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The holiday season is here, and with it, your chance to make a huge chunk of your yearly sales. But are you ready?
Do you have the best discounts to attract those in a celebratory mood to go on a shopping spree?
Is your server ready to handle the heavy traffic?
Are you ready to keep up with the sales of last year’s holiday season, or do you want to go beyond it?
These are the questions that you must answer right now and quickly. Because the closer the holidays come, the harder it will become for you to manage. But don’t worry; this article is here for you with the recipe for how to prepare your eCommerce website for the holiday season, whether that’s through crafty website updates or through the help of a professional marketing agency.
Analyze the Results of Last Year
Analyze the result of last year’s holiday. The inflation rate is high, and you need to consider everything from your financials to customer-drawing strategies to maximize your profits.
Therefore, step into the archives and assess the campaigns that you ran last year. Were they successful? If so, to what degree – what was the highest traffic for your eCommerce website? What were the keywords in which your eCommerce ranked, and what was the CTR?
But don’t only assess yourself. Pay close attention to your competitors as well. Find out what they were up to and how much they succeeded with their campaigns.
Answering these questions will give you a good starting point to start strategizing this year’s holiday season marketing campaign.
Get your Inventory Ready
Black Friday sales in the physical world aren’t so different from the virtual. Put the right discount on the right packages, and customers will flood in. Make sure that your inventory is updated to accommodate all the requests.
Contact your supplier and start stocking your inventory in advance. Go surplus if you have to. Holiday seasons are crowded, and items go off the shelf faster. So, having extra products won’t hurt your bottom line, provided you can get enough customers. The next tip will give you insight into that.
Provide Discounts and Free Shipping
90% of customers consider shopping online when a website offers free shipping. That, and discounts, are the best way to draw in more customers.
Select between regular deals for first-time buyers and special discounts for those who shop with you often. Offering special discounts will motivate your long-time customers to shop more.
Gift vouchers are also great if you want to draw your customers to a particular line of your product. Get in touch with the suppliers and sign as many discount contracts as possible.
Make Sure That Your Website Can Handle Traffic
Getting your website to crash during the holiday season is a good way to lose customers. However, it is common. Even major players like Flipkart and Amazon are susceptible to this issue.
But if you have been running a small-scale eCommerce, the traffic spikes your website may experience might be too much for it to handle. So, get in touch with your website host and find out if you have enough space to handle the traffic.
If crashes do happen – and they likely will – you also need to get your customer support ready to deal with the customers. Create a plan to either hire more temporary staff or optimize the work of your current support agents to handle the high number of complaint tickets.
Add a Festive Look to Your Website
Check out the “Great Holiday Sale” on Amazon, and you will see how much the devs have put in to give the website a celebratory mood. The hottest products get the highlight, and navigating through them is easy.
However, we understand that your business might not have enough resources to pull this off. But all is not lost, as you can add a little spark to your website to draw customers.
Add a countdown to the sale on headers. It will create a sense of urgency for those browsing your products.
If you want to get more bullish about it, show a holiday pop-up whenever someone adds a product to their cart. Do it sparingly, though, as it can also drive away the customers.
Another budget-friendly option is to alter some elements of the website to give it a festive flare. For example, you can modify the buy button and add a little bell favicon to add a Christmas appeal. Or, you can create an animation for a loyal customer that says something like you are eligible for a reward.
If you have grown too comfortable with your sub-par navigation, now is the time to take care of it.
People want to go through the website and find the best products with the best discounts during the holiday season. They know they don’t have much time because of the holiday rush. Having poorly crafted navigation will drive them away quickly.
Doing something from the ground up might be a bit much during this time – considering the holidays are getting closer. So instead, look for what you can do in your website’s navigation pain. We suggest at least optimizing your search function. Here are the tips.
1. Put the search function in the highest place within the eye-shot of the user.
2. Don’t forget the auto-complete option.
3. Make it responsive for mobile and desktop.
4. Add a filter option for precise search.
5. Add sorting option by price or by discount.
Create Special Category Pages
If you want people to pay attention to the holiday features available on your website, create a holiday category of products. Populate it with the best discount offers so that your customers find it easy to navigate the discount offers that they want.
Here are some of the examples you can try out:
1. Black Friday Offers
2. Christmas Offers
3. Mother’s Day Offers
Keep up with the holidays and implement them quickly to get the most conversions.
Conclusion
To capitalize on the holidays, you must start working on these tips now. To get ahead of this thing and get your website and marketing strategies ready, contact the right marketing professionals. They will prep your website for the holiday season.
