Before we know it, the summer will be over, and then we’ll be inching closer to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas for another year.
As an eCommerce store owner or manager, now is the time to start planning ways to boost sales during the important holiday season. That way, you’ll maximize the impact your brand has in the market and the profits you can achieve for your organization.
1. Focus on Customer Service
You must provide excellent customer service to your clients year-round. However, support is particularly crucial during the holiday season.
This time of year is when people tend to be the busiest, crabbiest, most stressed, and the least likely to be patient or diligent about reading details on a website. They’ll therefore be more inclined to get in contact with businesses to ask questions and find out information.
Do everything you can to make life easier for shoppers. Make your contact details easy to find and have multiple points of communication, such as live chat, emails, phone calls, and social media responses. You and your team should respond to queries as soon as possible to satisfy customers and maximize sales.
Make your returns policies clear and note if they are different during the holiday season. Plus, mention cut-off points you have for shipments if people want to get them in time for Christmas.
Consider adding a specific holiday header that shows up on each page noting cut-off dates. Also, it pays to offer buyers multiple shipping options, including same-day or overnight services where possible.
2. Get Your Website Working Well
As an eCommerce entrepreneur, your website is your shopfront and a vital element to cement before the crazy time of year begins.
If your current site has navigation that isn’t particularly user-friendly, it is imperative to change this ASAP. It pays to utilize a quality web analytics tool to see how people browse and buy on your site.
Check out which pages they click on if they go back and forth seemingly searching for information, and how long they spend on pages.
Notice if they put things in their cart but then don’t check out, where they seem to get stuck in the payment process and click away, and any other details you can analyze. Use all the information you discover to determine how to improve your website’s navigation and processes.
Also, update stock details and other product data as quickly as you can during the holiday season when there is a lot of inventory movement.
Showcase plenty of images and videos of your products so people can clearly see what they are buying. It helps to have a “search” function so people can quickly find specific products or information, too.
Your site should use a clear font that is easy to read and leave enough white space on each page so shoppers don’t get a confusing, cluttered, hard-to-process feel. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly since many people browse and buy on smartphones and tablets these days.
Plus, each page should be fast loading. No one waits around for pages to load, especially during the busy Christmas shopping period.
3. Target Content Directly to Your Customer Base
Another way to maximize sales is to look for ways to target content directly to your main customer base.
Make it feel personalized and have wording that shows how your brand and what you sell differs from what shoppers will find elsewhere. You should know your niche and who you are targeting and refine content regularly to appeal to this demographic.
Many businesses also have success creating specific holiday gift guides for people to view or download. Put together gift ideas for different age groups and tastes, with catchy graphics, prices, and brief descriptions.
It helps, too, to put together some time-sensitive bundle offers to attract customers looking for great deals and a way to tick off many gift-buying tasks from their checklist.
4. Build Online Trust During Holiday Season
Consumers are aware that hackers are out in force these days and target online shopping sites. As such, shoppers want to feel comfortable that the eCommerce stores they frequent take security seriously. Let people know how you do this and that you use secure payment processing systems.
You can build more online trust by displaying relevant site seals such as those of PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
Showcase the logo of the SSL certificate provider you use, such as GeoTrust or Thawte, and display certifications showing you are part of well-regarded groups like the Google Trusted program. Also, list testimonials and product reviews from previous customers to make customers feel safer spending their money with your business.
Christmas and the days and weeks before and after it can be the time of year when you make more sales than you do for many months at a time at other periods. Don’t let this opportunity go to waste.
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