What do want? More eCommerce Sales. When do we want them? Now.
The holiday period is the busiest time of the year for retailers and eCommerce is no exception. It is vital that you maximise your sales and profits this holiday season and beyond, to help you do that I have put together a list of 10 ways to get more holiday sales and grow your business. Sometimes the simplest opportunities can provide the biggest rewards, here are some secret sauce strategies that you should employ to get more sales in your eCommerce store this holiday season.
What do want? More eCommerce Sales. When do we want them? Now.
The holiday period is the busiest time of the year for retailers and eCommerce is no exception. It is vital that you maximise your sales and profits this holiday season and beyond, to help you do that I have put together a list of 10 ways to get more holiday sales and grow your business. Sometimes the simplest opportunities can provide the biggest rewards, here are some secret sauce strategies that you should employ to get more sales in your eCommerce store this holiday season.
1. Run a sales promotion – A Sale
The big retailers do Cyber Mondays and Black Fridays for a reason, they work. As a short-term tool to drive sales these are great, but beware, if you overuse price-cutting, then the market quickly becomes reliant on it and will only purchase when there is a discount. Carpet retailers in the UK suffered from overuse of price discount promotions, what started as a ‘must end on Monday’ sale turned into a permanent, never-ending discounting spiral. You do not want this to happen in your business. Use sales promotions with caution, think of it as a short-term boost to your cash flow.
2. Run a non-sales promotion – Competition or giveaway
You could offer free shipping, a gift-wrapping service, or run a fun holiday giveaway competition to win a bundle of items or a gift box. Promote the giveaway on your website and social media, encourage sharing and engagement (for instance: like our Facebook page to enter our free prize draw) and collect lots of cool customer information that you can use to retarget people who have visited your store with additional offers. Win, win, win.
3. Create some engaging content and promote it everywhere
You should be creating engaging and helpful content consistently; for the holidays you could create a topical blog post, or a behind the scenes video, tips and tricks related to your specialism and share it on your website, by email and social media – Look at me writing a how to boost your holiday sales article just before the holidays ? The goal is to engage your audience and drive traffic to your website that you can convert into sales.
4. Upsells
If the visitor is looking at product A for $50, show them the alternatives in the same category (without them having to look), you might also like product B which has more features at $75 for example.
5. Related products
If you sell an electronic item, for instance, you could offer the batteries and a case as related upsell items at checkout near the add to cart button as checkboxes. Remember, if you make it easy for your customers to spend more money in your store, they will.
6. Bundles and Package Deals
We all love a deal, right? Well here is an ideal opportunity to massively increase your income and provide exceptional value at the same time by bundling products together. Create bundles, package deals and multiple opportunities for customers to spend more.
Create package deals that stack value on top of value and then give your customers a compelling reason to buy, for instance, buy product A, B and C and get product D for free. Again we need to make it easy to let them add bundles to the basket with one click, if they have to do any of the work, they will not buy.
7. Use social proof
Show visitors what other people have purchased, best-sellers or the top-rated products in the category and share honest customer feedback. Social proof can be a powerful tool in helping to reinforce the buying decision.
8. Employ retargeting strategies
Retargeting is a powerful approach that can boost sales fast. If a visitor looks at product A on your website but doesn’t purchase, you can retarget them with advertisements across Facebook and Google, so they see and are reminded of the product, you can even incentivise them to complete their purchase with free shipping or some other offer.
9. Fix Shopping Cart Abandonment
There is nothing worse than a visitor adding an item to cart and entering their details at the checkout, so far so good, but no sale? Abandoned checkouts can be easy to fix and can massively boost your conversion rates. If someone abandons their shopping cart (hey it happens, we all get distracted) you can use marketing automation to wait 2 hours then send them an email offering assistance to complete the purchase or answer any questions, then again a day later. Powerful, compelling strategies that work.
10. Email your existing customers
If you are not already building relationships with the lifeblood of your business, then stop reading this and start now. Seriously, communicating with your existing customers should be part of your daily routine as an eComm business owner. What do they like, what do they dislike, where do they hang out? How does your product fit into their life? How could you help them?
Creating a dialogue with your customers can help you to improve your service, fine-tune your product offering and do more of the things they love about you. To get a quick win right now, you could offer customers who bought X a discount on Y and Z, or suggest products related to what they have already purchased, or give them a coupon when they refer a friend or follow you on social media; the possibilities are endless.
When I was building my eCommerce business, like children it did not come with a manual and I had to figure most of this stuff out by trial and error. Sound familiar?
I hope you find some useful ideas here that you can employ to boost your eCommerce sales this holiday season and grow your business.
