Holidays are the time when people spend more and more. So the competition also gets stiff in the holiday season. This is the time where you have to attract more customers and get the most out of it. Whether your store sells Barbie dolls or customized gift cards, the holiday season is the time to heighten the profile of your products and get them in front of potential buyers To stay ahead in the competition you must have some strategies to supercharge and increase your holiday sales. We have learned some lessons from the past holiday seasons and through this article, we will discuss those tips which will help you in boosting your holiday sales.
This article will guide you through some efficient tips to keep your e-commerce products highlighted in front of your potential buyers and increase your sales. Spare your ten minutes to quickly go through these tips which will help you boost your holiday sales.
Some of the quick tips
Update your website
Update your website. This doesn’t mean that you have to overhaul your site’s design during the holiday season. However, making small changes can bring more customers to your business. For example, make changes to your website banner images, highlight promotional offers focussing on holidays, replace your ads with holiday-specific discount information, use high-quality images on your website that can attract customers, change these images frequently since in this time your customers visit your website frequently. Also, adding customized categories like items below $10 or gifts for children etc can also improve customer engagement.
Create holiday specific contents
Your contents such as blogs, or some infographics can be one of the best ways to bring traffic to your website. If you are running an online gift store, an article like “Best gift ideas for your loved ones” will bring genuinely interested candidates to your website. So creating holiday specific contents is one of the best ways to boost your holiday sales.
Customize your social media appearance
Keep your brand updated by giving a holiday feel to all your promotions. You can consider giving small effects to your icons and brand logo which will help your social media accounts to become catchy. Update your themes, profile pictures, and share of your products in gift wrapping to help people associate your brand with holiday purchases.
Another way of improving your social media presence is to conduct some charity program for a local charity. This will not only show the social commitments of your brand but also shows what the season is really all about.
Be clear on your return policies
Another main point you have to notice is about the return policies. While more and more customers visit your site during the holiday season, you have to take care of some of the unnoticed mistakes. Most of the customers visiting your site may be new customers. These customers look for return policies before making a purchase from your site. So it is important to place your return policies somewhere visible.
If your return policies are hidden somewhere on your site, you are preventing customers from reaching the peace of mind they need to purchase. Try placing the return policies on your FAQ page or even link to it from the footer of your website where it is easily visible. Also, just give some relaxations on your return policies for the holiday season. You can consider extending the time that you will accept returns. These small corrections can make a huge difference in your sales.
Take quick actions to avoid cart abandonment
Cart abandonment is an e-commerce term used to describe a visitor on a web page who leaves the website without completing the purchase. This is a disappointing situation. Your potential buyers were trying to buy your products and something stopped them from the purchase. It may be due to different reasons such as a confusing checkout page, or a discouraging cost of shipping etc.
In the holiday season the number of customers will be more and thus the competition also will be tight. So minor mistakes from your side can divert your customers to other brands. So finding the reason for abandoned cart and fixing them quickly can encourage more of your customers to hit the “buy” button.
Create ads focussing on specific offers
Whenever you post your brand’s ads through Google AdWords or Facebook, promote holiday specific offers. People spend more during the holiday season. So when they get to see an offer, chances are high that they purchase from you and will surely boost your sale.
Suppose your customers are searching for a personalized gift and they found your many adds and if your add is having an offer, they will surely go to your ad and may purchase the product.
Reward your loyal customers
Customers will always go with cheaper deals. So if you want to retain your loyal customers you have to provide them with some rewards. You can gift your long-term customers with some kind of offers or complements. With this, you can not only boost your holiday sales but also increase your customer lifetime value.
Keep your team focussed
The holiday season may be a hard time for your team members. They will be more engaged in conversation and hardly interested in work. Encourage your team by celebrating small victories. It will help in improving your team’s morale and helps in keeping everyone focused. Give your staffs some dedicated time to engage in conversations and other kinds of stuff so that they will be focussed on work for rest of the time. Proper managing of your employees during the holiday season can help your sales skyrocket.
Amplify your customer service
When it is a holiday season, the sales will be high and obviously, your customer service team will have some extra pressure. By improving your support and after sale services, you can indirectly improve your future sales and brand reputation.
Now let us discuss some of the ideas regarding how to improve your customer service during the holiday season.
- Clearly mention the customer support contact channel and the service available hours on a visible part of your site.
- If your company provides a live chat support, make sure that you have enough support staffs to handle these so that your customers don’t have to wait in a queue.
- Improve your social media presence. Respond to all your social media queries as soon as possible. This will give a good impression to your new customers.
Provide additional options on your webpage
Providing temporary additional options on your webpage may increase your customer presence. Additional options can be something like providing a free gift wrapping option, add a wishlist feature to your site, send some reminder emails for abandoned carts. For example, Holidays seasons are the time when many of the customers gift something to their beloved ones if your brand is providing a free gift wrapping option, it will be a huge advantage over other competitors. It would be greater if you could add some personalized messages as a token of love to your loyal customers. All these tips are simple and require less effort and investment, but the result you get out of these are huge.
Organize some giveaways
Organize some giveaways for your social media followers. Create a contest like sharing your products in the customers’ social media networks and selected customers would be gifted with some special gifts. This is a way of marketing your products at less expense. When your customers share your giveaway ads on their social media networks, more and more people start knowing about your brand and also follow your brand. Many of the famous companies are following this tip to market their brand and improve their sales.
Offer faster delivery
Offering a faster delivery option during the holiday season can drive customers to your business. Everyone is busy nowadays. If your company is promising them a faster delivery than others, chances are very high that they buy the products from you only. During the holiday season put some efforts and invest some money in providing your customers with a faster delivery these efforts worth it. You can see a boom in your sales.
Many of the e-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart provide doorstep delivery within a day or even within hours of sale. Once your customers realize they get their products delivered within hours after the sale, they will shop more at your site especially on the holiday season. There are many local delivery services with which you can achieve faster delivery.
Use popups to highlight your holiday offers
Popups are considered as an annoying and risky marketing technique by many of the store owners. But the fact is that popups are the best ways to capture your about to be lost buyers. Use the popups to highlight your special holiday offer. This doesn’t mean that you have to annoy them with regular popups. Target your specific audience and show them with relevant popups. You can target relevant customers by tracking their previous history. You can check which products did they searched or purchased in the past few months. Then categorize them based on their interests. Show popups with offers related to their interested products. This can lead to increase the number of potential customers visiting your website.
Improve mobile experience
People are now using mobile phones to make purchases as it is more convenient and easy to buy something on the go. Now more than 50% of the e-commerce traffic & one-third of e-commerce sales are now happening on mobile devices. So improving the mobile experience is vital in boosting your holiday sales. If you are ignoring the great mobile experience, you are losing a huge amount of sales, especially during the holiday season.
Boost your email marketing
Don’t wait for people to come to your website instead, you can multiply your sales by emailing subscribers about your holiday offers. But remember to make the email campaigns personalized and targetted to get the best results. Categorize your subscribers based on their purchase history, interests and based on their response to your past emails.
For example, if you are running a fashion store categorize your customers who have searched or purchased a particular brand in the past few months. Provide them with information such as offers related to that specific brand in which they are interested in. This is how you target a group of specific customers who are more interest in a specific product. When you do these chances are high that these customers will buy your products. Here the customers are getting what they want and what they are interested in.
Concluding notes
Holiday shopping is something that most of the customers are looking forward to. So the sales will be definitely higher than the rest of the time. They are ready to spend more shopping on these days. It is your responsibility to provide them with the best experience and convert the holiday season into your company’s profit. So taking effective steps to improve your sales during these holiday seasons are very important to generate revenue. Take some time and try to implement these tips in the coming seasons. You can definitely see the difference in sales.
Through this article, we have shared our some tips that we noticed from the previous holiday sales experience. Hope this article was helpful.
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