“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store” – Dr. Seuss.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]h yes, the magical time is upon us again. Well not for all of us, but for eTailers it is! It is time to think about selling for the forth coming Holidays. If you are an online retailer (eTailer), you should start thinking about making small changes to your site, which will help you increase your online sales for the upcoming festive season.
So, let’s just get to it. Here are a few tips to revamp your online business to lure more customers.
1. Theme up your Site
You know it wouldn’t just feel like Christmas if your landing pages didn’t do justice to Christmas. Bring Christmas to life by updating your site’s color schemes to make customer get in to the Christmassy mood. Make sure your homepage is well designed as will act as a central hub for all your products. But remember, not all customers like Christmas, but leverage Christmas’s offers, so make sure to balance your site’s design that doesn’t woo them off.
2. Give Free Delivery on Orders
This might be an issue for you as an eTailer, but it is what most of customers are fascinated during Christmas. It encourages customers for impulsive buying and gifting to their loved ones. Margins can be affected if you don’t plan well for your orders. One strategy would be using free delivery as an average order value.
3. Analysing your Capacity
You might not know this, but this is one of the most important factors if you are running a large online store. With traffic increasing threefold during Christmas, you have to make sure you have the capacity of serving that size of customers. Capacity can be interpreted in many ways:
- Make your web server can handle large number of concurrent users on your website.
- Check your Inventory Levels, and make sure they all remain updated at all times.
- Constantly liaise with Packing & Shipping companies to make sure they can fulfil orders on time thereby decreasing lead time.
- Adjust Pay-per-Click budgets according your projected sales.
- Highlight any Gift Wrapping Options
4. Responding to Queries
There are many customers who may have a number of questions during the festive season. Make sure you answer all of them. Increasing customer interaction will given them confidence to trust in your products thereby increasing sales. Since the stipulated season window is small, make sure your response turn-around time is short.
5. Holiday Marketing
Ah Yes, probably the most important aspect of holiday retailing. This is an area that has to be planned well in advance so that customers are aware and visit your site when the holiday time comes. Email Marketing (including your existing customers) is a great way of promoting your site well in advance for Christmas. Other mediums would include using social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and StumbleUpon etc to reach masses with your offers. What’s more to this is people can setup their own wish lists that friends and family can fulfil.
6. Last Minute Orders
Always be prepared for last minute orders. What these customers are expecting is for their orders to be delivered at the exact time. DO NOT make shipping promises to customers you can’t possibly fulfil as this will only leave the customers displeased. And this impression will be carry forwarded for many years to come.
7. Contingency Plan
Always have a Plan B for Christmas Season. To be honest, with the climate changes, you never know when and how much will the snow hit. In cases like this, make sure you clearly communicate with your customers, so they are aware of the situation. Apart from this, you may require to quickly cope up with something that your competitor may offer which would require speedy planning & strategising.
8. Mobile
Do not forget to configure your website device-responsive. With increase in smart-phones and tablets, you have to realise that a majority of your sales might be coming from people who are on the move. Having a responsive website allows your customer to have a flawless shopping experience regardless of what device they are accessing your website on.
All in all, it’s just well planning that will make a Successful eCommerce Business for Christmas. Don’t forget that little things like a personalised thank you note or customised gift wrapping add a personal touch to Orders during Christmas. Customer who gift items to their loved ones want to make sure that recipient gets the intended emotion. The most important factor for a customer is the shipping times as they want their orders in time for Christmas. Make sure to make the entire holiday shopping experience as organic as you can, as this will sum up what Christmas shoppers are looking for. With that said and Christmas approaching in under 4 months, start planning right away!