The first step you should consider is free delivery for all orders. On the one hand, it reduces profit, but on the other hand, the biggest barrier is removed from the customer's point of view in online shopping. Free delivery also supports impulsive shopping, and will definitely increase the number of your orders.
Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year, and during this time all media and stores are full of Christmas ads. Online store should not be an exception. By changing your design to your e-shop, you create a Christmas atmosphere. Just a small change in adding Christmas background and color and gift shopping will be much more attractive for customers. It's also a good idea to add a Christmas shopping category directly to the landing page and display the most wanted and best-selling gifts.
Getting your customers' attention and pushing them to click on your store will surely provide the best ad. During Christmas, it's good to focus on more creative and exciting campaigns that get people interested and get them to shop more often before they buy something.
Ways to achieve this are, for example, newsletters, Facebook and Instagram advertising, an online advent calendar. Be interested in different ways, just think of something new and fun to engage with customers. Christmas advertising can also be targeted at people who are not celebrating or not in like it. For example, you can create a category outside your Christmas shopping with non-seasonal merchandise on your e-shop.
In all these changes, one must always remember the basic rule - pragmatism. You need to make sure that all pages are easily accessible and practical to use. There is nothing worse than forever loading content, which only discourages the customer from shopping. Do not get yourself too carried away with marketing because it could be that you forget about simplicity and, ultimately, the content will look chaotic and the customer will not be able to orientate in it.
Before Christmas, when the average buyer's requirements are higher than usual, you can afford to sacrifice your initial profits and focus on getting new customers. Put more aggressiveness on the promotion and target advertising to a new group of clients.
The huge advantage for your store is if you can be selling the goods the last days before Christmas. Focus on customers who shop at the last minute and offer, for example, Christmas vouchers and gift boxes. This means that you will get ahead of competitors, you will be selling at a time when they will no longer be able to.
The date of delivery is very important, and it is good to make sure it is visible everywhere. One option is, for example, to include a countdown, or to add a link to the main page directly with the link where the length and cost of delivery is explained.
Also highlight the option of gift wrapping when cash on delivery is selected.
The conditions for returning and exchanging goods must be at the forefront of customers' eyes and especially if they were expanded or edited before Christmas. When people are stressed, the feeling of certainty that gifts can be returned without difficulty can help you get significantly more orders.
Customer behavior during Christmas is totally different than normal and therefore the results of traditional analyzes and tests can not be taken into account and given importance. Conversely, various market and customer surveys during Christmas are only valid during this period.
Establish a strong marketing plan that will follow after Christmas. If someone bought something during Christmas, target him during January sales.
Send vouchers to all customers that they can use in January.
Customers can also be engaged on social networks, by providing coupons that they can share with their friends and family.
If there is an unexpected situation, be sure to have a plan B ready. You may have to start an emergency sale before you originally planned, some goods will be sold faster than you anticipated, you need to respond to competition or many other issues that may appear.
Christmas is a critical time for most online businesses and legitimately require a very high level of planning.
Combine marketing plans to ensure customer satisfaction and get ready for unexpected tips and drops in your site traffic.
Christmas can easily break your budget, even if you are already planning on the experience of previous years. It is very easy to overtake all the resources and to exceed the planned budget, and nevertheless not getting profits, you imagined. Planning and quick responses to problems are important, but at the same time, you have to set limits that you will not exceed at any cost.
Not all stores can afford to over-plan the stockpile and therefore they are running out of inventory and thus loose advantage on the market. One of the options you should consider when dealing with such a situation is dropshipping.
It's a way to offer products you physically do not have on your e-shop. But you have a contract with a supplier. Once you have received your order, you can buy and send it to a customer or order with a supplier who packs it and sends it directly to your customer. It is a very convenient way for online stores that want to sell without large stock inventory, and avoid scrapping. There are projects that associate vendors who allow dropshipping to sell and where you can find a business partner that will let you do dropshipping according to your terms.
During Christmas, make sure that you can also find packages or gift baskets in your offer, as an inspiration use Shopify or Amazon where they are very popular. You can experiment and combine best-selling products from different categories into one for which you offer a favored price.
Be prepared for questions and interest from your customers and make it easy for them to contact you. If you do not have goods in stock, inform the customer and assure him that the goods will be booked and delivered to him before Christmas. Customer service is what testifies quality of your e-shop and therefore always try to answer and communicate with your customers.
If you have this option, you may want to test the load on the page. Due to the level of traffic and promotional activity during Christmas, you need to be sure that your site can handle it. Functions that can work at normal load, when raised, can cause problems, limit performance, and Christmas is just about the time when you need a one hundred-percent serviceability.
Customers are less tolerant during Christmas and lose patience if tests show that you may have trouble preparing for it in advance. Personalize your site for mobile phones and tablets, a large number of people today check the availability of goods and also make orders directly through smartphones or tablets.
Christmas is a very critical time for both small and large e-shops, so do not to wait until the last moment, but prepare a strategy ahead of time in order to overcome everything. We wish you the greatest success and many sold gifts.
