How online retailers score points in the Christmas business
Every year, retailers enter the busiest time of the year in terms of sales. In retail stores, shoppers fight their way through crowded stores, while online the servers of stores and marketplaces are brought to their knees due to high capacity utilization. However, retailers should take a few precautions to cleverly channel this rush of customers into their own online store and use it profitably. In the following, we would like to show you how you can benefit from the Christmas business and offer customers a successful shopping experience at the same time.
The alternative to the department store crowd
Very few shoppers look forward to stuffy department stores and irritable crowds vying for the favor of stressed salespeople in the run-up to Christmas. Only the hard-boiled are happy to voluntarily subject themselves to this annually recurring act. Good, well-organized online stores that offer promotions and top service for the festive season have therefore been offering a welcome alternative to the increasing number of shoppers for years.
Three areas are particularly important if you want to score points with your customers in the coming weeks. For each of these three, we offer you a short 4-point checklist that you can use for optimization.
Store design
The store itself can provide a greatly improved user experience with a few adjustments, even apart from the Christmas decorations. This is how it works:
Test the resilience of your own systems! Any delay in page loading, checkout or even inaccessible store pages will cost you shoppers. This is because they are hoping to save time when shopping online, especially in the run-up to Christmas.
Saving time: Is your store optimized for mobile devices? This principle should apply all year round anyway. However, offering a solution even after the 4th Advent to customers who were unable to find the desired goods in the store of their choice and are now looking for them from the store via cell phone will quickly win new customers.
A rather small visual element, but of great importance for planning the gift table: What is the last possible date by which the buyer can order products in order to be able to give them away in time on December 24th? Therefore, integrate this date clearly visible in the design of your store.
Bidders have special categories for their Christmas shopping. Divide your range into handy sections such as “For him”, “For her”, “For dads”, “For Star Wars fans” and similar, limiting your listing. The advantage of this is that you save the customer the agony of choice and make it easier to keep track.
Marketing
Once technical barriers have been eliminated, you can start thinking about possible marketing activities around the party:
Give shoppers an incentive to visit your store every day. One simple way to do this is to have an advent calendar with a deal of the day. Announce the promotion prominently on the homepage of the online store. You have already created an incentive for many visitors to regularly browse your range.
Use cross-selling and smart discounts to draw customers’ attention to other products. For example, if they buy a TV, bidder offers them a 25 percent discount on Blu-Ray players. If they buy Blu-Ray players, they get three Blu-Rays for the price of two. Ideally, you can even link these listings together and cleverly guide customers through your product world.
Start special sales right at Christmas for the time between the years. This allows you to target those who want to spend their Christmas presents now.
Enclose vouchers for (discount) promotions in January with the products ordered. With this form of follow-up marketing, you can integrate customers into your store even after their Christmas purchase and give them an incentive to browse your store again.
Service
If you want to offer your buyers extra customer service and further incentive to buy, you can score points with the next four options:
Free shipping – although this means a lower profit margin, it removes the hurdle of shipping fees for potential buyers and undecided customers. Also point out special express delivery options, which you can offer for a fee-based price.
A prominent reference to the possibility of having the product gift-wrapped is another plus point at Christmas.
Pay particular attention to your customer support! Because every inquiry you receive is another potential customer and therefore a sale. As many support hotlines are overwhelmed at Christmas, the one who remains friendly and helpful in every situation is the one who comes out on top.
Clearly indicates exchange options for all products. Even better: extend the deadline for possible exchanges for purchases before Christmas. Similar to the free shipping, this removes another hurdle in the buying process for those who are undecided.
Conclusion
Our tips offer retailers some approaches that they can use to make the Christmas season even more effective for their sales figures and customer loyalty. Of course, there are many other methods that can be used for this purpose, from competitions and prize draws to social media promotions or targeted ad placement for the festive season via Google Ads and social ads. Do you have any other tips worth mentioning? Then share them with us in the comments!
