The holidays summon joyful feelings, but they can also bring a hefty dose of stress — especially if you’re an eCommerce business.
Between prepping your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, testing your website, reviewing your marketing data and creating holiday-themed landing pages, it’s understandable if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. You’ve put a lot of thought into your holiday marketing campaigns, but it’s also easy to neglect a few critical components in the throes of the busy season.
To minimize your stress and help you survive eCommerce holiday chaos, here are our best survival tips that will keep you on top of your game this season.
Have a Plan
Ideally, eCommerce retailers should begin planning for the holidays as soon as July. It may seem premature, but more than half of consumers begin researching gift ideas in October. If you don’t have a solid marketing plan in place before the peak of the season, you could miss valuable opportunities to connect with current holiday shoppers.
Know What Makes You Different
What makes your online store different than your competitors? How are you communicating that to your target market?
If you don’t have a unique selling proposition (USP), then holiday shoppers might not feel compelled to choose your eCommerce site over the competition. Identify your store’s differentiating features by examining your products, price point and promotional strategy.
You can even use customer feedback surveys to help pinpoint why consumers are loyal to your store.
Once you identify what helps your store stand out, incorporate it into your holiday marketing messaging. Are you running PPC campaigns for Black Friday? Include your USP in your online ads and holiday landing pages to promote your unique value.
Be Honest and Upfront to Inspire Conversation
Every new customer presents an opportunity to build a relationship and inspire life-long brand loyalty. To get your relationship off to a good start, being prompt and honest in your messaging is crucial.
If your company makes an error, be transparent about it and keep your customers updated until the issue is resolved. Whether your site is experiencing delays from high-traffic volume or an email campaign that went awry, own up to it with a carefully worded apology email. Not only will your customers appreciate the honest approach, but you could see an uptick in brand loyalty.
Streamline the Shopping Experience
Simplicity is key to driving conversions. While it may be tempting to add extra forms to gather more data or load your page with holiday-themed images, this can disrupt the user experience and hurt sales.
Focus on streamlining the shopping experience for your customers by walking through the user experience. Scrutinize your checkout process and identify any potential pain points that could cause customers to abandon their purchase. Similarly, check your page speed to ensure that your pages load quickly. There are plenty of free website speed test tools you can check out, like Google PageSpeed Insights. It’s also a good idea to read through your website copy to ensure clarity and readability.
Be Clear About Shipping Dates
The last thing you want is an angry customer who missed the cut-off for shipping and expected their gifts to arrive on time. By sending a helpful email reminder of important holiday shipping dates, you can save customers a lot of frustration.
Just remember to be clear about your shipping dates by using definitive terms such as “shipping deadlines” or “shipping cut-off date” to avoid any potential confusion. You also don’t want to assume that people are only buying gifts for Christmas. Be aware of other winter holidays like Hanukkah and Kwanza and add messaging to your website if the cut-off dates apply to these holidays as well.
Recover Bounces with Abandoned Cart Messaging
Every year, holiday traffic spikes during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Unfortunately, so does your bounce rate. It’s a problem that has plagued eCommerce merchants since the advent of online shopping, but luckily there are helpful tools to help combat this issue.
By setting up automated abandoned cart messaging, you can offer your customers an easy way to return to their cart and complete the sale. If you’re a Springbot customer, this is a breeze to set up. It’s also one of the most effective strategies for capturing more sales this holiday season.
Offer and Incentivize Customer Reviews
Ideally, your holiday marketing efforts continue through the beginning of the new year. Keep your momentum rolling by asking your customers to leave a product review or interact with your brand on social media. To make it worth their while, consider offering an incentive, like a discount on their next purchase. Include an expiration date on the coupon to add a sense of urgency and prompt new customers to repeat purchase.
We can’t stress how important customer reviews are for your eCommerce store. According to a BrightLocal survey, 90 percent of consumers will read up to 10 reviews before they feel that they can trust a business.
In addition to providing SEO benefits and boosting sales, customer reviews can also give you insightful feedback that can help you improve the user experience. Plus, they provide quantitative social proof that consumers trust your brand.
Conclusion
Now that we are halfway through October, the holiday season is nearly underway. Now is the perfect time to fine-tune your marketing campaigns and address any shortcomings. That way, your online store will be set up to attract record sales and new customers during this competitive time of year. Not sure where to start? Download our Holiday Planning Checklist to avoid last-minute stressors.
