With the holidays just around the corner, everyone is looking for the perfect gift for this eventful year either in-store or on holiday e-commerce sites.
There are some people who start deal hunting before the holiday season starts and there are those who wait until the very last minute.
If you want to optimize your holiday E-commerce online store during one of the best shopping season of the year, here are 5 ways to do so:
- Set up shipping & delivery
- Drive traffic to your client’s online stores
- Make sure online payment solutions are ready
- Get in front of the holiday rush & begin sales early
- Cater to last-minute buyers
Shipping Done with Ease
One of the most important things consumers care about when ordering online through e-commerce sites is shipping.
People will inquire about the cost, arrival time, and packaging.
This holiday season, online shopping and shipping requests are expected to push conventional shipping companies to maximum capacity. People are worried to leave their house so they want to shop online for all of their gifting needs.
Curbside Pickup
Giving the option of curbside pickup to customers, lets them get deliveries easily without relying on delivery times.
They can have their order shipped to your business or to another location and once they are notified that their items have arrived, they can call for their items, park outside, and only have to open the trunk or passenger seat to receive their package.
For shoppers who are hesitant to pick up in-store because of social distance, this is a perfect choice.
Seasonal Staffing
If you or your clients are processing and managing the shipping of all orders manually, it would be a good idea to increase the number of workers you have.
A great way to handle this is to hire seasonal employees to fulfill orders or connect to a shipping service, such as Shippo or Shipstation.
Based on the current pandemic, it’s a great time to implement different methods to handle packaging and delivery so that your products arrive in time for the holiday season! Don’t be afraid to get creative!
Drive Traffic To Your Holiday E-Commerce Business
The more eyes on your site, the more likely you are to make sales!
It can take time to build up traffic and drive potential clients to your customer stores, so make sure you start early before the peaks of holiday demand.
The first way you can do this is by maximizing your online store by using SEO in your website and in your marketing. There are sights like Wix SEO Wiz, which can customize a SEO plan for your client sites and yours.
To tell Google that these pages are part of an online store and give them the best chance of ranking in the search engine result pages, optimize product page titles and descriptions (meta-tags).
Make Sure Online Payment Solutions Are Ready
There is no time like the present to implement payment solutions so that your customers can shop online quickly and effectively.
First, make sure you have linked your credit card payment provider to your business and verify their validity.
Once you do so, consumers will be able to plan and pay for the items that they want. It’s important to also make sure you use non-traditional payment services like PayPal and Bitcoin.
Prepare for Returns
Have a strategy for how your customers will respond to refunds quickly before your head is underwater. Another effective strategy is to come up with a way to make refunds convert into exchanges. Offer your customers a way to exchange their items for a different, size, color or style.
Beat the Holiday Rush and Start Promos Early
Like a bolded headline on the front page of a newspaper, market your holiday e-commerce campaigns early and loudly!
Make sure your marketing campaigns are carefully staggered by your consumers so that they can produce a good flow of ongoing sales instead of just a few major peaks.
By doing so, the handling and fulfillment of orders is made simpler for your clients, and offers outstanding quality and timely delivery to customers.
Get Flashy with a Flash Sale
There is no better way to drive sales then by creating FOMO (Fear of Missing out)!
No one wants to run the risk of an item selling out or that they lose out on a good price, so they feel more urgency to participate in a flash sale.
Getting clients to run a flash sale increases their customer base and helps them to get ahead of the competition. This can also help them move overstock and make room for new inventory.
Clipping out Digital Coupons and Promotions
There is nothing that people love more than a good deal. Adding a coupon or promotion code and seeing the price drop is an instant serotonin burst.
63% of shoppers who make a purchase from a top selling store apply a discount on their purchase.
Encourage consumers to use coupon codes in innovative ways and set limited sales dates to maximize urgency, like buy one get one free, an additional discount for loyalty members, free shipping and a gift with purchase.
Cater to Last-Minute Holiday E-Commerce Shoppers
We are all guilty of waiting until the last minute to do something. Last minute holiday shopping is no exception.
It’s important to account for these last minute consumers because they make up a large market.
You need to make sure you have enough inventory and account for any possible number of orders that you may receive.
Offer solutions that will allow your consumers to make last-minute purchases without worrying about payment solutions as well as making sure that there are various methods to receive said items.
Want your business to stay on the nice list this holiday season?
Now that you have learned how to prep your online store for holiday e-Commerce, allow our team to help you implement these strategies!
Talk to our marketing elfs at hola@colibricontent.com to help wrap your business or your clients services in a perfect bow to be catered to your shoppers!
0 Comments