How to Get Your eCommerce Optimized for This Holiday Season

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Here’s how to tune-up your ecommerce store to make the most out of this festive season.

Holidays are coming up next. This is the time when we celebrate, look up to buy new things, splurge into extravaganza and make the merriest out of the festive season.

And this is also the time when your competitors are eyeing at the largest chunk of the market and looking to divert most prospects towards their business. Or maybe are already prepared to check them out.

Surely, this is the time when businesses get exposed to big opportunities,tapping the high buying tendencies of customers. And this is where they get the chance to balance off their lean period and enjoy the holiday selling spree.

But, that only proves true if your business is well aligned to serve the market trends and is all prepared to curb the competition and make customers respond favorably to your ecommerce offerings.

And, you can have the idea of how fierce the competition is with the fact that the US alone has more than 500,000 ecommerce stores.This is not just growing in terms of numbers but also the way businesses offer their services and engage customers.

On the top of that, these numbers are growing every season, which makes online commerce business ever engrossed and volatile.

And this gets at the peak of its opportunities and competition as you step into the holiday season.

Here are some of the interesting stats from the last season:

  • Total online holiday sales reached $84.2 billion in 2016 which was a 16.4% growth compared to that of the preceding year
  • Each American spent an average of $900 during the 2016 holiday shopping season
  • Gift cards stood out to be most desired among users as 61% of people looked forward to them during the season
  • U.S. retail ecommerce holiday sales increased by 13.4% in 2015, making the ecommerce sales to rise to $9.33 billion
  • 78% of shoppers used the internet for research
  • 73% of shoppers showed interest in shopping at a new store or with new online retailers
  • Businesses experience the single biggest selling days on 22nd and 23rd of December
  • Same Day Delivery is considered very important by 25% of holiday shoppers
  • In 2015, mobile visits were 49% of the total holiday shopping visits
  • In 2015, 25.1% of total Black Friday sales were generated through Email marketing
  • Black Friday through Christmas brings in 50-100% more revenue compared to other shopping days throughout the rest of the year
  • November and December are the months that generate 30% of more revenue on average than non-holiday months

Looking at these stats you get an idea of how big an opportunity is the holiday season for your ecommerce business. And to crack and make the best of benefits flow your way you have to optimize your ecommerce entity to suit the latest market dynamics and user preferences.

Here are the most penetrating and proven ways that will make sure you make the most of this holiday season:

  • Be everywhere your customers are

To make it happen you need to be accessible to your customers and allow them to have tactile experience with your products. Seeing and touching the products are still their top motivators and increase the chance of selling your products by a great proportion. If you have physical stores, utilize the omni-channel experience. Or otherwise you can employ a sourcing system that serves as a means to connect with users for product interfacing at different tactically selected locations.

  • Integrate Live Chat

Enable Live Chat to your site. This provides your users with an easy and instantaneous way to connect with you in case of a quick doubt or query. This allows you to attend and serve your customers well and enhance your customer service value by connecting with them through the virtual help-desk in real-time. This not just boosts the chances of conversion but also contributes to your customer engagement funnel.

  • Optimize your pricing

Price is one of the most decisive factors in sales.To make sure your pricing system helps you attract users and drive sales while allowing you to settle for decent margins, you need to analyze transaction history, sales chart and user feedback on your portal. Based on these take detailed inferences on how the pricing of products are impacting sales. While you do this also keep a watch on competitor price-grids and pricing policies.This will allow you to plan and optimize your pricing to the best of your benefits.

  • Offer free and fast shipping

The best thing you can do to pamper their festive moods is by allowing them free and fast shipping. This expansively contributes to the extra value of your service spectrum. Your users feel more motivated as they look to have more benefits coming their way paying less price. And free fast delivery works wonders as a treat of celebration!

  • Urgent flash sales

It’s time when you should tap the sense of urgency of your users. You can do this by placing limited-period flash sales that offer them tempting deals, making them grab the bid at its earliest. Here, their buying binge and celebrative mood would meet the rush of urgency prompted by the flash sales and it should result in fast conversion.

  • Giveaway campaigns

The best thing you can do to knock their buying nerves in the festive season is offering them ‘that extra’ with exclusive discounts and free gifts. You can do this by adding attractive banners on your site, putting carousel ads on Facebook, sending targeted newsletters, doing cross-channel advertising and promoting your campaigns on social media. This can be done in the form of lucky draws, partaking prizes, discount coupons, scratch offers, and freebees.

  • Retarget your visitors

There are the visitors who might have come to the site to take a look at things and make up their mind first. Or they might be doubtful with their buying needs and couldn’t commit purchase at that point. And in the process, they just skip the site to give it a though later. These are not the lost opportunities and you should attempt to retarget such visitors by approaching them on social platforms or through emails. Remember, this has a high chance of conversion as it will now be a revisit so don’t miss it!

These are some of the most effective and rewarding ecommerce optimization ideas for holiday season. Taking up these measures you would enhance your ability to reach and penetrate audiences better and are most likely convert visitors into buyers. Just keep your approach sorted and focused utilizing these ideas to best support your situation and purpose. And you will be making the most of your ecommerce business, taking onto your competitors in the busiest hours of the massive $1 Trillion industry.

If you would like to know more about the topic or require help with ecommerce development services reach our experts at [email protected].

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About Author
Tushar Vijay

Tushar Vijay

A marketing graduate, a deemed strategist, a sure geek - Tushar is a fine blender of the art and science of writing. When it comes to tune up content with commerce, he knows the trick. For him, if words don’t make you think and beat, they are not worth your time. A crazy foodie, an unfailing jogger – that’s him off the desk!

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