Each year, high purchase intent search terms peak during the holiday season. It is a time of the year associated with joy, family, festivity, and bonanza offers. People buy more stuff and are willing to spend more money than usual.
As customers line up with open wallets, eCommerce platforms find new and innovative ways to attract their attention during the holiday season.
Though attention alone cannot drive sales, if you can craft a memorable purchase experience for your customers this holiday season, you should see a spike in visitors and sales.
But, before calling passengers onboard, you will need to prepare the ship for its voyage.
Brace yourself, because customers are coming!
Pre-Marketing Preparations
Regardless of marketing strength, your eCommerce platform would experience growth in traffic during the holiday season. The key challenge is to design a customer experience that encourages purchase and inspires brand loyalty.
You will first need to remove any purchase hindrance a customer may face on your eCommerce platform.
Most customers abandon purchases because of additional charges, complex checkout processes, slow shipping, and website errors. You must abolish such problems from your website. Your eCommerce platform should run error-free. Plus, your shopping website and its servers should be prepared for additional traffic.
The offers, deals, and packages should indicate costs and taxes with utmost transparency. Most importantly, every customer expects timely delivery service since many of the purchases are intended as gifts for someone.
Tips to Bring in More Customers
Now that you have braced your brand for more customers, let’s see how to bring more shoppers to your eCommerce site this holiday season.
Advertise Early
Most brands would be actively targeting customers during the holiday season. You can gain a significant advantage over the competition by marketing early. By starting early, you get more opportunities to communicate with the customer in a variety of ways.
People start searching for “Christmas Gifts” and Christmas Gift Ideas” as early as September. The search trend reaches its zenith in mid-December. This means people have already decided what they would buy 10-15 days before the holiday.
This trend in consumer behavior holds true for all holiday-related searches. Edge out the competition by advertising before the shoppers even begin searching.
Implant Ideas
If you start marketing early, your brand has the opportunity to implant ideas in the customer’s mind. Alongside products and offers, a brand should also focus on content marketing through listicles. Articles such as “Top 10 Halloween Gift Ideas for 2023” or “Perfect Christmas Gift for Parents in 2023” can create a strong impact.
Such articles not only incept purchase ideas in the customer’s mind but also help create a psychological association between holiday buying and your eCommerce brand.
Tips to Convert More Customers
As potential shoppers start pouring onto your website, you will need an effective sales strategy to ensure they purchase from you. Advertising can only take you so far. Conversion depends on what you sell and how you sell it.
Convert Early
You would be wasting the advantage of early marketing if the brand does not initiate sales conversation. Your eCommerce brand can provide the option to “Set a Reminder” through email or message so that they can communicate with the customer.
Additionally, your brand can approach the customer with soft pitches to initiate an early conversion. Facilitate early bird customers with offers like “Buy Now, Pay Later” or “Pay in Installments”.
Upselling and Cross-Selling
Once the customer is on your website, upsell by suggesting better products to the customer. For example, if a customer is buying wired headphones, you can suggest wireless headphones or true wireless earbuds. The suggested product should be upgraded to the selected product. It should be of better quality and have better reviews.
Cross-selling suggestions, on the other hand, require relevance. If someone is purchasing a dress, suggest a handbag that would compliment the color.
eCommerce brands can increase their revenue by 10 to 30% through upselling and cross-selling. If you can combine these tactics with a nice offer or a delightful package deal, then the sale is almost inevitable.
Check Out Deals
69.7% of sales are abandoned at the checkout page.
The customer has come all this way — it would be a shame to let them leave without connecting with your brand. Here is your chance to nudge the customer with something to close the deal. The offer does not need to include an additional discount.
Some of the most popular check-out offers include:
- Free Delivery
- Discount coupon / Gift Cards for future purchases
- Membership / Loyalty program subscription
Though if you truly want to ensure conversion, provide an additional discount with a countdown timer. Make the offer available only for immediate purchase.
Once someone has purchased on your eCommerce platform, you should ensure that they buy from you again. It is far more expensive to convert a new customer than it is to retain one.
Tips to Retain More Customers
One-time purchases can result from a variety of reasons, like great deals, discounts, product availability, and so on. Such purchases usually hail from convenience. However, customer retention entirely depends on memory. If you have marketed well, your brand will receive an influx of shoppers. Retaining these people depends on your ability to create a pleasant and memorable experience.
An Offer for the Next Holiday
There is more than one festival during the holiday season. If a customer has purchased from you for Halloween, entice them with an offer for Black Friday or Christmas. This should be done immediately after a purchase is made. The order confirmation window should ask the customer to subscribe to an email or newsletter with the promise of an enticing offer to come.
The follow-up offer can be communicated to the customers through:
- Order confirmation email
- Delivery schedule email
- Newsletters
- Email blasts
However, there is an even more delightful way to convey future offers to the customer.
A Holiday Surprise
A purchase reaches fulfillment when the customer receives the product. This is your chance to make the customer experience even more memorable.
Imagine this: The customer receives their package. They are relieved that it has arrived on time. As they unpack the box to check the product, an unlikely surprise greets their eyes. Tucked away with the product is a thank you note from your brand, along with a gift card for future purchases. Who can forget such a delightful buying experience?
Experience Is All That Matters
As the holiday season approaches, customers expect offers and deals. In the race for sales, eCommerce brands often forget brand loyalty. A customer would only engage with brands they remember. So you focus more on creating a brand experience rather than quick sales.
At each stage of the purchase journey, the customer should be not only enticed by your offers but also by your brand’s identity. You can grow eCommerce sales this holiday season with marketing tactics, but brand loyalty depends solely on customer experience. Ensure a purchase journey as warm and joyous as the holiday season and you may enjoy the privilege of loyal customers.
Featured image by Jill Wellington.
