Less than two months away, Christmas is probably the most anticipated time of the year for both, shoppers and retailers.
With 45% of Christmas shoppers set to do their buying primarily online, this holiday season is expected to be the biggest period of spending the internet has ever seen!
To help you capitalise on this incredible sales opportunity, we have pulled together a 24-point checklist providing you with top tips on how to prepare your online store for record-breaking sales numbers.
Make the Christmas spirit present in any aspect of your holiday sales strategy – from your product offering and special promotions, to your store design and brand message. Let your customers know that you are in the festive mood and your online business is more than ready to meet their shopping needs.
Decide what products to include in your Christmas offering as early as possible. This way you will have enough time to secure sufficient stock, plan you resources and decide how to advertise your holiday promotions.
Don’t go for your most popular products, because this is what your competitors will most likely do. Pick a unique offer that will make you stand out from the crowd. Shoppers looking for gifts online are going to be bombarded with lots of similar offers and no-one really wants to get two or more identical Christmas presents.
Although online buyers are not particularly expecting to get a heavy discount when shopping for Christmas presents, as they would on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for example, nothing catches the customer’s eye like a special offer. So, even if you can’t provide any discount for your holiday products, try to come up with something special, even if it is a free gift wrapping service.
In case you want to run a special Christmas promotion, do it in a way that is appealing to customers but also lucrative for your business. Create family packs, gift baskets or bundles of related products, providing percentage discounts on orders over certain amount, or featuring promotions such as ‘buy 2, get 1 free’.
Enable your customers to include unique gift notes upon ordering. It could be placed either in the order notes or in a custom field on your checkout page, if the online platform you are selling onto allows it.
Now that social commerce is growing in popularity and shoppers are eager to get the opinion of their peers, allow your customers to easily share products across their social networks, by integrating social media icons, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest buttons.
Change your featured images to show Christmas gifts, create Christmas banners and use those banners to promote your Christmas offers. A store design that has looked the same since summer will not add much to the success of your Christmas online campaign.
Incorporate visually appealing countdown to Christmas into your storefront and holiday promotions to create anticipation and a feeling of immediacy among customers. Encourage them to order as early as possible.
Providing a smooth mobile shopping experience for your customers is a key factor to the success of your holiday sales campaign this year. It is expected that 28% of all shoppers who will purchase their Christmas presents online will do so via mobile, so offering mobile-friendly storefront and listing template will help you capitalise on this incredible opportunity.
Christmas is celebrated all over the world, so don’t forget your international customers! Providing them with multilingual store design will allow you to make the most of the cross-border opportunity and will also help you stand out from the huge online competition that is expected this holiday season.
This holiday season, online retailers expect order volumes they have never seen before! Make sure you have sufficient stock planned for your Christmas products, especially for the ones you are promoting or discounting. Setting a stock buffer will additionally protect you from overselling, which can be one of the main pitfalls of the Christmas shopping rush.
For more top sales tips this Christmas, make sure you check out part 2 of our 24-point checklist for fantastic online Christmas sales!
Let us develop a tailored solution for your business that will help you reach new international customers and grow your global sales.
get in touch
