eCommerce Tech

Sales in Ecommerce: How to Have a Successful Season

Jun 4, 2019 7 min read 315 views
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Sales in Ecommerce: How to Have a Successful Season

 

Each year there is a period of different holidays: Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. It is a perfect time for people to prepare presents for their friends and relatives. Moreover, all the customers are in search of sales and discounts for this period.

So it is a good chance for merchants to increase their multiply their income.

There are can be different ways to attract people’s attention to your online store and make your potential clients make an order in your online store but not in stores of your competitors. In this article, we would like to present you some pieces of advice on how to increase eCommerce sales and make your holiday sales season even more successful.

Preparing Your Ecommerce Holiday Sales Marketing

1. First impressions are half the battle, so start with décor
Many merchants disregard celebratory web design. But it is a mistake. It is the easiest way to catch visitors’ attention and inform them that this online store is ready for the busy sales season, so they can search for discounts and special offers. Of course, you can place a banner, but there are other elements that can support your ideas and create a holiday sales atmosphere:

  • Change your online store background theme to the celebratory event and use related images
  • Implement positive festive colors and add animation
  • Change your corporate logo and add some festive elements to it.

It is a great opportunity to make your online store fresh and unusual, so don’t lose it.

2. Start your email marketing on time
Email is the best channel to deliver information to your existing customers. How do you know when the right time is? It depends on the range and type of products your online store suggests.

If you have expensive products and people need to think twice before making an order, you can start an emailing campaign earlier to prepare your potential customers. But don’t start it too early, because people can postpone shopping when they know about your great discounts for Black Friday, for example, or other attractive offers.
It is important to hit people’s interest in your company, services, and goods for a really tasty price. Do not forget to mention the last date of the discount or sale, it is one more secret way to attract additional attention.

How to Increase Ecommerce Sales

Here are some tips on what you can use to prepare your email templates:

  • Develop subject lines in the email carefully. It should be informative and attractive. Remember that about 33% of recipients open an email based only on the subject line, and 66% of them mark the email as SPAM after reading only the subject line.
  • Add personalization to your messages and try to design it not as an advertisement but more like a postcard style. Consider that emails with personalization in the subject lines have a 26% higher unique open rate than emails without personalization.
  • Specify the expiration date of the special offer clearly and plan the frequency of sending emails to remind about the duration of your offers and discounts. But don’t send too many emails to any one recipient.

3. Prepare holiday sales gift programs
Remember that many people will make purchases with the purpose of buying presents for relatives and friends, and it may be a real challenge to make the right choice.

So, you can add a special section on your site with gift ideas. It can be an article on your blog or a special gift offer page. You can also propose gift certificates or promo codes for a certain amount of money and in this way, you solve the problem of choosing a gift and can attract one more new customer.

All the gift programs depend on the group of goods you sell. If these are clothes and accessories, for example, you may offer a special gift of some jewelry when a client buys a clothing unit. These can be different presents, no matter whether they will be small or big ones. The most important point here is your attention to the customer.

4. Start to write about holidays on your blog a little in advance
An effective way to make your sales campaign more effective is to start blogging about Christmas, New Year, Halloween, Thanksgiving Day, gift ideas, for example, beforehand.

You can also expand your content and add other topics, such as how to be well prepared for holidays and celebrations, how to decorate the holiday sales table, home design ideas and so on. If there are related products in your store, you can recommend them to be bought in order to implement the ideas being shared.

If you deal with clothes, you may devote a whole article or a certain group of goods, which will be on a specific theme. Show your clients the possible dress-codes.

5. Use social media to increase sales in eCommerce business
This is an important channel of communication with both existing and potential customers. It is better to develop and plan this communication program for the whole sales period in advance. News, blog articles, information about discounts – all these points must be published on social networks. Moreover, it is a great idea to shoot a special congratulatory video for your audience to create a special personal festive mood and atmosphere.

6. Use different discount types for sales promotion
Best Ways to Boost Ecommerce Sales Fast

Discounts are different and have various effects on the buyers’ behavior. A discount program should be developed carefully, and another significant thing is how you tell about your offer to a potential customer. We recommend paying attention to the following types of discounts:

  • Discount as a gift. During the winter holidays, for example, everybody likes gifts, and this discount type must be an option in an online store. Actually, it doesn’t look like a discount, you just provide a gift in response to some customer’s activity such as making a purchase over a certain amount, recommendations of the online store, repeat purchase and so on.
  • Discounts for regular customers. It is also a must-to-have category. Each regular customer needs to know that they have a discount and, furthermore, it should be understood that it is unique. The way of informing customers about this is important. It is better to send a personal email or SMS.
  • Discounts for all. Almost all online stores will announce sales and because users know about this, they will compare the actual prices. Giving discounts for all is good practice, but it is important to support this campaign with other promotions.
  • Unexpected one-day discounts. An unexpected drop in prices for some products may surprise and stimulate sales. But if a customer made a purchase before and after they have received information about the price cut, they may be disappointed. This type of discount should be used carefully. It can work well for unpopular or non-seasonal products.
  • Pre-discount. You can provide a discount for orders paid in advance.
  • Bulk discount. It is also possible if you have enough items in stock.

These are only hints concerning what you can use. Each type of discount works differently in every business and it is hard to give universal advice that would work for all storefronts.

7. Christmas wrapping service
It is also an important option you should provide. As in the previous cases, you can use this for sales promotion. A lot of online stores provide decoration/wrapping service for free and this stimulates customers to make a decision about their purchase.

8. Provide as many payment options as possible
During the holiday sales season, you will have more buyers and some of them may need different payment methods than usual. You must predict this situation in order not to lose potential customers. Moreover, check all the payment services with which you work, it is important for clients everything to be quick and easy while placing an paying for the order.

9. We also recommend checking the purchase flow.
Again, it is a very busy period for both merchants and buyers. A long checkout process that includes several pages and many fields that should be filled in may discourage the desire to make a purchase and lead to a large number of abandoned carts.

For Magento online store owners, we recommend optimizing the checkout flow with one step checkout extension. Also, test this flow carefully.

10. Offer quick delivery
Again, everyone is busy before Christmas and New Year, and fast delivery service can play a key role in choosing the online store from which to make your purchase. If you can offer quick delivery, it is a kind of “advanced aerobatics” in the eyes of your buyers. Moreover, you may offer not only quick but free delivery – this factor may be the last and the most successful in customer’s hesitations about the order.

Additional Tips on How to Increase Sales in Ecommerce Business

Try never forget to work with reviews on social networks. Most shopping network websites and online stores are integrated with social networks. It is important not only to create profile groups, increase the presence and brand awareness in social media, but also carefully study the responses to them, as in such a way you will be able to aware of all the news and clients’ opinions. Even if one of the thousands of responses will be useful to improve the service or eliminate deficiencies, it will pay off.

What is needed for preparing your eCommerce holiday sales marketing

  • Introduce multichannel communications and modern resource management systems in logistics and sales.
  • Updated design of your resource.
  • Creative ideas in the format of gifts, sales and discount programs.
  • A personal appeal to your clients not only in the period of holidays but 24/7/364.
  • Integrate shopping networks and online stores with social networks.
  • Maximum personalize offers.
  • Automate customer service based on CRM systems using chatbots, social networks, and instant messengers.
  • Create a loyalty program.

Increase eCommerce Sales During The Holiday Season: Loyalty Program as One of the Ways How to Increase Sales on eCommerce Website

There can be three types of loyalty program:

  • Accumulative. The program is based on the accumulation of points that can be used to pay for subsequent purchases. This is one of the most common types of loyalty programs. The second common application of this method is the retail of any format: nowadays, the so-called cash-back reward system.
  • Tiered. The more the buyer uses the product, the more points, and benefits they get- this is how the sense of this program can be described in one sentence.
  • Coalition. The most common type of loyalty program for the banking sector: nowadays, almost every bank can offer a number of co-branded cards. In addition, the affiliate program can combine several partners from different fields.

You, as a merchant, can offer your clients to become partners in your loyalty program and offer special privileges for some holidays. It is a good chance for people to make purchases for affordable prices and for you to increase eCommerce sales and find new customers.

In conclusion, we would like to add that CRM systems and well-developed loyalty programs are very significant competitive advantages during this period of sales. If your customers know that they always have the best conditions and services in your store, they will stay loyal even during the period when there are many attractive offers on the market.

Moreover, it is a great method in marketing to create different kinds of sales and discounts not only during the period of holidays but it also useful to make such kind of “presents” for your clients from time to time. This makes your auditory more loyal and it gives you more chances that your previous clients will return to your website really soon.

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