Is your e-commerce Site Holiday-ready?
The holiday season is approaching again. That means people are going to spend money. The previous year’s holidays were quite different. Many people were spending their holidays away from their families and loved ones. At that time emails were the only way to deliver holiday joyfulness to long-distance families. The majority of people preferred online shopping and avoided in-store shopping due to the ongoing pandemic. For many, COVID-19 resulted in great loss but for a few, it was a life-changer. E-commerce had a huge growth during COVID-19.
This year people are coming back to normal and planning to celebrate this holiday season with full enthusiasm. With the decrease in COVID cases, people are keenly looking forward to returning to their normal lives. According to a survey, the expectation of people celebrating thanksgiving is 85% whereas the celebration of Christmas is around 92%. But it does not mean that e-commerce sales are going back anytime soon. Especially online holiday shopping 2022 is still in full force.
Most e-commerce business owners start preparing for this holiday season as early as May or June. But if you have not started preparing yet, don’t worry it is never too late. Holiday preparations begin earlier and earlier each passing year. Starting your actions instantly will surely help you out with success in the exact time.
The shares of e-commerce in the market are still high but so is the competition among the in-store and online business owners. For beginners, your first and foremost priority should be the ideas for making shopping easy, supple, and according to the needs of the customers. Consider hiring a professional developer to help you with a smooth website and get among the best holiday shopping websites!
Your time is very precious and important and for your convenience, we have created a To-Do list for you all. This list contains all the recommendations that you need to be ready before the holiday shopping frenzy smashes. Here is a step-by-step guide to giving you heads-up for the preparation for the holiday season.
Guide For Preparing For The Holiday Season:
This guide is for all those who want to stay ahead of the competition and avail the benefits from early holiday shopping 2022. To make this year your resilient holiday season, below are the steps you need to keep an eye on:
- Be ready for the incoming traffic
- Prepare a hassle-free customer experience
- Go for a strategic holiday advertising campaign
- Upgrade customer service and support service
- Reviewing adequate checkout procedure
- Work to earn visitor’s trust
- Make all your holiday offers prominent
- Rethink about the return policies
- Stock up the inventory
Be Ready For the Incoming Traffic:
Online holiday shopping straight away means a higher rate of traffic on all your online store websites. For consumers, there is nothing worse and tiring than a site outrage during one of these essential times. Making your side speed your priority should be the most important task.
Most of the online sellers put all their efforts and attention into the design and graphics of the webpage rather than investing them in their site speed.
An appropriately designed website is very important for attracting customers but a high speed helps more. A site slow down can result in a major loss for online retailers. When a site does not respond in time people go to other websites and this is where you start losing your sales. We recommend you to take help from a professional and understand how to put Shopify ecommerce stores on vacation. It will ensure high functioning of your online store during rush hours.
Prepare for Hassle-Free Customer Experience:
In today’s times, all the consumers want easy and convenient shopping with hurdles as low as possible. Your site should be convenient and easy to access. The options available on the site should be specific to the purchasers’ needs. An ideal shopping site should have an all-in-one path to checkout. Your site should meet and surpass all the customer expectations to supply holiday magic.
Go For A Strategic Holiday Advertising Campaigns:
Lots of surprising changes and updates are the best way to attract customers. This way you can have a massive growth in your sales. Using new technologies or promotional schemes helps in increase of sales abundantly.
A major step is to guarantee and double-check that your store is fully improved with all its promotional schemes and strategies. Being ready for this magical holiday season before all the big-spending of this holiday season can bring a major change in your sales.
Promotions and marketing is a long-run game so it is better to begin your preparation ahead of time. Early planning always results positively and in favor. When thinking about the strategies and plans for online business SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something you need to plan.
Upgrade Customer and Support Service:
As the holiday season is around the corner, it is important to be ready and fully equipped for success. Your business as well as your buyers need equal provision. The timely and prompt availability of your e-commerce display place is vital. The worst holiday nightmare is a crashed webpage. All your efforts and hard work go in vain when your website crashes.
Before the arrival of the holiday season. Verify and make sure that our website has uninterrupted worldwide support. Hiring up a support team could be easy in this hustle.
Reviewing Adequate Checkout Procedure:
Rationalize and simplify your checkout procedures to improve alterations. According to the most recent surveys and their results, 69.5% is the average cart desertion rate. This indicates that the majority of the people who begin the check-out abandon the carts before completing the procurements. To reduce cart abandonment you need to create a single-page checkout procedure, stop asking for the same information again and again and eradicate all unnecessary distractions for the page.
Work to Earn Visitor’s Trust:
In this era, the demands of buyers have changed. They ask for transparency when shopping. To eliminate all sorts of doubts and misconceptions from your customers’ minds, provide them with all information they ask for. Today, the customers want complete revelation. To increase your sales rate it is necessary to provide them with shipping charges and a proper return policy, which is easy to understand. All your policies and strategies should be customer-friendly. Customer trust is the key to increasing sales.
Make All Your Holiday Offers Prominent:
Special holiday offers should be highlighted. From shipping to promotional codes and BOGO vouchers. Highlighting all your holiday offers helps out buyers to shop easily. Making your customers hunt for all discounts and holiday offers tore them up. Display your offers and side banners or advertise them on your social media pages. Updating your regular customers through emails and messages is also very effective this season. To bring your word out, display out your offers and provide discount codes for the customers through influencers. Putting up a specific option on the website for sale is also a very fruitful and productive strategy.
Rethink About The Return Policies:
All your shipment and return policies should be settled before the holiday season. Free and easy return options should be provided for this holiday season. Throughout these holidays the return and exchange guidelines should be negligent and laid-back.
A wiser decision would be to provide free of cost all returns and exchanges in holidays. This strategy will bring a prominent change in your sales. Putting up a comprehendible return and exchange policy with no complications can be easy for all the customers.
Stock up The Inventory:
When the holiday season is approaching, fully-stocked inventory is very important. All the deals and sales you strategize to put up on the website needs all items in stock. Carrying out a proper physical count of the items and products you have in your inventory can help you in padding your inventory for further sales.
Having experienced personnel for ordering the proper units of all items will be a blessing in this holiday season.
Conclusion:
This year’s holiday season is around the corner. All the strategies you need to boost up your sales are mentioned above. The holiday season is a marathon and not a sprint. Early preparations for your stores will help you out in smooth and hustle-free operations. Get all the above-stated strategies settled down, hire an expert if needed and enjoy a successful sales season this year.
