With the holidays fast approaching, most businesses are starting to gear up to survive the peak period of retail. Every year, consumers are spending more and more money shopping during the holidays. Now is the perfect time for e-retailers to start strategizing to get their slice of the holiday pie.
what can you do to increase conversions this holiday season? We've compiled the latest trends that you can use to beat out your competitors this season.
Create a sense of urgency
Holiday shipping cutoff dates are one of the most vital elements of holiday shopping you need to provide to customers. By showing customers clear, accurate cutoff dates you'll increase the chance of giving them an on-time delivery that will keep them coming back for more. This year, holiday shopping is slated to be mostly done online, which is a good thing for e-retailers.
This is a highly stressful time for consumers. Not only are they trying to find the best deals, they are also trying to find the best gift for that special someone. As a e-retailer, you can use this sense of urgency to drive conversions during the holidays. In fact, nearly 90% of impulse purchases are made when items are on sale. You can create this sense of urgency by using countdown timers, limited-time offerings and time-sensitive sales periods.
2. Take advantage of Shopping Frenzy
Let's face it, everyone is looking for a great deal. Last year, Aussies spent $3.9 billion in November on a variety of products including clothes, beauty, gadgets and travel. Yes, we're talking about the big "deal days" that predate the Christmas and Boxing Day sales. This year, these dates include:
- Thanksgiving Day (November 26)
- Black Friday (November 27)
- Cyber Monday (November 30)
- Green Monday (December 14)
- Free Shipping Day (December 18)
- Super Saturday (December 19)
There are few different ways to take advantage of the shopping frenzy:
- Prepare with pop-ups
- Send personalized advertising emails
- Display deals and discounts
- Personalised content, site wide
3. Faster shipping over free shipping
You've heard of free shipping. Shipping costs as well as delivery times still remain one of the biggest factors behind cart abandonment. While free shipping is still very much a driver to convert, fast shipping has become an enticing new trend. Last year, Amazon Prime had 112 million users buying into their 2 business day delivery guarantee. This is especially important during the holiday period, as more than 60% of consumers are estimated to purchase presents a week before Christmas. Time sensitive deliveries allow e-retailers to push same-day or next-day delivery options to consumers, as a primary driver for conversions later in the holiday period.
4. Optimise your store for on-the-go shopping
With more than 1 in 4 shoppers in Australia purchasing items through their mobile phones, mobile is one of the fastest growing devices for eCommerce. You've probably seen mobile optimisation on every store optimisation recommendation list. We want to stress the importance of creating a mobile-friendly website, as Google will penalise you if you're not. Being pushed down the search list isn't what you want during one of the years busiest retail times.
So what do we mean by being mobile optimised?
- Audit your page loading times
- Audit your content
- No pop-ups
- Prioritise the important elements above the fold
- Keep any form interactions frictionless
Optimise your mobile checkout experience
As the last touchpoint before a potential customer converts, optimising your mobile checkout process, should be a key part of your holiday strategy. You want to create a mobile checkout experience that is pain-free for your customers.
- Rectify any performance related delays when a user accesses their cart
- Make guest checkout easy to find
- Make the order summary and tracking easy to view on mobile
- Pre-fill as many fields as possible in your form to reduce drop-off
- Offer mobile-friendly payments like Paypal, Google Pay and Apple Pay
5. Display your deals and discounts
It goes without saying that during the sale period customers expect a great deal on your products. It makes sense that every touchpoint on your website should broadcast any deals, bundles or discounts that you have.
How do you do this?
- It could be as simple as a styling change with your prices on your websit0
- It could be a filter option to show only discounted options
- It could be a banner on the homepage and product page to ensure your deals don't go unheard of
6. Create bundled promotions
Product bundling is when you package complementary products together, often sold at a discounted price or with an added value. These bundles are extremely popular during holidays. There are a few different scenarios that you can use to bundle items:
- Increase awareness of a new product
- Sell slow-moving stock
- Gift-giving occasions
- Build-your-own bundles
Each bundle that you put together should ideally have a theme. This will also help you with your marketing as you can segment audiences and run targeted campaigns promoting each bundle. It's also important that you're highlighting a benefit for your customers. This could be a price discount or a free item.
7. Integrate social media
It goes without saying that, just like a brick-and-mortar store, eCommerce stores need to push their holiday deals and sales out to their community on social media too. During the holiday period, it's a good idea to run traffic ads to your website using an incentive like a discount or deal, and retarget those web visitors with targeted campaigns (more on this later). Generally, you want to start advertising at least a month (if not two) from the start of the holiday period. Doing so will allow you to get ahead of the competition and allow your customers to hit your brand multiple times before conversion.
- Run holiday-themed contests and giveaways for brand awareness
- Reward your social media followers with exclusive deals
- Advertise your promotions, coupled with the right targeting
- Capture leads to retarget with email campaigns
8. Reward customer loyalty
Return customers are 60x more likely to convert than new customers. Setting up a loyalty program automates the process allowing you to set up reward tiers that customers will strive to while they shop. These exclusives can include discounts, offers and promotions. Not only will this make them come back for more, they will also spread the word organically.
9. Improve customer support
The holiday season is a perfect time to use content to help bring new customers to your site and to nurture your visitors as well. Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers - what content would help them to shop for holiday gifts? How about a guide for children under the age of 17? What about a gift guide for the best shoes?
You can create some of this evergreen content and run Facebook ads to attract more traffic to your store. Just be sure not to make your blogs overly promotional.
Make sure you audit all your product descriptions as well to ensure that they are as descriptive as possible. As online products cannot be physically picked up and inspected it's important that your customers are given the most information possible to make their decision.
10. Offer free gift wrapping
Chances are, if your customers are anything like us, they dread the gift-wrapping part of giving someone a gift. But it's just wrapping a bit of paper around your gift, right? Well, it's a little more complicated than that. For many, it's the extra task of visiting a store or going online and purchasing wrapping paper, ribbon, scissors and tape. Worse if they can't find any scissors, and they leave their gift-wrapping till the last minute. Offer your customers the proverbial cherry-on-top by providing a free gift wrapping service at checkout.
11. Retarget, retarget, retarget
As we discussed in our previous article, customers are unlikely to convert after experiencing your brand just once. Often they will go through multiple touchpoints before they convert. They may jump from your website to social, and then finally convert on your website. This is why it's important to set up your Facebook pixel and retarget your web visitors with branded ads or more targeted campaigns.
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