It's October! Get Your Online Store Ready for the Holidays
Anyone who's been in a retail store the past couple of weeks has no doubt noticed the Halloween displays, which cropped up just as the Back-to-School sales ended. In the eCommerce world, these two major late summer/early autumn signals that it's time to think about getting your eCommerce site ready for the holidays.
Not Everyone Waits For Black Friday
If you're new to eCommerce or really focusing on it this year, you probably understand that the holiday season can be your busiest--and most profitable--time of year. So get started on prepping for more business.
First, you need to let customers know that you are thinking about the Holidays. So should they! Some people may grumble that the holidays start too soon but others shop for the holidays all year long. Those are the folks who plan their purchases and don't necessarily get caught up in the Black Friday madness at the mall. According to ThinkWithGoogle.com, nearly 30% of those crazy planners start their holiday shopping before Halloween!
Add in last year's astonishing ecommerce sales, which rose by 10% according to comScore, setting a $46.5 billion record. You want some of that, too, don't you? Armando Roggio of Pratical Ecommerce offers up some immediate steps you can take right now to let the world know you're preparing for holiday sales, specifically, Black Friday and Cyber Monday:
5 Steps To Maximize Sale On Your Online Store
1. Contact You Vendors
Start shopping your usual vendors for deals. A lot of times they'll offer additional discounts on 5% - 10%, free shipping or extended financing terms. Look for end-of-season closeouts and take another look at their overstock.
2. Create A Special Landing Page
If you're doing PPC advertising a special landing page can help with increasing conversion rates by emphasizing specials on products or even shipping discounts. This is especially true for holiday deals, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday. (Think With Google calls the former "Gray Friday.")
3. Special email subscription to the page
Make an email newsletter signup a major part of your page so that you can continue to promote deals throughout the Christmas shopping season and even throughout the year. Then be sure to use it for your past and current customers because email newsletters aren't dead!
4. Promote Your Sales With PDF Flyers
Creating a PDF for your online promotions allows you to approach websites that focus on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. I also strongly suggest you create a social media campaign around this. Pinterest is a terrific way to feature the latest and greatest deals you're offering right now. The site is a magnet for bargain-searchers and depending on which social network ranking service you look at, it's either the third- or fourth-most popular network out there.
5. Develop great shopping-related content.
Creating promotional content is important to increase conversions because ever website is fighting for the Christmas dollars. Make sure that your content creates a sense of urgency and value.
Refresh Your Product Description Content
Of course, most of the above requires fresh, new content and the good news is, well-crafted organic content remains a key driver for website traffic. If you've been using PPC advertising, look at the keywords that have been most successful and incorporate them into your content. Be careful not to overdo it with keywords: look at them as indicative of what attracts customers. "Holiday candles" can be expressed as "seasonal scents for your home" or "warm, spicy fragrances" and so forth.
In addition to that, unless you're selling a custom or unique product, there are probably 100 other websites selling the exact same product. Aside from the SEO value of your product descriptions, it's a great way to close the sale when customers may be comparison shopping. A really descriptive description may be the determining factor between buying from your site or a competitor.
Don't Overlook Practical Website Capabilities
Tim Ash of Monetate reminds us that your website's responsiveness is very important to shoppers. No one wants to wait for pages to load or click and get a 404 message. Holiday traffic can put a real strain on websites so make sure you have enough bandwidth. Purchase more if necessary; you can always scale back later on.
Create a mobile site specifically for smartphones. People in all age groups are now shopping through their smartphones, says Chuck Martin of mCommerceDaily. Make their experience a good one and they will return, even if they don't purchase anything during the first visit. Mobile shopping soared last year, and with the new iPhone out, there's every reason to expect that it will continue to rise this year.
As we've mentioned, the Christmas shopping season is extremely competitive so making sure that you're using every tool available to you to gain a competitive advantage on your online store is important. We'd love to hear about any other suggestions you may have or just questions that you may have for us.