The Christmas shopping season is nearly upon us. For ecommerce businesses, this can be the most lucrative time of the year – but only if you’re prepared. Forbes at the start of the year predicted ecommerce to grow by 10.4% in 2023. In line with that prediction, IMRG has reported that in June ecommerce stores saw a 1.9% increase YoY in traffic. This goes to show that more people than ever are shopping online. Don’t leave things to the last minute and miss out on potential sales.
Follow this checklist to get your online store festive-ready.
Optimise Your Website
Your website is your virtual storefront, so make sure it’s ready for the influx of Christmas shoppers. So, here are four areas where you can start to improve your online store to make sure it’s fully optimised to convert more of your traffic over the Christmas period.
– Test your site on mobile – over 50% of UK shoppers will use their phone for Christmas shopping. Is your site mobile-friendly and easy to navigate?
– Check your site speed and performance. Slow load times and a difficult navigation are a conversion killer. Optimise the user journey, images and pages for faster speeds.
– Review your conversion rate. Is it at least 1-2%? If not, speak to us about improving your site’s user experience. The better the UX (user experience), the more sales you’ll make.
– Look at opportunities to enhance your AOV (average order value). Are you upselling on the cart? Offering discounted product bundles? Using apps to offer a more tailored customer experience? The more you can increase your AOV, the more revenue you will make (simple).
Run Paid Ads
Don’t wait until December to start advertising. Begin holiday ad campaigns in October to get ahead of the competition. Focus on deals, fast shipping and other priorities for Christmas shoppers.
Why not run your own “Prime Day”? Pre-promote and push the limited time offers as must haves. Raise interest and gain momentum to really make shoppers feel like they are going to part of something that they can not miss out on. Use trigger wording to entice customers to make a purchase.
If you have seasonal products, why not offer an “O2 Priority” like service, where those that are signed up to your mailing list can access your festive offerings before anyone else, with potential discounts too. Build a campaign around this so you can raise interest and gain valuable data from potential customers that you can sell your products to over a period of time, which will also help impact your Customer Lifetime Value.
Optimise for SEO
Ecommerce SEO will drive organic traffic to your site. Target top festive keywords in your content and product pages. Create gift guides and blog posts around popular searches like “Christmas gift ideas” and “stocking fillers”.
Build new collections/product categories specifically targeting the popular searches. Remember though, don’t try and squeeze in a lot of text within these pages. Make sure they are still user-friendly, whilst also optimised for search.
Build new landing pages for these popular pages using conversion rate optimisation techniques to give you the best possible chance to convert customers. Use user generated content, reviews, trust markers, product differentiators and USPs to best sell the benefits for buying from your brand.
Email Marketing
Use email to engage customers and remind them to buy from you. Send gift guides, special deals, new arrivals and cart abandonment reminders. Use segmentation to target high-value shoppers.
Invest in Klayvio. Invest in a team (us…) to optimise your email marketing strategy and post-purchase strategy. Email marketing has never been so important. Klayvio allows you to build extremely personal flows that convert. If you’re an online store not using Klayvio, you are missing out on a great opportunity to take your customer engagement to the next level!
Promote on Social
Run contests, giveaways and gift recommendations on your social channels. Collaborate with other brands to reach new audiences. Showcase products being used in real life.
Stock Up
Review your top-selling lines and stock up on anything that might sell out. Update your shipping timelines and options for Christmas delivery.
If you don’t have a stock management system, we recommend implementing one now, even if your order volumes are currently low. A centralised inventory system provides huge benefits as you scale your ecommerce business. It saves you time, avoids costly stockouts and disappointed customers, and ensures you can seamlessly grow your inventory as sales increase. Starting with an inventory management system early allows you to be prepared for future order growth. The time and costs associated with manually monitoring stock levels only increase as your business grows. So invest in automating inventory management now.
By taking these steps now, your ecommerce business will reap rewards this holiday season. Let us know if you need any help getting festive-ready!
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