Ecommerce Holiday Quick Checklist To Implement Now

The holiday season is creeping up quickly, and it’ll be here before you know it. Are your online presence and your business ready for the boost in traffic and revenue?

For online retailers, the holiday season is the most profitable time of the year. If you haven’t started yet, then it’s the right time to optimize your site to not only improve the shopping experience but make sure that holiday shoppers keep coming back to you all year round.

If we look at last year’s stats - Holiday sales were responsible for $126 billion for digital businesses, and One Trillion Dollars for retail and digital sales. That is a BIG number. 

However, among all the holiday Cyber Monday was leading with a big hit of about 73% sales. 

Today I am going to share 3 quick holiday eCommerce tips with you guys to ensure your sales reflect your strategy. 

Let’s get started. 

Holiday Tip #1: Optimize For Mobile

According to Adobe Digital insight about how customers browse and spend their money. Smartphones accounted for 60% of visits to online retail sites, with 40% of the total sales. It is predicted that the number will be double this year.

Below are described 3 incredible ways to get your site ready for mobile shoppers.

1. Optimize Your Mobile Site Speed

A slow site is going to drive visitors away. As a matter of fact, if your site takes more than 10 seconds to load, you will lose 50% of your site visitors right away.

So, how you can measure your mobile site speed? Well, it’s simple with the help of Google’s Test My Site tool, you can check your mobile site speed. 

If your mobile site’s speed is too slow, you can enhance it by:

• By properly sizing your site images to match display dimensions
• Remove CSS and JavaScript to strip code files of data that aren’t required for the file to be executed
• Use PNG for static images instead of GIF to save network bytes
• Use a content delivery network   

2.Enhance Your Checkout Method

For eCommerce sites, one way to optimize your mobile site is to fix the checkout process. You can make it easier for your shoppers to check out and pay by:

• Reducing the number of checkout steps. If you can get it down to a single step, that’s ideal.
• Showing progress through the checkout, with a progress bar or other visual signal.
• Using a guest checkout, so visitors don’t have to sign up to purchase (but offer the option to save their details after purchase).

3.Make it Easier for Visitors to Use Your Mobile Site

You can increase your mobile site’s usability in several ways. For example, designing your mobile site to allow for plenty of space for users to tap so they don’t make the wrong selections can go a long way towards decreasing frustration for mobile users.

Holiday Tip #2: Be Active On Social Media

Being active on social media during the holiday season is one of the most cost-effective online marketing strategies as it offers a unique opportunity to build brand awareness and increase your visibility without directly having to pay for it.

This holiday eCommerce shopping season, you must post holiday-themed images, contests, gift guides, and anything else that might help you to drive sales and engage customers.

Here are 2 incredible methods to get the most out of your social media reach:

1. Share Festive Content 

The holidays are a stressful time for a lot of brands, so just don’t forget to take the time to engage with your followers as people and not just consumers.

Engaging with followers in this way gives them the chance to see the personable side of your brand and goes a long way toward building customer loyalty that turns into advocacy.

For your part, you can learn quite a lot about your customers when you actively engage with them outside of sales transactions and listen to what they have to say about themselves and their own lives.

For this, you can incorporate poll questions like - Do you want a gaming gift for yourself, or do you have all of your shopping done? Or anything that your audience can relate with themselves. 

2. Use Holiday Hashtags 

Here’s a lot that goes into the entire holiday shopping season that can be turned into a hashtag:

• The holidays themselves (#ChristmasCountdown, #HappyHolidays, #TisTheSeason, etc.)
• Food (#Homemade, #HolidayMenu, #HolidayEats)
• Shopping (#BlackFriday, #CyberMonday, #WishList)
• Travel (#Vacation, #HolidayTravel, #Brunch, #Shopping)

If you’re sharing some unique products, make sure to hashtag those too!

Holiday Tip #3: Launch An Advertising Campaign 

Holiday Shoppers only buy from the brands recognize or know - that is the main reason why launching an advertising campaign before the main event is so important. If you want people to purchase from you, they must be well aware of your brand. 

The question is, how you can achieve this. Well, there are numerous ways to get recognized by your niche - one most effective one is to build brand awareness by creating an advertising campaign. Advertising, in simple words, is the way of spreading the word about your business. So, you must concentrate on promoting at least one single product, that can be a special holiday deal or your brand as a whole.

The best way to spread the word during the holiday season is by advertising on digital media. With this mix of media, you’ll reach more eyes in a shorter amount of time.

Conclusion

Running a holiday campaign can be stressful for any brand. With decent preparation, you’ll be able to reduce that stress and make the most out of the upcoming holiday season.

Start by optimizing your mobile website conversions and analyzing last year’s data for historical spikes in traffic and sales. Then when you set up your campaign, be sure to optimize your ad copy, creatives, and audiences to lower your ad costs. Also, consider introducing new types of content to your paid ads strategy.

Once your campaign is up and running, monitor ad performance, and scale your winning campaigns.
Have a happy Holiday season!