The wait is over! The holiday season is around the corner. The things that we wait for throughout the year are here – holidays, festivities and special occasions. It’s that time of the year when we celebrate, get festive, gather together and do fun things.
If you are selling online, this time of the year can prove to be a huge opportunity for your business. You can delight the right customers and boost your sales. Online retailers (especially those who deal in fashion, packaged goods, and luxury items) generate more revenue during the holiday months.
Consumer sentiments largely contribute to holiday retail sales. Holiday retail sales crossed the $1 trillion mark in 2018 — up from 5.8% the year prior. As per eMarketer, the U.S. retail eCommerce spending rose 16.6% to $123.73 billion in 2018. Thus, it is a great time to be selling online.
So, how should you prepare your online store and optimize your listings to convert this holiday season? Before getting to this point, let us first discuss the events that we can leverage to attract both traffic and sales.
The Primary Holidays You Can Leverage To Captivate Your Audiences
People are full of zest during this time of the year and tend to pay extra attention to everything holiday-related like visuals, texts, promos, products, services and more. You must focus on things that appeal to customers, making you stand out from the crowd. While some holiday selling strategies for sellers may resemble each other, keeping them relative to a particular event is the key to success. But, if you are unable to identify which holidays and events will captivate your audiences, you may not be able to get the best out of the season. Here is the list of holidays and events that are important for you and your customers.
-
Halloween’s Day – 31st October – It marks the formal onset of the festive season. Adding a pinch of spookiness to your listing optimization for the holiday season can be of great help. Buyers, during this time, purchase majestic and spooky costumes, candies, horror posters, colorful lights, and other traditional stuff. Loading your inventories with such products is a must around this time. Adorning your store with some Halloween decorations like the theme, banner, and images will please your customers and make them relate more with the festive vibes.
-
Thanksgiving Day – 28th November – Most of the retail/offline stores remain closed on Thanksgiving Day. And, you cannot afford to miss this opportunity. Customers are more likely to surf online stores for gifts. So, what you should do is – work on your shipping process and include express delivery. It will give your customers the advantage of last-minute shopping.
-
Black Friday – 29th November – The highlight of the holiday season is this five-day shopping spree that begins from Thanksgiving Day (Thursday). The spree continues through the following Monday which is officially called Cyber Monday. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are part of this event. Both of which are the most popular days to shop online. Cyber Monday, cited by 67.4 million shoppers, followed by Black Friday with 65.2 million shoppers. Including impressive discounts and running Early Access ads a couple of weeks before the sale starts will further boost holiday sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
-
Christmas – 25th December – This year, there are 25 days from Black Friday to Christmas Eve. This duration before Christmas is likely to be one of the busiest of the year in terms of shopping. You can maximize your sales during this time by offering:
- Heavy discounts
- Referral bonuses, gift cards or multiple payment methods
- Flexible and express delivery options
- Festive themes that help your store stand out
Now, you have the holiday list ready for your eCommerce store development. The next step is to consider these tips on listing optimization for the holiday season:
How To Optimize Your Listings To Convert This Holiday Season
“eCommerce will be increasingly driven by mobile commerce, which is expected to jump 32.6% and will account for 44% of holiday eCommerce spending.” – eMarketer
Smartphones largely help shoppers find just the right gift in time for the holidays. Thus, to maximize revenue, you must focus on optimizing your site for mobile devices. It will not only help you build a lasting relationship with your customers by facilitating their shopping experiences, but also let you drive more conversions.
You know that one of the primary ways that helps to boost holiday sales is to optimize your listing for mobile as 66 % of smartphone owners used their mobile devices to make holiday purchase decisions. So, now let us know the ways through which you can optimize for mobile and prepare your eCommerce store before holidays.
1. Push Notifications
This time of the year overwhelms shoppers with innumerable advertisements, emails, and the urgency to get it all done before the big day. To stand out in this chaos, you need push notifications. It will let you directly engage with customers and give them a personalized experience. For holiday sales, you need one-time messages to let your customers know about your special offers, discounts, product launch, event updates, etc.
You can successfully navigate your customers to the page you want, the moment they open a push notification. For instance, you can either send your users directly to the product page, to their cart or to your home page.
2. Social Media
Leverage social media for app-exclusive offers and deals this holiday sales season. It will not only help you drive more downloads but also boost engagement and conversions. Advertise your app-exclusive offers and discounts on all social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. Through these advertisements, you can direct your users to your app where they can access special discounts or deals. It will drive urgency while giving your users a sense of exclusivity by letting them access the great festive deals.
3. Easy Checkout
The checkout stage is the most crucial of all the shopping stages. A complex checkout process may result in cart abandonment. To save their time you can include more options for digital wallets like Apple Pay, Android Pay, Google Wallet, MasterPass, Visa Checkout, and/or PayPal. With prompt and seamless checkout process, your customers are less likely to abandon the cart.
Besides, everyone is busy during the holidays. Customers are reluctant to spare even an extra minute. Thus, online shoppers lose interest if the checkout page consists of too many payments and shipping information. Giving your customers relief from long and clumsy shopping will surely help.
Conclusion
To get the best of sales this holiday sales season, you need to offer your customers unique value and fascinating discounts. Besides tempting offers and appealing themes on the store, you also need to include simplified checkout options, additional payment methods, express delivery, exclusive app access, and personalized communication. You can accomplish this either through your app or your eCommerce store. Add a cherry on top by using your own blend of eCommerce marketing expertise.
The holiday season 2019 is knocking on your door. Wait no more and optimize your listing for mobile today. You can get expert assistance by outsourcing eCommerce store development services. Connect with us by dropping a mail to info@data4ecom.com and get expert consultation on how you can prep your eCommerce store for the holidays.
