Overview
Tis the season when we start to look at how to improve our holiday ecommerce income. A time when shoppers are looking for the best presents for their family and inventory moves quickly.
Therefore, it is vital that you tweak your ecommerce strategy now before the holiday season goes into full swing.
Steps To Improve Your Holiday Ecommerce Results
Get A Head Start- The holiday ecommerce season traditionally starts at the end of November. However, 25% of shoppers start before the end of October. Even more telling is the fact that 48% finish shopping before Cyber Monday (biggest online sales day of the year) even happens.
Therefore, you need to start your holiday season early as well to capture these early shoppers. Take a look at what early specials you can offer to shoppers now to encourage them to peruse your store.
Look specifically at hot ticket items that sell like hot cakes during the holiday season. Offer an early holiday discount or some other incentive to pull in this holiday traffic.
Mobile Ready– At Shout, we have been saying this repeatedly for the past year how your company needs a mobile friendly website.
Well, this is doubly true during the holiday season. Mobile purchases in the 2014 holiday increased by over 140% from 15% of purchases in the first 10 months of the year to 36% of purchases in November and December.
The same trend should continue this year as more and more shoppers buy presents from their smartphones and tablets.
Ad Timing- One of the best ways to drive traffic over the holiday season is through paid online advertising.
However, with so many advertisers marketing during the same period it is best to be wise about how you spend your advertising budget to ensure you maximize your investment. Â
One of the first things you should do is to market at specific times of the day. Specifically advertising between 9-11 am can be beneficial. On average, bidding on targeted keywords between these times lowers keyword bid costs by over 10%.
The importance of this extra traffic during your busy season cannot be underestimated.
Furthermore, focus in on the weekends. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the year where weekday purchases dominate internet transactions. However, family and friends want to buy the perfect present for you. Therefore, they do not want to be distracted making purchases like they would be during the week.
The weekends provide time for them to shop online without having to leave the house.
By paying attention to the time and days of the week, you can vastly improve the efficiency and cost of your ads to your ecommerce site during the holidays.
Target Market- However, advertising is more than just picking the right time and day to make money. It is also about ensuring your marketing connects with the right audience. For example, Facebook and Google collect information to help you target specific audiences.
Using their information database, you can market effectively to your target market based on demographics and past behavior. If you want to connect with parents to buy your latest gizmo, then you can rely upon major internet companies’ data to help steer your audiences towards the right audience for your product.
Without good target marketing, you ads will fall on deaf ears.
Research– Holiday shopping has evolved over the past years as consumers spend less time in malls and department stores and more time researching products online.
That is why 78% of consumers use the internet to research presents before making a purchase. I is faster and more effective. Furthermore, when they are done shopping nearly 40% of consumers like the fact that they can buy on the spot.
It is one of the reason why a good ecommerce store can benefit so much during the holidays. As our attitudes towards purchasing items online continues to evolve, we do more and more shopping from the comfort of our own home.
Video reviews- Another change in holiday shopping season is the type of reviews people use before making a purchase.
For example, it used to be that simple text reviews were preferred. Now with widespread broadband usage, 80% watch product reviews and ratings on YouTube. While 68% of consumers prefer everyday people reviews, 45% still mentioned how they liked expert video reviews as well.
These reviews provide an in-depth look at the products people want to buy ahead of time. Like opening a gift twice, as you can ensure your loved ones get exactly what they want. It is also beneficial from a business standpoint, because encouraging customers to leave video reviews can enhance your marketing.
Final Thoughts
The holiday season is one where many ecommerce sites make or break their entire sales for the year. Therefore it is important to bring your best foot forward marketing your business.
Using the ideas we mentioned above are the first step to your holiday strategy. If you still need help identifying the best strategies to maximize your holiday ecommerce sales, feel free to contact our eCommerce SEO agency to see how we can help.
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