The holiday season is here, manufacturers, shoppers and retailers are all in a frenzy anticipating what happens to be the busiest shopping season of the year, every year.
Reports indicate that retail sales between November 2017 and January 2018 totalled about $1 trillion dollars. That’s huge.
For this year’s holiday season, ecommerce sales are expected to increase 17 to 22 percent compared to 16.6 percent from last year (2017).
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and New Year record more discounts, flash sales, profits, losses, cancelations, returns, among others. Are you prepared to handle these and maximize the holiday season sales?
Things like proofreading your email newsletters, hiring more hands, outsourcing jobs and making your website more mobile friendly can go a long way.
Listed below are some essential tips to help you prep your online store and boost your holiday season preparedness.
When Preparing Your Online Store For The Holiday Seasons
- 1. Email Marketing is Key
Email marketing is a major revenue driver for many ecommerce stores, so your email subscribers list is a veritable gold mine if you have one, and you should.
Product arrivals/announcements, discounts, vouchers, sales, abandoned cart recovery emails, newsletters etc, all go to your list.
But before you hit send, ensure your copy is free of grammatical and spelling errors, is relevant, appealing and doesn’t appear spammy.
Schedule, double check, proof read to ensure you don’t type 50% discount instead of 5%, etc. A/B testing or split testing can also yield insightful results.
- Work On Your Lead Capture and Nurture
Traffic is one of the many gains of a well executed email marketing campaign. Are you mentally and technically prepared to manage or handle the influx of orders, enquiries, etc?
Do you have an effective landing page to capture leads, is your homepage well designed to convey the right message in the shortest possible time?
Is your customer service up to par, is your live chat working optimally or dead, how many minutes does it take you on average to respond to customer enquiries?
You may need to conduct a website audit in extreme cases to figure out areas of your online store to optimize in time for the holiday season. There’d certainly be plenty of orders and plenty of options including competitors who’re just one click away.
- Use Paid Ads
Organic traffic is great but ignoring paid ads altogether may be a costly mistake. Combining both is a solid short and long term traffic generation strategy that can yield positive results.
Paid ads can reach thousands of potential buyers, and backed with the right copy can increase your click through rates, and hopefully conversion rate.
Social advertising is also gaining grounds, such as Facebook Ads, Instagram ads and Instagram TV which generally cost less to run and implement.
You could also consider influencer marketing to advertise your products. Influencers have a huge following and advertising with them automatically puts your product in front of a large audience.
- Consider Shipping Fees
Pricing affects buying in majority of cases, especially non-luxury goods. And shipping is a major component of online retail pricing.
Some products cost less than their shipping fee. This is a major turn off for many a customer, who wonder why they have to pay more to ship than to shop.
To combat this most retailers markup product prices then offer reduced or even free shipping, and trust me the word “free” does magic in marketing.
Others beat this by offering more shipping options/partners, consolidated order discounts, or epacket services. China Post’s epacket services deliver to about 33 countries including the US and UK. Being on time is also key, find creative ways to implement expedited shipping.
- Make Your Store Mobile Friendly
Shoppers are increasingly going mobile. The US retail mobile commerce market rose more than 40% during the last quarter of 2017.
More and more shoppers now browse and buy on mobile. Others begin by browsing products on mobile then buying on desktop. In any case, a mobile friendly retail store is always a winner.
For instance, Shopify themes are mobile responsive which makes browsing on mobile a breeze. Non-mobile friendly sites on the other hand don’t render well on mobile complicating user experience.
- Hire Extra Hands
You may need to hire extra manpower to meet up with holiday season rush. Usually prices are low and expectations are high, meet them and they come back for more.
If you run or own a dropshipping business (which by the way is free to start and requires no inventory), you may need virtual assistants to help with processing and forwarding orders to your dropshipping suppliers during holiday sales.
These extra hands can answer calls, respond to emails, etc. You can find freelancers on Fiverr and other crowdsourcing job sites for a fair price. Dropshipping automation apps like Oberlo simplify and automate many aspects of dropshipping for you.
- Ensure Your Inventory Stacks
Running out of stock is one of the worst things that could ever happen to you during the holiday sales season if you stock your own goods.
It may take months for new stock to arrive your warehouse by which time the holiday season is already or nearly over. No good, right?Therefore, it is high time for you to stock festival related goodies like Bulk Personalized Christmas Ornaments in your store to ensure that you can meet the high demand during the season.
To beat this ensure your products are ordered in time and already on ground in your warehouse before the sales begin.
For dropshippers, the above doesn’t apply. Simply ensure your suppliers have enough stock plus have alternative dropship suppliers in case yours fail or can’t meet up with demand.
Conclusion:
Implementing these can make the difference between success and failure. A successful holiday season sales can boost your annual revenue and help you recoup all your losses throughout the year.
Adrian Morrison reports making over $500,000 in dropshipping sales in 2017 Black Friday alone. You could be the next holiday success story if you implement some or all of these.
Author Bio
Amos Onwukwe is a Business and Ecommerce Copywriter featured in Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, and scores of others. He is available for hire.
