So much about this year has been unpredictable. But if there’s one thing we can say with confidence, it’s that Black Friday won’t look like the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. With fewer people wanting to risk shopping in physical stores, forget about shoppers lining up at 4am to get the hottest deals.
More shoppers are eyeing eCommerce sites than ever before and experts expect to see an unprecedented spike in online retail sales. According to a Bazaarvoice survey, 61% of retailers anticipate higher engagement and purchasing through social media this holiday shopping season.
All of this translates into a huge opportunity for eCommerce shops. The only question is who will benefit more—you or your #1 competitor? My eCommerce Holiday Guide will give you a leg up when preparing for the holiday season.
eCommerce Holiday Guide
I don’t have to tell you that the holiday season can make or break your year. It’s not too early to start preparing. The following tips will help you create a seamless experience for your users.
1. Ensure Customers Have a Great Experience.
Today’s online shoppers expect a personalized experience. Is your site ready to deliver? Before the holiday rush, make sure your website has solid infrastructure, industry-leading page load speeds, and updated integrations.
Having a personalized experience means that your holiday offers upsell and cross sell to visitors based on their purchasing decisions. Product recommendations that speak to the user as an individual go a long way toward increasing customer loyalty. By using crucial data such as search history, previous purchases, and page views, you can give conversion rates a boost.
2. Develop Your Holiday Marketing and Promotions Strategy.
Consider how you can attract new customers with promotions that will make them the heroes of their holiday celebrations. The name of the game here is content. You want your top customers to see your ads on social media, blog posts, and other places, so you need to be pumping out a constant stream of high quality content. But more than that, you want those ads to drive them to your eCommerce site.
Just imagine how great it would feel to start a social media ad campaign today and see double ROAS in less than a month. With our Blackhawk System, we guarantee those results and with the data you gain, you’ll have a solid foundation for achieving even more amazing results during the holiday season. It’s the snowball effect.
Bonus: Ensuring that your marketing and promotions strategies are in place before the holidays will boost sales and allow your happy customers to organically spread the word.
3. Automate. Automate. Automate.
Take advantage of tools for automating selling, shipping, and fulfillment. Automation ensures that fewer mistakes are made and fewer mistakes means fewer customer service contacts, which saves you money. When you know how to make automation work for you, these tools are some of the best investments eComm businesses can make.
Also, don’t forget about email automation. Start sending promotional emails now to warm up your audience. If you’re running special promotions, sales, or contests, don’t wait until the last minute to send those promotional emails. Take advantage of A/B testing and adjust accordingly.
4. Track and Measure Your Results.
It’s never good enough in the eCommerce world or any other industry to “trust your gut” when it comes to marketing and sales. If there’s one piece of advice eComm billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will tell you, it’s if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. So even as you gear up for a big holiday season, remember to keep track of your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Here are the eCommerce numbers to watch:
- Sales
- Average order value (AOV)
- Conversion rate
- Shopping cart abandonment rate
- Traffic (new vs. returning)
- Site speed
- Bounce rate
- Traffic source
- Mobile site traffic
Marketing numbers to watch:
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Subscriber growth
- Email open rate
- Social followers
- Number and quality of product reviews
- Banner or display advertising CTRs
- Blog traffic
- Affiliate performance
- Search engine ranking
The 2020 holiday shopping season will look different than past years. But eCommerce businesses are poised to take advantage of this shift. Will you be ready?
