Our series of articles dedicated to eCommerce Christmas sales and marketing strategies for the upcoming holiday season continues. Today we look at some easy ways to implement tactics and maximize sales in the weeks before Christmas. If you think about it, it is this period that sees millions of people around the world looking for a last minute Christmas gift. This is why you need to make sure your eCommerce website is absolutely ready to compete with all the other players in your niche and you did all there is to drive traffic and revenues before Christmas day hits the calendar.
To give you an idea of why it is so important to plan ahead and prepare for the holiday season, take a look at a few key stats:
- In 2014, holiday season retail e-commerce sales accounted for 23.4% of total annual retail e-commerce revenues (US)
- In 2014, online sales increased by an average 2.2% compared to the previous year (UK)
- In the last few years, the peak shopping day traffic volume growth was 20% (US)
- Non-store sales transacted online and in mail order channels are expected to rise as much as 9% in 2015
So what this facts point out to is an unstoppable growth trend in online sales during the month of November and December, as well as more and more people buying gifts online for Christmas.
If you are an online store owner, don’t miss out on the upcoming holiday sales season and make sure your holiday marketing campaign is on spot to achieve record-breaking sales!
eCommerce Christmas sales online marketing cheat sheet
Even if Christmas day is right behind the corner and you have about 4 weeks left to exploit the holiday shopping frenzy, there’s still time to adapt your marketing strategy and increase web traffic and conversions for your eCommerce.
Here is our holiday season marketing cheat sheet of things you should either have in place or implement right now to get those online sales growing.
It is not only a tree you should be decorating this Christmas
The Christmas spirit goes a long way when it comes to alluring customers into buying shopping gifts even if they didn’t plan to do so. The holiday atmosphere is often a mood lifting setting and you should take advantage of this marketing factor by adapting your website’s design to reflect such spirit.
We’re not saying a complete Christmas makeover is necessary, but letting the customer know your online store has prepared special offerings just for Christmas will grab his or her attention. Among other things, decorating your eCommerce with typical Christmas designs will make sure the user that lands on your website knows you’re on the holiday sales bandwagon. This leads to more customers going through your product pages and clicking further than just your homepage!
Highlight products that would make for a perfect Christmas gift
It doesn’t matter what you sell online, what matters is how you sell it to your customers. Select some of your most popular products and make sure to highlight these on your homepage during the upcoming holidays. Tell the customers why the selected products would make for a perfect Christmas gift. Even if it’s a product hard to spin, use product benefits to put a product on the spot as the perfect gift.
After all, if a customer landed on your website it means that he or she is interested in what you sell in the first place. You could also put together a Christmas gift guide comprising most popular products, the ones at a great price or special Christmas offer products.
Let your potential customers know you’re working with Santa this year
To make sure your potential customers know you have prepared Christmas treats for them, you need to plan your social media and marketing outreach campaigns focusing on Christmas specials (product discounts) and Christmas gift guides. This will help driving web traffic to your website and target customers that are on the hunt for Christmas gifts. A customer that is actively looking for a Christmas purchase is a customer more likely to spend on your website in the upcoming weeks.
Prepare Christmas newsletters with discounts available for products included in your Christmas product guide; advertise Christmas offers on social media; promote 2 for 1 purchases and other types of special offers to end by Christmas day.
Don’t forget to optimise for mobile
At the risk of sounding very very boring, we will never get tired of repeating that mobile optimization is core to driving more traffic to your website. We've included a few interesting key facts to support our mobile advocacy:
In 2014, retailer-branded app usage among US holiday shoppers was 34%
The same year in the UK almost 30% of Christmas spending was done using mobile technology
IBM found that 50% of all traffic to retail sites is occurring on mobile; by December, these figures are expected to grow
Need we say more?
Last minute shoppers are up for grabs
Last minute shoppers are the most valuable customers; they are very well aware how little time they have to complete their Christmas shopping. This means they will be more likely to spend more money and buy more than one product as long as they land on a website that grants delivery before Christmas day.
Implement a faster delivery service over the holiday season. Also, grant customers refund options; when gifting someone for Christmas, customers love to know they can get a refund in case the product was not the right gift for a person.
As much as this sounds like a hassle, it’s also a great way to show your customers you’re a trusted brand that will go the extra mile to make any customer happy!