How To Make Next Christmas Even Merrier For Your Ecommerce Business

By Angus  |  10 Dec 2014 12:00:00

With Christmas now only 2 weeks away, and little more than 1 week left for most retailers to fulfil orders in time for the 25^th, you may be beginning to evaluate your sales this festive season and considering how they can be improved next year.

Well consider this post as next years early, early, Christmas present, as I plan to run through some of the best methods for boosting conversions in the run up to the holiday season.

Incentives

As the most expensive time of year for just about everyone, you will really be at an advantage if you are able to sacrifice some of your profit margin to offer customers incentives such as free shipping, special delivery and discounted bundles of products.

With Amazon and other popular online retailers offering these kinds of incentives, you should be taking their lead, particularly on cross selling and product bundles which really give you an opportunity to differentiate your offer and stand out from competitors.    

Promotion

To maximise the impact of your incentives, you need to clearly communicate these offers to visitors on your site to ensure that your offer is both memorable and presented in a manner that encourages impulse buys.

You should use a banner slide show on your home page to promote your best selling products / product categories with their relevant offers. Don’t just leave it as this though. Make sure that your leading offer/s is on a banner that is visible all over your website for those who arrive on different landing pages.

Also make adjustments to your most visible categories to give them a festive theme by including the products you sell that are most likely to make good present ideas, possibly with a further incentive such as free gift wrapping.  

A rather obvious point here, but using Christmas themed imagery creates a more enjoyable shopping experience and crucially it keeps your website prominent in the minds of visitors as a destination for purchasing gifts.

Call to Action

Don’t forget to put a compelling call to action on your incentives or you will risk prospects leaving your website to shop around. To increase the urgency of shoppers, change some offers, set time limits and make it clear that once a product is gone that it won’t be restocked again before Christmas.

Take Advantage of the Extra Traffic

With your effective calls to action comes an excellent opportunity to build up your contact database. This is done by encouraging visitors to opt in to your mailing list to keep up to date with your latest offers and be reminded when it’s their last chance to take advantage of a certain deal. This will drive conversions in the run up to Christmas and make it easier to sell to these prospects in the future.

Offer Peace of Mind

With planning for Christmas often being a stressful time for families, anything that you can do to offer peace of mind will be appreciated by you customers. Most importantly, on your home page there should be a stand out section which guarantees delivery in time for all orders placed before a certain date. This has the advantage of serving as a final sales push but also crucially gives the impression that as a retailer you can be trusted.

In addition to this, be prepared to answer plenty of questions over the phone and offer a generous returns policy. As a smaller retailer, making this effort will make prospective customers feel far more comfortable buying from you.