It’s almost that time.
Yes, the holiday season is almost here. Stores are filled with Halloween decorations and soon Thanksgiving and Christmas will be all the craze, and don’t forget about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s the most wonderful–and busiest–time of the year.
This is a very important time for e-commerce brands since individuals will be shopping and buying fits, and this is when sales tend to peak. U.S shoppers spent $211 billion online during the 2021 holiday season, according to digitalcommerce360.com, and holiday sales (both online and in store) are expected to hit $1.3 trillion this year, according to insiderintelligence.com.
If you’re not preparing for the holiday season you’re already behind the 8-ball. Your competitors are already doing so and investing plenty of resources. Your online store needs to be well stocked, up to date and ready to handle hopefully an onslaught of visitors.
Here are tips and strategies to prepare for the upcoming holiday season.
Search Engine Optimization
You can’t assume that all of your customers and visitors will automatically go to your website. You want to appear when people are searching for items that you offer.
This is why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important and you must configure your Shopify website to be as SEO friendly as possible.
Make sure you are using relevant keywords for your brand into the page title, product descriptions and your headings. This means you want to be thinking about the terms that your shoppers are most likely to be thinking about that relates to your specific product.
You can also highlight Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals or specials. Highlight the event you are targeting with your keywords.
Using the relevant words and making sure you have the best SEO terms on your page can go a long way to helping your site perform the best.
EVERYONE LOVES FREE SHIPPING OR DISCOUNTS
Customers always love discounts or free items.
One particular selling point during the holidays is free shipping. This can be quite helpful to build trust and loyalty with your audience and perhaps hook them for the long term.
This is a long-term play. Yes, you are going to take a little hit in the short term since you are not generating any money from shopping on that item.
But if you build that loyalty and get more sales over the long run, you can make up what you lose. You can also try to tailor your offer. Perhaps you make customers spend at least $50 or $100. That way, you are ensuring they spend more to get that free shipping.
Customers can be enticed to spend more if they know it will all be shipped free. Be sure to promote this offer since it’s a clear reason for them to shop with you.
A similar play is to offer interactive games that can offer your shoppers coupons or discounts.
This helps freshen your website and make it more lively, while also standing out from the competition. Differentiating yourself from your competitors’ is always of the utmost importance.
This tactic can help boost engagement, and you can use it to help gather more emails or other desirable data. You can try different games to find the one that makes the most sense.
CHECKING OUT WITH EASE
One way to help keep visitors on your site is to make it as easy for them to make purchases.
While it would be great if everyone already had an account with your page, you can’t assume that they do. The easiest way to do this is by enabling guest checkout. You can do this within your Shopify account by going to settings and then entering the checkout and account tab and unchecking “Require customers to login before checkout.”
You want your page to be as simple and easy to use for all customers.
Beyond just allowing for guest checkouts, you want to account for different types of payments and currencies. You should have multiple options available. This makes your site more accessible for all shoppers, not just those using certain currencies.
Shopify makes this easy to set up, so there’s no reason not to.
POP-UPS ARE YOUR FRIEND
While there may be a negative stigma at times regarding pop-ups, they can be quite helpful when it comes to holiday shopping. Pop-ups can be quite helpful for converting your site’s visitors into potential subscriptions or sales but you have to do it strategically.
No one wants to be bombarded by popups when they first arrive to your site or want to be hit by pop-ups that are just asking for basic details.
Consider strategic use that could be based on engagement – let’s say after several minutes. You can also use exit pop-ups when they attempt to leave your website.
Pop-ups should also be themed with the holiday that you are promoting.
MAKE IT PERSONAL
One last tip is you want to make the experience personal for your shoppers since 71% of shoppers are frustrated with experiences they consider “impersonal,” according to a 2017 report on personalization from growsgement.com.
That’s a staggering percentage that needs to be accounted for.
You should set up your site to recommend products based on what they are searching for and their preferences. Liveclicker reports that “advanced personalization” can result in a return of investment of more than $20. There’s clearly a benefit to doing so.
We hope these tips have helped you in your preparations for the upcoming holiday season! It will be here sooner than you realize. Be sure to keep checking Digicom for the latest articles, strategies and tips for all your marketing and advertising needs.
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
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