The joyous season of the year is almost upon us! And it holds a lot of significance for the eCommerce sellers out there. Why? Because consumers, during this time, are out and hungry looking for best deals for gifting, decorations, etc. Every year, many sellers experience a rise in sales during the holidays. At least the ones who put in the effort, do! According to eMarketer, last year, customers in the U.S. spent about $123 billion online on merchandise during the holiday season. In fact, this year, the US retail spending is expected to reach $1.035 trillion, which is 3.7% higher than 2018. Amazing, right? Well, such is the spirit of the holidays. And to make sure that you’re able to grab your fair share, it is important that you prepare and optimize your listings to convert this holiday season.
So, let’s begin!
What’s there to prepare for?
Well, a lot of things! But we’ll start with some of the basic ones:
1. Get your eStores ready for SEO:
-
Want rankings? You gotta go out and get’em!
-
Want to break your sales records? Market that eStore of yours like crazy!
-
Competition is hard but you have to come through with improved CTR
-
Attracting consumers works well if you cater to their demands
-
You’re not the only seller trying to leverage the holiday season
-
This is your chance to get your creative juices flowing
-
Holidays are coming: Let your website make it obvious
-
Social media is like wildfire. Use it wisely
-
Throw in some enthusiasm with a contest
-
Come up with some useful content related to holidays
-
This is the right time for PPC!
-
Don’t forget about emails!
There are millions of eCommerce sellers out there preparing for the upcoming holidays. The competition is going to be intense, like it always has been. But to make sure that your eStore doesn’t lose its voice in the noise, it must rank high. High enough to bag maximum customer attention and hence maximum conversions. How’d that be achieved? The answer is SEO.
Optimizing your eStore with all the right keywords and covering all the latest trends will do the trick. But before that, you’ll need to conduct extensive research wherein you find out all the trending keywords (both targeted and LSIs). You can use a keyword tool like Google keyword planner for that. And since the holidays are mostly about gifts and decorations, highlighting products as gift ideas could work really well as it is exactly what customers are looking for. Know your target customers and develop a strategy for listing optimization for the holiday season accordingly.
And while you’re at it, don’t forget to optimize your listing for mobile as a lot of traffic during this season is from mobile devices. Make sure you leave no stone unturned.
2. Market Your Store Right
Why must you consider marketing:
Buyers go all nuts on offers and discounts during the holidays. Reckless spending on gifts, decorations, food, and whatnot. If your listing makes the cut and is able to grab the customers’ attention, you’re in for a treat! In fact, if you do market your eStore right, you might be able to break your previous sales records all at once! That’s right!
No CTRs, no sales. If no one clicks on your product ads or visits your eStore, how would they buy? CTR is one of the most important things that you should be focussing on around the holidays. Sometimes, you might be selling the right products but may lag behind in marketing them right. Meanwhile, there’s another seller with almost the same products as you but way ahead of you in conversions. The reason being his high click-through rate. So, take PPC and store marketing seriously if you want prospects to find you!
Buyers will buy. And if your eStore supplies meet their demands, you’re there! Yes, it would take some research to see what they are demanding. If you don’t know how to go about it, you can always opt for eCommerce marketing services, but don’t even think about skipping it.
There are millions of other sellers fighting for customer attention. If you don’t do something to make yourself heard, you’ll be overshadowed by your competition. Thus, preparing for the holidays entails a brilliant marketing campaign to make your eStore stand out.
It’s not every day that you get a chance to be creative with your online store. The holidays give you a fair opportunity to play around with not only your website design but your marketing campaign too. Designing illustrative and creative marketing campaigns will work well in gathering enough customer attention to increase your sales.
How you must go about it:
People are in a festive mood. Let your eCommerce website make it seem obvious! And by that, we don’t just mean creating an interesting theme (well, that too), but setting up one that incorporates smart marketing efforts to keep your buyers hooked. For example, each and every page of your eStore must be themed according to the holidays along with a banner that displays some of your greatest offers. You may market products relevant to the holidays smartly using well-designed and creative banners. In fact, to make sure that you do it right, go for eCommerce store development services and get a unique website designed in lesser time.
Nothing spreads a piece of news like social media. Once you’ve decided on your holiday offers and have a fully-functional holiday-themed website in place, it’s time to spread awareness. Take to social media. Use Facebook, Twitter, etc. to post updates and let people know what you have to offer. Trending hashtags around the holiday season work brilliantly in getting some traffic through social media. Others like Instagram and Pinterest could also be of help if you have a lot of visual content to share.
Organizing a fun contest on social media can really help direct some quality traffic and customer attention to your eCommerce website. For example, if your eStore sells clothes, then you can use Halloween and organize a contest wherein you invite users to send their pictures in a Halloween costume and you’ll be choosing a winner. Why stop at that? Choose 3 winners instead. It’s all about making people happy. To gain more traction, you can even make a separate webpage on your website showing the spirit of the holidays. Not only your buyers will be thrilled, but they will also be impressed and could subscribe to your eStore, thus increasing your customer base. So, get as creative as you can!
Publishing some useful and fun holiday-related content in the form of blog posts, videos or infographics can instantly get you noticed. For example, you could cover a blog post titled: 10 Super Scary Halloween Costume Ideas” or “7 Things To Gift Your Daughter This Christmas”. Not only you’ll be able to interlink some of your product pages, but you’ll actually be letting out information that could be useful for the buyers. Try not to be too salesy though.
Many of the eCommerce sellers might focus only on their existing customers, which is good but not enough. It’s time to invite some new ones too. PPC to the rescue. If your product listing’s ad matches their demands, they’re likely to buy the product straight away. So, launch a well-thought-of PPC campaign before the holidays to let new customers discover your eStore.
The festive season calls for attractive mailers. This is yet another area to get creative and sway your customers by presenting your holiday offers in a way that makes it hard to say no to them. Use illustrative font, attractive images, and innovative designs to come up with intriguing mails. Remember not to include too much text. Stick to visual representations for most parts.
The holiday season comprises multiple events, which if leveraged separately, can take your sales graph up significantly. So, let’s cover each one of them.
Halloween – Time to get a little spooky
The super fun trick-and-treat holiday can bring in lots of benefits for your eCommerce business. Did you know that shoppers spend about $3.2 billion on costumes and $2.7 billion on decorations on Halloween? Crazy, right? Well, if you go about it right, you could get the most out of this mania. And since it’s really almost here, it will be beneficial if you opt for eCommerce product upload services to get your eStore ready at the earliest. Coming up with an attractive and spooky website theme or design could really compel shoppers into buying from you. The same goes for Halloween based content.
Thanksgiving – Because it’s going to be sentimental
The Thanksgiving weekend, which stretches from Thursday to Monday, is one of the highlights of the year for an online seller. Thanksgiving weekend now stands at no. 3 in online shopping holidays. This is a great time to use sentiments to lure your customers into buying attractive gifts and decorations from you. The weekend comprises Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, days when sales go up like crazy. Online sales worth $3.7 billion were recorded for last year’s Thanksgiving weekend, which led to an impressive 28% year-over-year growth rate.
Black Friday
In 2018, Black Friday eCommerce sales jumped 23.6% from 2017, according to Adobe Analytics. It may increase even more this year, which is why you must be prepared if you want to boost holiday sales for Black Friday.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday eCommerce sales for 2018 set a record of $7.8 billion which is up nearly 18% from that of 2017.
Christmas – Make it Merry!
What have you been waiting for? Christmas? It’s here, well, almost! Crazy spending on Christmas gifts, sweets, food, and decorations is coming. Like Halloween, publishing impressive content around this holiday could actually direct a lot of customers to your eStore. Plus, discounted offers and deals are what every buyer is in for! The trick lies in how well are you able to present them to your customers.
These are some of the best holiday selling strategies for sellers, which will work if you get down to it as soon as possible. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get a deeper insight into this and what we have to offer. Also, there’s a lot more coming up. So, stay tuned!
The holidays are almost here, which is why you must start prepping your eStore as soon as possible. Let SunTec India help you in making an eStore that won’t just embrace the holiday spirit, but will also help you lock in maximum prospects. Avail our eCommerce store development services to get a website designed that’s one-of-a-kind. You can also avail our eCommerce marketing services if you need help with marketing your eStore right. Just write to us at info@suntecindia.com and get started.