It’s already a bit late in the game for planning your holiday ecommerce strategy, since that should probably have been done back in October or even earlier. The fact that the holiday season is always the biggest time of the year for retail sales makes it important that you do everything possible to maximize sales. An optimized ecommerce strategy should help you achieve your goals for the season, and it’s something you just cannot afford to overlook each year. Optimization of your ecommerce enterprise will ensure that you get the most out of the holiday season, and hopefully that will carry you over to the next year. If you’re looking for ways of enhancing sales throughout the holidays, continue reading below so you can take advantage of our proven optimization tips.
Prioritize customer service
Providing the best possible customer service should always be a priority, because you can’t afford to make potential customers unhappy, or so disgruntled that they write a negative review of your company online. It’s also much less expensive to retain the customers you do have rather than to go to all the expense of procuring new customers. This is especially true around the holidays, and you should make purchasing from your store a priority with your customers. One of the ways you can provide best customer service is to issue information that customers frequently desire before making a purchase. For instance, many customers need to know about your shipping policies, or about gift cards that can be purchased. If you’re offering any seasonal promotions or discounts, that will also be important. Any customers making a purchase might want to know if their purchase will arrive before the holiday, and they might want to track the progress of shipping. Your return policy should also be clearly stated, so that customers have that information in hand.
Emphasize video marketing
You will generally get much better results when posting video ads on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, as opposed to simply posting text advertisements. With regard to social media, the younger generations of shoppers will usually prefer video advertising. That means you can engage with customers much better by posting video ads, especially if you can involve user-generated content. In addition to paid ads, you can make use of video content on your site to boost your SEO and drive more traffic to your site. Any videos that you post should demonstrate the benefits of your products, how to use them, or how they satisfy a need that your customers have.
Use sitelinks and other assets
You can include sitelinks on your company’s advertising, so that customers have the capability of clicking on sales products, promotions, or special holiday gifts. Whenever you make use of ad extensions (now referred to by Google as ‘assets’), along with your sitelinks, you’ll have much more content on your published ads. Anytime a user searches for your brand on Google, your sitelinks will appear just below the main URL of your advertisement. Google Ads can also make use of assets providing information about the content of your ad. Sitelinks and ad extensions make it much easier for shoppers to find what they’re looking for, and that will encourage them to click on your sitelink. It’s also possible for you to use ad extensions to announce special holiday shipping policies, price discounts, and any other events related to sales.
Create a personalized experience for shoppers
E-commerce owners have the opportunity to deal with personalization in quite a number of different ways. One of the old standby methods is to use remarketing, whereby visitors who have previously viewed an item, and even put it in the shopping cart, abandoned the process before making a purchase. Ideally, you should increase your prospecting ads by October, especially when dealing with big ticket items that require a longer purchase consideration time frame. By doing this, your retargeting efforts will be in place before holiday promotions are in full swing. If you are in the retail clothing business, you might install a pop-up on your site that allows visitors to choose a size or a category they’re interested in. This will help to narrow down choices, and it will create a more personalized shopping experience. It’s also possible to map the customer’s sales journey, by following the consumer’s cursor at each stage of the purchase process. This will also help you to identify the strong points of your website as well as its weaknesses, so that any necessary changes can be quickly made, and so these can be based more on customer browsing history and interaction history.
Consider influencer marketing
The holiday season is one of the best times to consider partnerships with social media influencers who might be involved with your industry. Even micro-influencers with less than 1,000 followers have an average of 60% higher engagement rate and 20% higher conversion rate than bigger influencers who might have more followers. You can get considerable bang for your buck by using micro-influencers, who tend to be much more affordable than their larger counterparts. This will make it much easier to market your products to your specific target audience, without having to invest an arm and a leg. You might also be pleasantly surprised to find that the engagement rate for your micro-influencer will be even higher throughout the holiday season.
Focus on mobile devices and social media
There’s no question that more and more consumers are doing their online shopping right from their favored social network platform. During the Christmas season, online ordering typically skyrockets, compared to other times of the year. This is why it’s crucial for your website to provide a very positive user experience on all mobile devices such as tablets, desktops, and smartphones. Catering to the group of people who primarily conduct searches from their phones, you can create organic and paid marketing content on social media. These days, it’s super critical to promote your company’s products on mobile devices and through social media, if you really want to reach your target audience.
