The festive season is fast approaching. For online retailers, it is the ideal moment to boost revenue. But a strong end to the year takes preparation — especially since November brings another event that sends online sales through the roof: Black Friday. That weekend of promotional offers falls on the last weekend of November every year and lets shoppers get ahead of their Christmas buying. In a TNS-Sofres study in 2020, nearly 58% of French consumers surveyed said the event let them get their Christmas shopping done without the stress. So how do you get your online shop ready for the year-end surge? Here is our advice, and the checklist to go with it.
The design of your online shop
- Work on your home page
Your home page is where you can showcase your special Christmas offers and products. Its job is to point customers towards what they are looking for. To make browsing easier, add a dedicated Christmas category to your menu. And put a countdown on the home page to create a sense of urgency.
- Dress your site in Christmas colours
Play the Christmas card on your site itself. It keeps visitors and potential customers in the festive spirit and encourages them to buy.
- Push your best-sellers
Your best-selling items are a major asset for a strong end to the year.
- Identify your best-sellers using Google Analytics
- Feature them on your home page
- Put them in front of people by email
Navigating your online shop
- Make the user experience easy and polished
There are some simple techniques for improving the user experience on an e-commerce site:
- Let people create a wishlist
- Add buttons for sharing your products on social media
- Make account creation easy (through Google or Facebook, for example)
- Explain how returns work
- List your products on price comparison sites
This list is not exhaustive.
- Look after m-commerce
Consumers have been shopping from their mobile devices for several years now, and the trend has only strengthened since the pandemic. In 2020, 73% of online shoppers intended to buy Christmas presents on e-commerce sites. So, for a strong end-of-year on your own site:
- Adapt it for mobile devices
- Test the purchase journey on your mobile site: the mobile user experience has to be flawless.
- Run routine tests on your mobile site regularly: bugs can appear without anyone telling you.
Tip: be careful not to change too much on your mobile site. Customers who are used to it need to find their way around easily.
Your traffic
- Optimise your SEO
You know shoppers are hunting for a good deal, and never more so than at Christmas. For them to see your offers before your competitors’, optimise your organic search. There are several ways to do it:
- Work the phrase “Sale + [product category]” into the pages of the products you have discounted,
- Add the phrase “Christmas sales 2021” to the titles, meta descriptions and H1s on your pages.
Worth knowing. An online course is well worth the time if you want to sharpen your SEO strategy. It will serve you outside the festive season too.
Your communications
- Plan original email marketing campaigns
You will have noticed how much email people receive these days. Your competitors, like most businesses, rely on it. That makes holding a consumer’s attention — let alone catching it — difficult, so standing out is essential. Here are a few email marketing ideas:
- Suggest gift ideas tailored to your audience
- Run special offers
- Set up reminders for abandoned baskets
- Link straight to your “Christmas deals” category
To improve your open rates:
- Go for a short, punchy subject line: ideally it offers a benefit that makes people want to open it — free delivery, discounts, free returns and so on.
- Make your content original and give people a reason to visit your site: the first words matter most, since they follow the subject line.
- Adapt the design of your email campaigns to the festive season.
- Personalise the message with a greetings card to build loyalty.
- Talk on social media
Social media is a more powerful communication tool than ever. Use it.
- Post good photos of your flagship products,
- Promote your offers, such as free delivery and free returns
Your deliveries and returns
- Reassure customers about delivery
At Christmas, carriers are under heavy pressure as delivery volumes explode. Some even change their delivery times. Customers can end up worrying their parcel will not arrive in time, and in a period that is already busy there is no point adding to the stress. So that worry does not put customers off buying, hand delivery to a professional carrier used to handling these logistics peaks. Shippr guarantees same-day delivery with no middleman. Whether you want to hand over part of your logistics or all of it, we take care of everything from the moment the order is confirmed until the parcel reaches its recipient. We work with more than 500 professional partner drivers who collect parcels at the location you set and take them straight to your customers. Real-time tracking, a range of delivery options, a support team available seven days a week — everything is in place to help you through a busy period.
- Offer returns
Reassure customers about returns and let them exchange or send items back easily. They will stop worrying about choosing the wrong gift and can buy with peace of mind. Shippr also handles returns in its software, from start to finish.
Your customer service
- Look after your customer relationships
There is a lot at stake at the end of the year, but do not let it make you forget the spirit of Christmas. Beyond the commercial side, the festive season is a golden opportunity to strengthen your customer relationships. There are several ways to build stronger ties with your customers:
- Run a festive game
- Send digital gifts
- Send your Christmas and New Year wishes
- Add links to the social networks your business is on
- Show the human side of your brand
- Offer to gift-wrap your customers’ purchases
- Add a chat
By adding a chat to your online shop, you can answer customers’ questions directly. That is a real advantage for them: it saves time and gets them quick answers. You help them think it through and reach a decision.
Getting your online shop ready for the festive season: fill in the checklist
Have you ticked everything off, or are you working through it? You now have what you need to make the most of the festive season and maximise your e-commerce sales. Start putting it into practice today to keep the customers you have and win new ones.
