How to prepare your online store for the holidays?
The last quarter of the year is the busiest sales period for many companies. According to statistics, some stores can generate up to 50% of their annual revenue during this time. This high traffic is closely linked to holidays and events, which have become deeply ingrained in customers' minds and have also transformed the e-commerce landscape.
After all, that's when Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day, and St. Nicholas Day all fall. All the aforementioned deals are behind us, but the highlight of the day remains: Christmas. It's worth starting your preparations in November or even October. However, if you haven't done so before, all is not lost. We've prepared a handful of tips to help you make the most of the holiday season.
How was it last year?
Analytical tools will provide you with invaluable knowledge for effectively setting up your holiday campaign. Start by checking which days of the year you generated the highest sales, as well as which products generated the most interest. This will help you know when to increase your promotional budget. It's also worth examining your competitors' activities and reacting to their moves.
Keep your website in perfect condition
Attractive promotions and carefully planned campaigns will be useless if your servers fail. Therefore, make sure your website can withstand the onslaught. Page loading speed is also crucial. Impatient customers may abandon your store if the wait time is too long.
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It's worth reorganizing the homepage modules for the upcoming holidays. Highlight products that have historically generated the highest revenue. You can also create additional categories, such as gifts for her, gifts for children, or gifts for mom. This will help your customers avoid getting lost in the maze of offers and easily find what they're looking for.
Don't forget that an increasing number of purchases are coming from smartphones and tablets. Therefore, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you could lose up to 80% of your revenue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88rxkhPvUPA
Help your customers make decisions
In the final weeks of the year, it's worth preparing content that relates exclusively to the holiday season. When selecting attractive publication formats, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Opt for tried-and-true solutions, such as bestseller lists and gift guides.
Focus on specific examples in your texts, such as a gift for her, a gift for a child, a gift for mom, etc. You can also make life easier for users by providing answers to frequently asked questions. Then, pin your finished publications in a visible place on your website. Send the finished content to your newsletter list and share it on social media.
Build engagement on social media
Use social media to build user engagement before your holiday promotion begins. Don't reveal all the information right away. Gradually reveal more cards to build suspense. This way, your audience will regularly check your profiles to check on your progress and learn more.
Offer attractive discounts
During the holiday season, the entire e-commerce industry lowers prices in their stores. The scale of this phenomenon is so widespread that customers will undoubtedly flee to competitors if they don't find attractive offers from you. When determining the duration of a promotion, use historical data from analytical tools. Then, create a discount code and share it across all available channels.
Use the potential of Google Ads
When setting your budget, you should avoid unjustified frugality. Competitors and customers are playing va banque, so you need to rise to the occasion and allocate a larger budget than usual to avoid being left behind. Take advantage of remarketing on the search network (RLSA). When planning your campaigns , choose lists that even include recipients from last year.
Target new customers as well as those who have abandoned their shopping carts, completed a transaction, or viewed your products in recent months. You can also use the data you have to launch a display or video campaign. Remember to choose headlines and descriptions that are rich in keywords and will grab customers' attention.
Take advantage of new responsive text ads. They can increase conversions by up to 10%. Include a call to action in every message. Your ad ranking can determine your success or failure. To achieve high results, add extensions for callouts, sitelinks, phone numbers, locations, website information, and promotions.
Don't forget about your Facebook Ads campaign
Remarketing should be your main weapon when running a Facebook campaign . Use previously created audience lists, but don't limit yourself to just the last month. Even remind users who visited your page last holiday.
Your goal is to reach people who have completed a transaction, abandoned their cart, or simply browsed individual products. It's also worth noting that the lowest cost-per-acquisition strategy isn't necessarily the best one.
This time, the competition will be much stronger, so increasing your campaign bids may be necessary. This will increase your chances of winning the auction and, in turn, securing more ad space.
Ensure the highest standards of customer service
During the holiday season, you can expect interest in your store to increase several times. Managing all that traffic using standard resources often proves impossible.
Consider temporarily strengthening your customer service team. These employees will bear the greatest responsibility for ensuring the smooth running of the sales process.
Avoid delivery mishaps
Even if all of the above elements are perfect, there's still the issue of order delivery. Problems with on-time delivery can completely undermine previous successes. In extreme cases, you risk an even more serious image crisis.
Therefore, it's worth establishing a plan of action with your shipping company. Be sure to ask when the last day to place an order is to ensure your shipment arrives before Christmas or New Year's. This is likely the most important information for your customers, so you should clearly highlight it on your website and social media.
Summary
There's still some time left until Christmas. However, keep in mind that customers have until December 20th to place their orders to get their desired gift under the tree. Therefore, online stores are generating the most traffic right now.
There's no time to waste. You need to implement the actions we've outlined in this article as soon as possible. This way, you can attract customer attention and increase revenue.
In this post, we've only touched on the basics of online shopping and the holiday season. We delved deeper into this topic during one of our webinars, which you can find at this link.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- what to do to make your online store ready for the holidays,
- website performance and sales effectiveness,
- creating seasonal content for the end of the year and the holiday season,
- social media to support interest in the offer,
- price benefits that encourage purchases,
- Google Ads during the intense sales period,
- running Facebook Ads campaigns in times of increased competition,
- resource planning and temporary reinforcement of the customer service team,
- establishing a realistic shipping plan for the Christmas and New Year period with the courier company,
- priorities of marketing activities when the season is in full swing and there is no time for testing without a plan.
