The E-commerce share of the retail market and the degree of competition remains high, with more than 55% of shoppers opting for shopping online, which is a flexibly easy and suitable experience. The Holiday season makes most of the annual revenue for the retailers. The guide, by E-commerce experts, provides an insight into how to get your online store ready to make holiday magic by generating top-class revenues.
Steps for Preparing for the 2022 Holiday Season:
1. Prepare for Incoming Traffic:
- Make sure your inventory is appropriately stocked with must-have gifts.
- Check your reliability by working on the pageās load speed and security; your site should be scalable and steady to handle high traffic on the web infrastructure.
- Evaluate third-party integrations to ensure they are updated to handle the load; last-minute app add-ons break may slow down the site.
2. Create a Hassle-Free Customer Experience
- Test your site speed.
- Use new themes and an easy checkout path to take your storefront experience up a notch. Refrain from informational overload on site.
- Enable card abandonment notifications; send them to push notifications to convince them to purchase and to control customersā shopping journeys. Update your merchandizing strategy by merchandizing specific holiday bundles/products.
- Personalize the customer experience; merchants can surface relevant products to inspire customers after analyzing customer data. Ensure search results return accurate products.
- Optimize checkout by limiting checkout to one page, enabling guest checkout, offering various payment options, enabling multi-recipient functionality, letting shoppers select their preferred shipping option, and relaxing shoppers by giving them shipping insurance.
3. Surprise and Delight with Shipping and Fulfillment Options:
- Expand your sales channels through inline market laces, social commerce and cross-border and Brick-and-mortar shops.
- Add BOPIS for shoppers who prefer to browse online.
- Determine shipping and fulfillment options from handling it in-house, outsourcing with a third-party logistics provider or outsourcing with a dropshipper.
In-house shipping and fulfillment mean you manage the inventory and the shipment for all the orders. Outsource shipping and fulfillment with third-party providers to take advantage of bulk shipping discounts and advanced tracking technology. Outsource shipping and fulfillment with a dropshipper. Dropshipper reduces the time and money spent on shipping each time. Dropshipping allows products to be sent from wholesalers to customers.
- Create a memorable packaging and unboxing experience by adding extras like branded goodies and logo-emblazoned packing slips for a cohesive brand experience, but not with high-value items. Share your story on the website and social media channels.
- Have a displayed and transparent return policy with instructions and an in-page message; Consider adding a return label to each shipment that can be given to the gift recipient.
4. Create Strategic Holiday Marketing and Promotions:
- Plan and develop your marketing campaigns like SEO planning ahead of the holiday season.
- Adopt promotional strategies to add value to the store and engage and gratify customers in incentives like complimentary gift wrapping/free shipping/holiday-giveaways/contests/customer rewards/membership-only benefits. Invest in returning customers.
- Integrate your marketing efforts through social media channels; product tags on Instagram IGTV, Reels, stories, Live etc.; Facebook; video content and blog posts on various products to direct search traffic to your business. Such techniques creatively garner customersā attention.
- Leverage paid advertising through Facebook and Instagram ads to improve search performance and search engine marketing by driving traffic across channels.
- Send promotional emails about specific holiday sales, discounts or special offers with clear subject lines.
5. Ramp Up Your Customer Service and Support:
- Restrain from getting your website crashed; make an eCommerce platform available when needed by ensuring 24/7 global support that manages catalog transfers and recommends payment/shipping-related solutions. Maintain a good backup service.
- Make your contact information prominent and easy to find to build customer trust. Maintain a customer service team.
- Ask for customersā feedback.
Creating a shopping experience that allures customers and offers a smooth path to purchase convinces customers to choose your store over the competition!