Get Ready for Holiday Season with this 5 Ecommerce Holiday Planning Tips

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The holiday season is here and this year it’s going to be different than all the other ones! This year it will be more virtual meetups, online shopping, and take out dinners instead of gatherings, meeting loved ones, in-store shopping. 

And that will be a bit stressful and a lot more exciting and profitable for eCommerce businesses. However, traffic spikes, emails, templates design, sales offer, all this planning will take a lot of time and so to help you relieve stress (though we want your holiday season to be busy) here are some eCommerce holiday planning tips along with a list of holidays.

1. Create a personalized experience

A holiday means a reason to celebrate and share happiness. So, if you have multiple products to go with the holiday sale, it is important to upsell and cross-sell them. You can recommend products to the customers by using customer data (searches, shopping cart, history, etc.). For instance, a customer searching for a smartphone will also display the related smartphone accessories. 

Along with product recommendations, also ensure that your users get the best experience in terms of site navigation, site speed, quick checkouts, third party integrations, etc.

Want some eCommerce personalization ideas?

Read this article: 6 Ways to Increase ECommerce Sales with a Personalized Touch

2. Optimize selling, shipping, and fulfillment

To provide great customer experience, first, plan where to sell your products and how to ship and fulfill the order. To sell your products, start with expanding your sales channel. Along with eCommerce websites, consider selling on social commerce, online marketplaces, and cross-border. You can expand your sales with Buy Online and Pick In-Store (BOPIS) service. Do you know BOPIS had a 195% YOY increase in May due to the pandemic?

Next, handle your shipping and fulfillment by managing your inventory in-house or outsource with a third-party provider. Dropshipping is a convenient way to fulfill thousands of orders in a shorter time. It also cuts down the time and costs spent on shipping. Going further, provide a memorable packing and unboxing experience. Bring on some colored boxing packages that match with customers’ holiday emotions. Also, have a clear return policy. Planning all these a month prior will help orders start rolling in!

3. Plan a marketing and promotion strategy

It’s time to create a magical space with promotions, deals, offers, and products that entice the holiday spirit and connect your brand with the season. How to get it done? 

• Adopt promotional strategies such as free-shipping, gift wrapping, limited time offers. Seasonal strategies such as free shipping on a purchase order of XXX amount around Black Friday or Cyber Monday will bring in a lot of orders. 
• Holiday contests and giveaways are evergreen marketing tactics. There are two benefits of these – first, lots of traffic and second, customer engagement. 
• To add more and provide more, reward your customers with loyalty programs. Discounts are common and should always be there, but loyalty programs will encourage new memberships and more purchases as customers would be excited to avail their loyalty points.
• Content also plays a major role. For example, you want to sell Halloween products, creating a blog on Best Halloween Dress-up Ideas with your products can encourage more selling.

So, you have your marketing plans ready. But to make your customers aware of the upcoming holiday sale and offers:

• Reach out to them on social media – share offer deals on Instagram stories, post about promotions and offers on Facebook, tweet product campaigns with hashtags, etc. 

• Besides, garner the benefits of paid advertising on social media and Google ads.
• Send promotional emails and holiday offer SMS to gently remind your customers about the offers they shouldn’t miss out on. 
• Not to miss, use SEO tactics to rank on Google. The chances of your business showing up on Google’s first page is directly proportional to the traffic on your site. 

Not to miss: Only 100 Days to Christmas, so Here are Some Holiday Marketing Tips 

4. Ramp up your customer service and support

The holiday season is a hectic and often emotional time. Your customers need as much support as your business does. To balance it both:

First, ensure that your eCommerce platform provides 24*7 support. After all, you wouldn’t like to experience a crashed website during the Black Friday sale. So along with planning deals and offers, and attracting customers, keep a check on your eCommerce website – whether it’s working properly or there’s an issue while performing a specific task, say, adding products to the cart. Keep a check on the premium features that your website provides, and contact your IT support team for help. Do not delay!

Next, focus on your customer service plan. As the holiday season is a super busy time with thousands of orders on a daily basis, handling customer grievances and providing last-minute support can be challenging. 

• So, dedicate a support team that will help customers with their problems and queries through emails, SMS, calls within 24-48 hours. 
• To enhance the customer experience, ask your eCommerce development company to add a chat support feature on your eCommerce website.

• Create and update a list of FAQs so that common and repeated queries can be solved without the help of the support team. 
• Ask your customers for feedback as it can build trust among other buyers. And sometimes, that feedback also tends to help customers clear their doubts. 
• With better service, you can also incentivize your customers to leave a review for better discounts and free shipping on the next order.

Also Read: 6 Key Elements for Successful Ecommerce Business

5. Measure your profits with reporting and analytics

After making huge profits, always measure performance and campaign results as it helps with the next holiday planning. To measure the profits and sales in numbers, set goals, and KPIs.

Your goals can be anything like – “Selling XXX number of specific products”, “Average Revenue Generated”, “Per Day Selling”, or something different. Set your target and see how much you achieved through different reports and insights through your admin dashboard. 

For KPIs, you would have to look for the factors that made your eCommerce plan successful. Common website-related KPIs are:

• Sales
• Average order value
• Conversion rate
• Shopping cart abandonment rate
• Site speed
• Bounce rate
• Traffic source
• Product affinity

For campaigns, look out for these KPIs:

• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Click-through-rate (CTR)
• Subscriber growth rate
• Email open rate
• Social followers
• Blog traffic
• Affiliate performance

After collecting all this data, evaluate them, understand what’s working for you and what’s not. And based on the analysis, plan your eCommerce holiday 2021.

Checklist Includes…

• Creating personalized eCommerce experience
• Optimizing selling, shipping, and fulfillment
• Planning marketing and promotion strategies
• Ramping up customer service and support
• Measuring profits through reports and analytics

Follow these 5 steps and you’re all set for your eCommerce holiday sale!
Share your experience with us by tweeting us at @biztechcs.