Steps Your eCommerce Business Needs to Take Right Now Before the Holiday Season

Tis the season to get prepared! 

The festive season is soon upon us, especially for retail businesses, whose sales and demand explode during this time of year. 

If you have an eCommerce business but don’t know where to get started – read on, preparing your storefront for the festive month is snow joke! Sorry, we had to…

Create a Hassle-Free Customer Experience

The last thing you want is for your customers to leave your site with a resting grinch face.

Avoid this by creating a smooth and safe customer journey. This can be done by keeping on top of queries such as returns, exchanges, shipping time requests and much more.  

Keep your FAQs updated, keep your contact information updated, and always be available to customers via chat, phone (24-hour line), emails, and social media to share solutions. 

Security and Safety

eCommerce isn’t always rainbows and butterflies; it is imperative to consider protection against malicious activity towards your website such as cyberattacks. Investing in security solutions will help keep your online store and customer information protected. There are plenty of backup solutions available to eCommerce businesses, like our partner Rewind.

It’s wise to start pre-planning your customers’ experience before Christmas so that your store does not go down at the time your revenue is supposed to go up!

Surprise Shipping and Fulfilment Options

Offering your customers reasonable shipping costs or free shipping is a valuable marketing tool you can introduce during the Christmas season. Since customers like to think they are getting more for their money, seeing this promotion in their cart will most likely reduce cart abandonment and increase sales.

Optimising Your Mobile Experience 

You can certainly purchase something on your mobile phone much easier than you can on your laptop, let’s face it!

According to stats from eDesk In 2022, smartphone retail eCommerce sales are expected to pass $432 billion, up from $148 billion in 2018. In light of this stat, it is important to have a mobile-friendly eCommerce store.

Prepare for Incoming Traffic

What’s worse than your eCommerce storefront freezing or crashing due to the high number of people visiting the site? Not preparing for it! Just think about how many conversions you could lose if there was a website outage.

The following tips will help you prepare for any incoming traffic that may come your way.

• Ensure your stock list is full by contacting your suppliers to confirm you know the amount of stock you have. 
• Prioritise items related to Christmas as they are most likely to be in demand.
• Make sure the site is scalable and stable to handle increased demands on your web infrastructure.
• Check if your third-party integrations are up to date.

Christmas Marketing and Promotions.

Having unique, current and relevant content for Christmas will attract customers to your store and increase your Christmas sales.

Here’s how marketing can help during the Christmas season:

• In order to attract customers, you must ensure that your social media campaigns and marketing techniques are in place – pre-planning content and creating CTAs that are relevant.

• Paid advertising – this helps boost your organic traffic to your market.

• Email strategy – sending out emails that include Christmas discounts, special offers or sales helps increase conversions.

And there you have it. Six main things to prepare for the jolly season that there is to come. 

As the end of 2022 approaches, consumers are anticipating an enticing, smooth shopping experience filled with special deals. So it is vital we gift our consumers with a jolly good experience, leaving them coming back for more!