – whether starting from the beginning or making improvements – and take advantage of the upcoming lucrative holiday season.
1. Create a sales strategy for the upcoming holidays.
Begin with the fundamentals – a solid sales strategy is essential. Establish your objectives for the upcoming holiday season beforehand. The best moment to engage new customers and reconnect with existing ones on your website is during the holidays.
You must choose gift bundles and special deals. Develop a strategy for the required alterations in the design of your platform. Additionally, remember to consider the marketing plan.
2. Get ready for incoming Sales
Shopping during the holiday season leads to more visitors to your online store, especially during busy days such as the Cyber 5. There is nothing worse than a website crashing during crucial times.
Ensure that your stock levels in your inventory are sufficient.
More shoppers lead to more inventory requirements. To prevent delays and unhappy customers discovering their desired gift is unavailable or delayed, contact suppliers promptly to ensure you have enough stock, especially for popular gift items.
Verify your dependability.
Examine your third-party integrations. Have they been recently updated? Evaluate their performance under pressure, and refrain from adding any more afterwards. Extra or eleventh-hour app enhancements can disrupt your workflow or decrease the speed of your website.
3. Organize promotions for the upcoming holiday.
Organize your seasonal sales strategies. Promotions increase sales and simplify the purchasing process for customers, especially those who are uncertain.
Select the best-selling items.
What are your best-selling products? Conduct some investigation. Discover the most sought-after products or services in the months before the holiday. Afterwards, select the products you wish to discount, emphasize them, and ensure they are easily visible to customers.
Sephora showcases their most popular products and top-rated items as chosen by customers. To the left, there are various filters available that assist customers in selecting a suitable gift within their budget. They range prices from less than 10$ to 100$.
Recommend Gift Vouchers
Gift cards come in handy for individuals who are unsure of what to purchase. Additionally, new clients have the opportunity to visit your website in order to redeem their gift cards.
Provide holiday wrapping services with a custom message.
In the festive period, take advantage of the chance to increase sales through upselling. This is the season when individuals are more inclined to buy additional items connected to their initial purchase. This occurs due to the encouragement from various promotions and offers.
Generate your gift options.
When it comes to holidays and gift-giving, individuals often embrace personalized, one-of-a-kind presents that have a special meaning. Therefore, numerous online stores now provide the choice of “Create Your Own” in their selection.
Some brands have launched campaigns that encourage customer creativity and individual preferences as Easter approaches. This also encourages individuals to explore your range of products and prepare for upcoming events.
Get ready with unique gift sets and packages.
An additional suggestion is to provide curated holiday packages and collections. In this place, you have the opportunity to mix and match various alike or complementary products.
4. Develop strategies for email marketing campaigns.
Having holiday email marketing campaigns is necessary. Now is the perfect moment to let your customers know they can purchase their holiday gifts from you. If you possess sufficient data, you could likewise deliver customized product suggestions and exclusive promotions.
Special promo codes, discounts on specific items, free shipping, or reduced shipping costs could be extended to customers who regularly open your email promotions. Don’t overlook the importance of creating a sense of urgency by setting deadlines for your offers.
Another useful suggestion is to send a follow-up email to individuals who have left items in their online shopping carts. A significant number of customers put a product in their carts but do not complete the purchase. There are multiple reasons for this. From a poor network connection to determining if it fits their needs. Particularly because individuals frequently require extra time to come to a decision during the holiday season.
Additionally, a follow-up email can have a significant impact. Studies indicate that over 40% of cart abandonment emails are opened, with 50% of those being clicked on, and of those clicks, 50% result in a purchase.
5. Adorn Your Store with Festive Decor
Adorn your website’s main page appropriately. There is no need to revamp the entire website. Frequently, you can simply apply a “skin” to the primary sections and pages. Choose a fun holiday concept and let your creativity shine.
For instance, you could design a winter wonderland or a vibrant Easter garden on your site to enhance the festive atmosphere. Alternatively, you could establish a countdown timer for the upcoming seasonal holiday. This technique creates a sense of importance for the upcoming holiday, prompting customers to buy quickly and enhances the celebratory atmosphere.
6. Tailor Your Paid Advertisements to Suit Your individual Needs
When designing your ads, adhere to the personalization mentioned above. People become annoyed when bombarded with advertisements. Your competitors will also be running ads targeting your customers during the holiday season.
To differentiate yourself, customize promotions for individual clients. The likelihood of increasing your sales through personalization is higher. Bear in mind that individuals do not invest their time in browsing through impersonal advertisements.
7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Prepare for an abundance of holiday shopping related search queries before and during the holiday season. Hence, it is important to ensure that you have a high ranking on SERPs for these specific phrases. Therefore, now is a great opportunity to make investments in updating content and making other SEO adjustments throughout your website.
8. Remember to consider Remarketing strategy.
While browsing some time ago, you may have come across the ideal presents for certain friends and family members. You may have even saved them to your bookmarks or added them to your favorites, ready to purchase when the Christmas season gets closer. That is something your users do as well. However, as is often the case, no one bothers to review the saved content on their browser or Instagram.
That is precisely the reason why remarketing was created in the first instance. Known as “retargeting”, this marketing approach focuses on individuals who have engaged with your site previously. Utilizing remarketing is an effective method to keep your store in people’s minds and target valuable potential clients.
9. Make Gift Lists
Do not underestimate the influence of gift guides. They are extremely beneficial for individuals seeking inspiration for gift ideas. Additionally, it is recommended to divide your gift suggestions into categories, making it simple for users to locate perfect gift options at any time.
Etsy provides a useful resource for customers seeking to create a customized present. Refer to the image above to observe how Etsy captured a holiday vibe by using the title “We asked a few elves…”
They provide custom family Christmas sweaters, portrait mugs, name necklaces, and a variety of other gift options in their catalogue. It is an excellent tool if you are searching for items to sell on Etsy or seeking ideas for one-of-a-kind, customized presents.
10. Create Instagram posts enabling users to make direct purchases from them.
Picture your clients browsing their Instagram feed and coming across a fantastic sweater that would be ideal for their closest friend. Instead of visiting the website, signing up, and looking for the sweater, you have the option to make a shoppable post. By doing this, all they have to do is select the post, view the price, and then go to check out. Quick and simple.
11. Enhance Customer Satisfaction
Now, let’s turn our focus to the customer’s experience. There are several methods to monitor and enhance the online shopping experience of your customers on your platform. Search for quick routes, ease and user-friendly layout.
During the holiday season, avoid trying new approaches to your customer’s journey as traffic and demand are higher. Get that done beforehand. You shouldn’t put in the work, time, and funds towards developing a customer journey path that goes against the preferences and perspective of your clients.
12. Consider prioritizing mobile devices.
Our world is primarily focused on mobile technology. Ensure that there are no issues with your website when customers shop, even though it likely functions well on mobile devices.
The popularity of m-commerce is increasing and spreading. Particularly prior to the festive season. Based on eMarketer’s information, individuals use mobile devices for shopping during this period primarily due to being on the go and not having a desktop.
It is essential to test the mobile version of your website, but remember not to implement significant alterations. Can you recall the customers who discovered the ideal gift for their brother in August and returned to your website in December to purchase it? They ought to be able to easily find the item without wasting time searching for it.
13. Think about adopting a more adaptable return policy.
For the holiday season in your online store, it’s beneficial to display your return policy prominently when discussing eCommerce. Additionally, it is important to take into account the adoption of a generous return policy. If customers require an item exchange, do not create additional obstacles for them.
14. Examine Your Stock and Protect Your Backend.
Make sure to assess your inventory before beginning a promotion to ensure that you have sufficient items available. The same is true for products that are featured as top sellers. Remember to ensure your security is current.
15. Ensure your website is functioning flawlessly.
Because you anticipate a large volume of traffic, now is not the right moment to add new features or functions to your website. If modifications need to be made to your website, avoid making them overly substantial.
Keep in mind that your customers are familiar with your website’s design, so making too many changes could potentially confuse them and drive them to your competitors.
16. Customer service can be improved by using live chat features.
Make sure that your online customer support is consistently reachable and easy to access. During this season, customers are more inclined to reach out to customer service or communicate with brands through chat services. You have the ability to feature your live chat feature for users to send you messages directly.
Conclusion:
Having learned all the tips and tricks to increase your holiday profit, be sure to act on them without delay. The obstacles you must overcome are now evident to you, so proceed wisely.
With the holiday season approaching, it’s time to start planning using the tips provided in the article above. If you follow all the tips correctly, your online platform will definitely generate sufficient profit.
Are there any inquiries you have about getting your store ready for holiday sales? Share your thoughts in the comment section!