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The holiday season is about to begin and in whatever way you define it, you can’t ignore the certain buzz of it in the air. Be it Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or any other festival after that, shoppers will be scrambling to buy last-minute gifts. The customers have the buying spirit in their vain which will last for the rest of this year.
And small tweak to your website design, marketing, and others will help you make the most this season even if you don’t sell festive special products. Few businesses can very well cash in during this holiday shopping by giving their store a holiday facelift which is a no-brainer. Also, holiday sales in the US will see around 34% year-over-year growth and could generate over $220 billion in sales revenue.
And to take a piece of the pie for yourself, we have curated a list of top 10+ ideas to prepare your online store for this coming holiday.
Ideas to Prepare Your Store for Holidays
The marketing experts at Mconnect Media have personally curated this list to help supercharge your business for any time of the year especially for the holiday season.
1. Holidayfy Products:
The First idea is to Holidayfy your whole eCommerce store. Add holiday flavor to your products and collections. One way to do so is by bundling your existing product catalog into gift packs. Create a whole new holiday collection around the holiday theme. Update your design in a way that reflects the holiday season. You can offer digital gift cards to your customers by prominently featuring them at the top of the section.
2. Create a Gift Guide:
Most people during the holidays want to gift something to their family or loved ones. Thus, they will be actively looking to buy gifts for others rather theirselves. And you can help them by creating gift guides. Gift guides help your customers navigate through your store from the perspective of gift buyers. You can promote such gift guides on your blog pages or link it at the top of the homepage. Other ways to promote gift guides is through email marketing, via social media networks, linking to collections.
3. Offer Free Gift:
The one best motivation you can offer to your customers to buy products is a free gift on purchase. Everyone likes the idea of getting a free gift on buying one or more products. Many brands offer a small gift with their mainstream products. We have all seen such kinds of products waiting to be grabbed on the shelves of supermarkets. You can do a similar thing with your eCommerce store.
4. Offer BOGO:
BOGO – Buy One Get One – for free is another lucrative offer customers can’t resist. BOGO tends to be beneficial for both customers and retailers. Retailers are willing to sell more items at a lower price, and customers are willing to buy more products at a lower cost. Thus, they are perfect incentives for customers during holidays.
5. Time Your Deal:
Run your special deal for a certain period only. This will create a FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – in your customers. You can also run flash sales of new product launches. This will certainly create hype about your brand and increase the number of sales due to the psychology of your customers about missing out on good things. Come up with new deals or special offers daily if possible to lure more customers in.
6. Automate Your Marketing:
There are many tools that help you automate your marketing efforts if you are busy packing the orders of your customers. Digital marketing assistance can help you with running ads on Facebook and Instagram. They can also help you A/B test your ad campaign to see which ones perform better and gives improved results.
7. Offer Festive Packing:
Nothing will come out as odd as the traditional packaging during festive days. You can introduce a festive packaging option to enable buyers to have a little joy and surprise element as well. You can also offer gift wraps, ribbons, etc. to excite your customers more about your products. Allow customers to customize & personalize the festive packaging by adding a little note or message before they add items to the cart.
8. Create a Sense of Urgency:
One way to create urgency in the minds of customers is by constantly reminding customers of order deadlines. Embed countdowns on your special offerings. Also, you can cut off the shipping days to allow your local customers to pick up the orders at the last minute from your brick-mortar store or office.
9. Target Non-Conventional Holidays:
Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year are some of the mainstream holidays every eCommerce business owners are looking to cash in the bigger chunks of profits. But there are some non-conventional holidays such as Hanukkah, Green Monday, Boxing Day, and other local holidays of your country. Brands must target such days too to boost sales further and earn some more cash.
10. Make Returns Easy:
Many customers would be returning products at a faster rate, especially for products that come in multiple sizes. Plan & update exchanges, refund, and return policies well in advance if they change around holidays. Make your returns easy and seamless for customers by allowing them to submit a return request from your website.
11. Offer App Exclusive Deals:
This is another way to boost sales from your eCommerce app if you have built one. Renowned brands like Amazon also does the same. What it will do is entice customers to download your app and shop from there with an extra discount than regular. Once the app is downloaded, you can further elevate your marketing effort to make your customers return to your store frequently and purchase items more often.
Wrap Up
At last, say thanks to your customers for shopping with you by sending them a holiday-themed thank you note. Holidays are great to double or 4X your sales. And for that, we have listed the top 10+ ideas to prepare your store. The key here is to plan in advance and implement whatever ideas you think are great.
If you still need the help of experts to plan your holiday campaigns for your business, then you can consult our eCommerce experts to design suitable promotional campaigns for your brand.
