Ways to Increase the Sales Through Your Online Store In the Festive Season

Do you get the impression that the festive season is stretching out further and further with each passing year? You have not made a mistake. Even though rising prices and distribution network problems are to be held responsible for the record-breaking timeframes this year, the early bird has always gotten the worm.

For this year, we are going to assume that you already have a few things in place, including a website, some products, and an “x” number of customers, which you wish to grow to “y.” After spending the better part of the last century engrossed in the world of advertising and eCommerce, we’ve identified 8 key areas to put money in right now that will produce the best return on investment for your eCommerce businesses in prepping for the holiday shopping frenzy.

Make Sure the Speed of Your Website is Optimized

According to OurLam.com “Customers will have a better experience overall if your website loads more quickly. And just like in a race over 100 meters, every second matters!” This is particularly true during the holiday season when people are shopping at the last minute, tensions run high, and there is a lot of window shopping done online. To be more specific, if you can cut the waiting time by just one second, you will see a 17% increase in conversions.

Amazon has long been considered the standard case study example for discussions regarding website speed. When the largest e-commerce company in the world claims that each additional 100 milliseconds of page load time costs them an additional 1% in sales, it is time to pay attention.

How to do it: The most significant bottlenecks are caused by the size of the images as well as the caching mechanisms. Additionally, it is always a good idea to consider minifying the CSS and Javascript files. Larger and more complicated web pages will require various approaches, so if you do not know to do so on your own, it is best to seek the assistance of an expert.

Maximize Your Digital App

Are you viewing this piece of writing on a mobile device right now? According to the most recent findings, there is a probability of fifty percent that your clients are. Why is that a relevant point?

Simple and uncomplicated! These are the two most important guidelines to follow when designing the mobile experience that you will provide for your customers. And to do that, making investments in a mobile-friendly website, both in terms of its design and its functionality, should be a primary concern for any company owner who operates an online store. Customers should not be required to scroll horizontally or zoom in to see the product or text, and it is unacceptable for forms to take an unreasonable amount of time to complete.

Processes for the Automation of Email Marketing

What exactly is an automation flow for email marketing? In a single phrase: being in the right place at the right time! Not only does sending targeted emails to customers keep them interested, but it also demonstrates to them that their experiences (and purchases) are valued. In addition to this, it frees up precious time for you, which you can then devote to concentrating on other things.

Emails sent to a specific audience that is relevant to that audience will have the greatest impact. Consider sending them a discount code after they have abandoned their shopping cart or a message of thanks after they have signed up for your newsletter.

Although marketing is never as simple as “setting it and forgetting it,” this is the step that comes the closest to developing lines of communication that match a particular action or behavior. To cite just one example: The high-end home furnishings brand Eternity shares its journey from breaking even to bringing in R500k per month in revenue. They began their email marketing strategy from scratch and set up clear and digitalized flows to support every element of the customer journey, from shopping cart abandonment to post-purchase promotions.

Make Sure That You Have Your Campaigns Planned in Advance

How early is too early to start shopping for the holidays? This year, Target kicked off their Deal Days on October 6, which is either fantastic news for people who like to shop early or a mild annoyance for people who hadn’t even decided what they were going to be for Halloween yet. The middle of October is still a good time for most companies to begin introducing new deals without appearing to be overly aggressive in their pursuit of making a sale.

Even if you don’t decorate your website with Christmas-themed elements, the process of strategizing, planning, and selecting which holiday campaigns to run can take quite a bit of time. If you get a head start, you’ll have more time to do research on your intended demographic, which will help you avoid making hasty decisions at the eleventh hour.

Get an Early Start on Your Advertising

One more argument in favor of getting an early start: Ad spend! In this case, you need to take into account two different things. The first is the behavior of customers in the weeks leading up to a period of specials and discounts. They already have started thinking about the television, fancy watch, or other items that they want to purchase by the middle of October or the beginning of November.

They could perhaps check out a handful of web pages, bookmark the ones they like best, gather information, and then put off purchasing until the product goes on sale the following month to see what is currently being offered. Does this ring a bell? In addition to this, beginning your planning process earlier may enable you to qualify for advertising rate discounts.

Leverage Viewer Segmentation

Regardless of your age, wealth, or location! All of these are important considerations to make before designing individualized marketing campaigns with specific messages that will establish a personal connection with customers.

Nike is a fantastic illustration of a business that does a good job of market segmentation. As a result of having access to data analytics, the Nike Direct initiative can communicate with customers on a more personal level and make educated guesses about the types of sneakers and retailers that customers will be interested in purchasing at different times of the year. Despite a decrease in retail revenue, Nike was able to increase its online sales by 15% by providing customers with a more individualized shopping experience.

Your advertisements, website, and email newsletter are all great places to begin identifying subgroups of customers, even though only certain business owners are in a position to purchase a data analytics venture to improve their customer journey insights.

Instill a Sense of Frantic Necessity

Whether you refer to it as a fear of missing out (FOMO) or a scarcity mindset, the findings of research in psychology are crystal clear: loss aversion is twice as effective as gain aversion. To put it another way, people are motivated more by the desire not to feel as though they have missed out on an opportunity than they are by the desire to gain something.

This strategy has seen widespread application in marketing as a means of convincing customers to act immediately rather than postpone their decisions. It is possible to accomplish this by introducing flash sales at the last minute, running holiday-themed advertisements that are only available for a limited time, or restricting the number of items that are available for purchase.

Ad Retargeting

Ad retargeting is a failsafe method for increasing conversions, particularly during the festive season when customers are more in the “scouting” stage and don’t finish a sale until much later in their purchase process. During this time, consumers are more likely to be influenced by ads that appear on their mobile devices.

Retargeted ads have a clickthrough rate (CTR) that is 10 times higher than a typical display ad. Additionally, website visitors that have been retargeted have a conversion rate that is 70 percent higher. These statistics come from the lead generation platform Wishpond.