Article

Nina Kozłowska
Nina Kozłowska 6 December 2019

Brace Your Ecommerce For The Christmas Shopping Season

Christmas shopping season starts with Black Friday, goes through Cyber Monday and lasts until Christmas Day. In the US, holiday ecommerce sales were responsible for $126 billion in 2018. For retailers, it's an incredible opportunity to boost sales. Increased traffic and demand come along with significant competition, as all online shops want to take advantage of the shopping craze. Keep on reading to find out how to prepare your ecommerce for the upcoming Holiday shopping season!

Refurbish ecommerce websites. 

For online stores, their webpage is absolutely crucial. Even the best possible marketing campaign can be fruitless if a website isn't well-optimised. 

Use a unique value proposition.

It expresses the advantage of your products or brand over the competition. Think of the most significant features of your ecommerce and use them to attract buyers on product pages, the homepage, as well as social media or newsletters. Remember, customers don't buy products; they purchase emotions, values or benefits. Don't hesitate to highlight practicalities and advantages.

The Christmas shopping season is extraordinary. Consumers buy not only for themselves, but also for their family and friends, so your messages can be more emotional than usual. 

Embellish your online store.

Shoppers love Christmas time! Give your website an Xmas-look to fit their mood. Prepare Christmassy banners; you can even think of changing some other elements in your online store or adding more green and red, which are associated with holidays. 

Re-think delivery; provide many delivery options, and to make your offer competitive, you should think about free shipping. Add a countdown to inform your customers when it's the deadline for purchasing gifts that will be on time for Christmas Day. That way, you can avoid disappointment and complaints. You might also consider offering extra gift wrapping to save your customers' time. ;) 

Add ratings and opinions.

As shoppers very often focus on buying gifts for their relatives, they demand the best quality. While searching for the best products, they pay attention to ratings and opinions. Add such elements to product pages on your website to take advantage of social proof. Opinions of your happy consumers can help make the purchasing decisions of future customers. 

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Christmas shopping season is busy not only for retailers but also for shoppers. Their "To Do" list is on fire because of work and home duties. On top of that, they need to get thoughtful gifts for close ones. No wonder that customers are more and more willing to purchase on mobiles. Nearly half of online shoppers in the US use mobile devices for that purpose. Make sure your website functions perfectly on both desktop and mobile. All the elements should be readable and easy-to-click. 

Create landing pages for holiday sales.

You might also consider creating a few personalised landing pages to promote your Christmas sale and reach the target group. A landing page should be clear and easy-to-read. With no distractions, it should attract visitors to buy your products. 

Improve the customer experience.

Eliminate pain-points and smooth a buyer's journey to make the whole process even more pleasant. Online shopping should require minimum effort from buyers. If a web page is loading too slow, or registration is needed, consumers can simply leave the store and never come back.

Make the most of content marketing.

Provide potential customers with helpful content. Create blog posts with gift ideas and tips on choosing the best products (Holiday Gift Guides). Once you expose your in-depth knowledge on the subject, you'll gain customers' trust. Articles on your website can also boost your website's SEO. Use the right keywords to position your online store higher in search results. 

Provide excellent customer support.

During the busiest shopping season of the year, without a doubt, you'll get more emails than usual. Offer many ways of contacting your customer support. Brace your team in knowledge and tools that will help them deliver the best and the fastest possible help. 

Implement an AI-powered chatbot.

Use bots for Messenger and live chat on your website. That way, your customers can get instant help. AI-powered chatbots use natural language processing and machine learning so that they can provide a smooth conversation. Check out platforms like Chatbotize that can help you build your bots in minutes based on ready-to-use plugins. An intuitive chatbot can find solutions to many enquiries. If customers ask too complicated questions, a bot can handover an issue to a human agent. 

Prepare conversation scenarios and update FAQs.

Make sure that your knowledge base is actual and include all the essential information. Your agents should have easy access to it to answer customers' questions as fast as possible. Use scripts to create chatbot scenarios and automatically answer the most common enquiries.

Integrate your inbox.

Use tools, such as Chatbotize, to integrate inboxes. That way, your agent will get access to all of the conversations in one place. No matter if customers contact your support center via live chat on the website, via Messenger or even on WhatsApp. Read more about Chatbotize 2.0

Be visible on social media.

Choose social media platforms that can actually help you close the deal. Facebook and Instagram provide features designed especially for online stores. On both channels, you can tag products on your posts and ads, as well as build a shop section on Facebook. Make the most of conversational marketing to interact with your target group, build a relationship and gain loyal customers. 

Create a contest.

Christmas contests on social media can boost traffic on your website and sales. Prepare engaging challenges to build a relationship with your customers. Offer attractive gifts that will get users' attention. One of the best ideas is to use a chatbot for social media contests. Customers can be more willing to take part in such contests because they don't need to submit their entries publicly. Everything is happening in Messenger.

Make the most of retargeting.

Hopefully, you've already added a Facebook pixel to your website. If not, don't wait any longer! By tracking your online store's visitors, you can reach them in your future campaigns. Precise targeting can help you increase CTO and boost conversion. 

Promote your special deals.

Use attractive images and videos to get customers' attention. Also, add unique value propositions and other advantages, like free delivery, extra gift-wrapping or the fact that you cooperate with local manufacturers. Another excellent idea is to distribute promo codes via a Messenger chatbot. Thanks to that technique, you can build a base of users that you can contact later via Messenger. 

Not every strategy will work for your online store, but you should try out many actions to find out which tactics bring you the most benefits. A/B testing is an excellent idea for learning about your customers' preferences. Once the Christmas shopping season is over, evaluate your actions, write down conclusions and improve your business strategy for the next year. Identify sweet spots and make buyers even more happy in 2020.

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