The holiday season is a time when shoppers are in a happy mood, looking for gifts for their loved ones and shopping around for great deals and products. People browsing online have a sure buying intent. They are looking for gift ideas and great deals, and with good reason as there are festive sales galore and the competition is high.

How can you then ensure that consumers buy from your e-commerce platform and not your competitors? Do you think the e-commerce software you use for your business will allow you to customize and make the necessary changes easily?

Prepare to Grow Your Holiday E-Commerce Revenues: 8 Tips

You might need to do a lot of restructuring, designing, analysis and re-targeting, but we guarantee these 8 tips will boost your e-commerce sales during the holidays.

1 - Optimize all strategies for mobile visitors

People are neck deep in chores and errands before the long holiday break. Mobile shopping is a convenient solution to holiday shopping for people who are always on the go.

Ensure that your site is compatible on different mobile devices. Customers must have the ease of scrolling down on their mobile phones without the site distorting.

This means extra work for your developers, but it will play a major deciding factor in consumers staying on your website or moving to an easier and mobile friendly one.

2 - Calls to action

People shopping online before the holidays have an intent to make a purchase. Everyone is shopping for Christmas gifts for their family or friends. People tend to look around to find the best deals.

That's why it is important to include compelling calls to action (CTAs) on your product pages. Consumers are in a rush, and CTAs are the best way to help them make a quick decision before they move to another e-commerce site.
Make sure the CTAs are catchy in bold and colorful fonts, with terms like ‘Buy Now,’ ‘Early Bird Offer,’ ‘Till Stocks Last,’ and ‘Hurry, limited stock left,’ which gets the customer’s attention and translates into sales.

3 - Visitors don’t like waiting

A 2-second page load time is what consumers have the patience for in today’s digital age. During the festive season, when online shoppers are hard-pressed for time, their patience runs out quickly, and the last thing an e-commerce company can afford is to turn away a confirmed sale due to slow page load time.

Consumers who are not hung on brand loyalty will switch over to another site if your store takes more than 2-3 seconds to load. You will not only lose customers, but the higher bounce rate will eventually hurt your SEO, negatively affecting your page rankings in the long run.

4 - Don’t forget the specials

Want to get the customer’s attention in a competitive e-commerce market? Give out deals that would make the customer feel they’re losing out if they do not buy from you.

Give out discounts like '10% or 25% off if you shop today!' These discounts could be on a single product or a buy one get one free offer that entices customers to buy.

Free delivery is another way to keep customers hooked and make a dash to buy more items than they originally intended. Offer enticing upsell and cross sell suggestions. This will increase your average order value and the customer will be happy about making a smart choice.

5 - Recover abandoned carts with festive special discounts

The holiday season is a great time to recover abandoned carts. Re-target shoppers who did not complete their purchase with discounts or deals on the products in their abandoned carts. That may just be the incentive they need to complete the transaction.

Giving out offers and discounts might seem like a formula for losses, but in the long run, offering discounts on products already in the cart is a risk worth taking as compared to an abandoned cart and a lost prospective customer.

6 - Give landing pages a complete festive makeover

A well-designed site with great products will not only bring in more customers but will also result in higher sales conversions. Design your landing pages with festive elements to attract customers.

Red is a great color to attract buyers, make them stay longer on your website, and put them in a better mood to buy. Use white spaces to make the writing and products stand out. Upload a video or add festive design elements like snowflakes to give your website some festive holiday cheer.

7 - Use email marketing to promote your holiday content

Holiday promotions are a great way to drive both traffic and sales. People are on the look-out for gifts and deals. Send them emails about the discounts and promotions on your e-commerce store.

Design catchy emails with festive colors and elements that entice the reader to open them. Offer deals that will further push them to click on the link to your website and shop right away.

Don’t wait for December to get the emails going. Start your festive email marketing campaign as early as October or November. People often need time to decide on gifts. The more they see a product they like, the more likely they are to research further and compare to other products before they hit the purchase button.

8 - Create blog entries with search-friendly titles

Blogs are great ways to drive traffic to your website and help customers make product choices during the holiday season.

Catchy blog titles like ‘5 Christmas gifts that can make your folks back home smile’ or ‘Great gifts don’t always have to come in big boxes’ or ‘Great gifts come in small packages too’ will grab the attention of buyers searching for gift options.

The easier you make it for customers to make informed choices, the higher the chances of them coming back to your site to make a purchase.

Research trending topics on social media, use the right keywords, and optimize your e-commerce SEO to draw holiday traffic.

Conclusion

Dashing to e-commerce stores during the festive season is the easiest way to shop for loved ones. It is also an opportunity for online sellers to strategize and target customers who have a 100 percent buying intent. Buyers are in a joyous mood, and this is the time when e-commerce store owners cannot use the same old formula to grab a consumer’s attention, especially when the market is flooded with discounts and sales. It would be sacrilegious of e-commerce businesses to not target this huge segment of confirmed buyers.

Follow the tips above and get your cash registers jingling like the bells on Santa’s sleigh! Happy holidays!

Shane Emerson is an American writer for various digital news publications. After being in the e-commerce industry for more than 15 years, Shane has a good understanding of what it takes to make an e-commerce business successful. He likes to cover newsworthy events related to business management software, e-commerce platforms, customer relationship management (CRM), and Quoting software and Value Added Resellers. Find him on Twitter @tweet_varstreet.