Tips to Increase Sales and overall customer experience during this holiday season.
As you know, post-pandemic, all the customers are entering a new shopping year where everyone is concerned about inflation, tight budget, the conservative mindset on what to spend and on what to not, supply chain issues with delayed deliveries, and more. Businesses in the retail industry are facing challenges in sustaining satisfactory levels of profitability, which is resulting in an increase in the cost of goods, supply chain issues, unemployment, and demand-supply unbalancing. Let’s explore this topic to understand the current buyer persona in your business and how to handle them in the right way to convert more and more business during this holiday season.
Priority 1:
First and most important – work on organic traffic
Either hire a professional agency or do it yourself, but you will need to make sure that your site is visible to search engines. You will need to analyze your complete website and make sure that you are taking care of all the important SEO aspects of your website. Some of these important points are:
1. Page meta title, meta description, heading tags h1, h2.
2. Your page content should focus on the keywords you want to rank.
3. Link Building.
4. Blog posts on your website – writing content pages not only attracts customers but also search engines. The more pages you have, the better strength you will get in your online presence. Just make sure that you write quality content.
5. Using tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to see the reports and make better decisions.
6. Add all your pages to Google Search Console.
7. Add a sitemap with all your links.
8. Creating a Google shop.
9. Optimize your page content – this is one of the most important parts of the SEO. Content is king, so always make sure that your page is highly optimized with the content, better content appears better in search engines.
Priority 2:
Shopify Store –Site changes and design updates
During the holiday season, I never encourage big design changes as it is not the right time to reinvent the wheel. If you want to redesign the complete store, the first to the third quarter of the year is always better. I also focus on growth-driven design which helps to keep growing and optimizing your store and shopping experience based on the industry’s trend and your customers’ feedback. Amazon.com is the best example of a GDD-based website. They hardly make big changes to their site. So the question is, what you can do during this holiday season to make your site more beautiful, personalized, and conversion oriented:
1. Hire a Shopify Partner and ask them to give you a report on what you can do on your Shopify store to put it on the next level. Based on his suggestions, prioritize your things and get them done.
2. Make a set of small changes in your online store to give it a feeling of the holiday season. Some of these things could be to update your site navigation, your banner images, etc. You can also put a discount badge on the top of the site so a customer sees it as long as he opens your Shopify Store.
3. Using AI-based content-generating tool for your business – I know this is part of the SEO and Content, but it is worth mentioning in this section. These days some top AI-based platforms help you to generate content for landing pages, your product description, SEO-related content, blog articles, and many more. I would strongly suggest trying this out https://Multilings.com this platform is super powerful and rich with features and functionalities.
4. Use the optimized way to show your CTA buttons. For an e-commerce store, you should always optimize the name, design, and placement of your buttons. Whether it is Buy Now, Add to Cart, Checkout, Complete Checkout, or other buttons, make sure that they are always visible and placed exactly from where a customer can make a decision to click them. The more optimized button will result in optimized conversion.
5. Listen to your customers – if you have any technical feedback from your customers related to any bug, broken things, or whatever. Never ignore to work on this. Fixing these things increases the value of your brand. If possible, implement a feedback form on your website.
6. Specific focused areas on your site – whether it is your home page, product page, category, or cart page, always implement some upselling features like showing the best products carousel, discounted products, or combination of products for example if someone buying a pair of shoes, show him to buy socks.
7. Upselling Seriously – upselling looks like a very small thing to do in your store but it results dramatically positive in conversation. So focusing more on this should be highly prioritized. You can always do upselling on your product page, category page, cart page, and checkout. Sometimes you can do an upselling even after the shopping is done. For example – on the Thank You page you can show him a Coupon code for the next purchase or a discounted product which is only available for a specific period of time. You can send marketing emails after the purchase and some follow-up emails in some cases.
8. Mobile site optimization – you really don’t need an app to launch your site. Just have the right developer to support your growth in the business by making important changes related to your store. A developer can just make your site responsive to fit perfectly on any device your customer is opening your site on.
9. Optimize your checkout experience, try to keep one one-page checkout as people find it easier to buy with fewer pages. Put some security and safety badges, and review badges on your checkout page to give extra confidence to your buyers.
10. Accept multiple payments and offer guest checkout – both these points are super important. You should never restrict your customers to buy, offer guest checkout, and only collect their emails. Offer multiple payment options so they can choose the best one for their payment to your site.
11. Implement videos, technical documentation, and other helpful stuff on your product pages. The more content, videos, and images you have, the better it is for your customer to make a decision.
12. Mention your terms and conditions, refund policy holiday hours, etc clearly on your website.
Priority 3:
1. Customer Service – The most important part of your business. Whether it is a shopping experience, technical support related to the products bought from you, or general support related to queries and feedback, you should always be on top. Have an online chat on your website, show your contact form link in the header or footer of your site, show a phone line with exact timings, etc. Remember, one happy customer may get you 2 more customers. Giving high weightage to your customer service is one of the crucial parts of any business operation.
2. Manage your demand and supply – forecast your demand and then stock your inventory accordingly. If your inventory is handled by a third party, like dropshipping, make sure you have enough quantity of each SKU of your store.
3. Buy Now Pay Later – this is a game changer to increase your sales these days. Because of inflation, people don’t want to spend too much upfront, buying and paying later gives them the feeling of not spending cash from their pocket. They feel relaxed. Try Affirm payment, AfterPay, or Square payment system for these types of offers. They perfectly integrate with your Shopify stores.
4. Offering Coupons – create different coupons whether it is store specific, product specific or category specific. Always have something in place. Send marketing emails to your email groups whenever these coupons are launching.
5. Setting your marketing calendar – set your marketing calendar based on the different events in your business. Note those dates whether they are holiday specific as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or your business anniversary day, and then add the tasks in advance to launch them on time. You can use a calendar-based system or any project management system to manage these types of marketing, development, SEO, and sales projects for your business. It’s always good to plan, strategize, make processes, and tasks and then handle them. This is the foundation of any successful business.
6. In addition to point 3 above, prepare for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday earlier this year. If missed, try to not miss the Christmas and New Year occasions to capture some good sales.
7. Offer free shipping – people love to have free shipping on their purchases. In the United States, 6 out of 10 stores offer free shipping in the holiday season.
8. Offer expedited shipping service to your customers to make them feel like VIPs.
9. Offer local pickup from your warehouse or home-based business.
Priority 4:
Shopify Store – Marketing
1. Set a budget – set a budget for marketing during this holiday season.
2. Run your marketing ads on YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other channels based on your audience and budget.
3. If possible, hire a marketing team for a small holiday campaign and see if they can help you set up all this and convert a big one.
4. Do not forget to do email marketing to your existing customers or to your newsletter subscribers.
5. Try every possible way of marketing under your budget. There are lots of ways, blogs, and articles that you can follow to learn more about it. You can also consult with a marketing agency to make a marketing plan for you.
6. Set up a free gift wrapping, messaging, and packaging service. Offer a gift from your customers to their loved ones. Do an email marketing to all your existing customers.
Last but not least, putting effort into your business is one of the most important things. To complete a marathon, you first need to start with your first step. Just try your best and experience it and get ready for many more seasons to do good business.
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