How To Maximize eCommerce at Christmas
A month till Christmas, marketing campaigns are well underway. Many organized online shoppers start Christmas shopping in October and start early to seek the best e-commerce deals during the lead-up to Christmas. The online share of retail sales rose to around 30% during 2020, which is bound to rise in 2021. Most companies who have experienced Christmas shopping will have noticed users’ spending habits and therefore each year you can adapt the marketing strategy and set their website up so that it is able to accommodate the rise in users to the site. Christmas is a great time for e-commerce businesses, but you need to make sure you make the most out of the booming holiday period. Within this article, we will discuss what you should be doing with your e-commerce business during Christmas.
To grow your online sales at this time you must plan ahead in all areas of the business including but not limited to, offers, promotions, website, blog content, social media and mailing campaigns. When putting together a plan you must also keep in mind what is sold at Christmas time, do you have specific products/services which sell better at Christmas, if so focus on these and make sure that they target the right audience with the right message behind them, think what and who you can target dependent on the product.
1. Analyze customer behavior from last year
First, when you are coming up with this year’s strategy, last year’s data is your best friend. Analyzing customer behavior allows you to understand how each customer shops over the Christmas period and how they have engaged with your business. You can analyze trends such as late-night shoppers, big spenders, little spenders, etc. From this data, you can personalize your marketing strategy to suit each customer’s personality from how you word the campaign, which offers you display, and what time of the day you send the email marketing.
Also, from this data, you can re-engage with previous customers as you know they have that initial interest in your products/services. You can then personalize the marketing emails they receive with tailored recommendations on products they were interested in last year.
2. Analyze the competition
Analyzing your competition is just as important as analyzing your customers’ behavior, the Christmas period is highly competitive against all industries when it comes to marketing. Customers are spoilt for choice with a variety of products and big promotional deals by conducting competitor analysis allows for you to create a marketing campaign that is different and will make you stand out against other businesses and reduce the risk of your customers buying elsewhere.
3. Build optimized pages for your site
Appearing on Google rankings are competitive within saturated markets and even more so during the festive period, you need to make sure your site is optimized for the correct keywords and that your content is keyword heavy and relevant so that you are higher up in the searches, as users normally stay on the first page of search to find the best companies. The main page to optimize will be the home page, as this is typically the first page a user will land on, you want to create a good first impression and showcase your best products that you believe are of high interest to potential customers. MR SEO offers SEO services for e-commerce businesses who are looking to make the most out of Christmas, optimizing your business’s site to generate organic traffic and in turn increase conversions.
4. Upsell
Most Christmas shoppers are browsing for multiple gifts to buy, so this is the perfect opportunity to upsell your products, but you need to be careful with how you go around this and make sure it doesn’t distract users from what they come on the site to buy. To avoid distraction, you need to place these upsells in relevant places on the site and at the right points of a customer’s journey including the basket page where they might want to add that last-minute product to their basket. You can also follow up with this upselling strategy with email marketing, setting up automated product recommendations based on what they have purchased.
5. Design your website
Get festive. Decorate your online shop to attract buyers and create positive, happy emotions in customers to allow for the best user experience. This allows marketers to get busy with their creative side and create interactive, engaging Christmas content using festive colors.
In addition, something businesses should keep in mind is the important dates around this time, including black Friday, cyber-Monday, last posting dates in time for Christmas, and the new year posting dates. All this information should be clear for customers and avoid any messy situations where buyers don’t receive their gifts in time.
Overall, Christmas is a busy time for e-commerce businesses and a perfect time to see a boom in sales, and even more so now most Christmas shopping is done online since the pandemic. Start planning early, be ahead of the game so you can have more of a relaxing December in the lead-up to the big day.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
