The holiday season is just around the corner, and you know what that means. A mad flurry of shopping! But don’t expect to find the usual messy sales racks, the inevitable jostling crowds, and the endless lines. eMarketer predicts tepid retail sales while expecting a surge in eCommerce sales during the shopping season.
If you’re an online merchant, now’s the time to hit go on your plans to capitalize on this big sales surge. And if you’re wondering “how big?” here are the numbers – according to the National Retail Federation, 20-40 percent of yearly sales for small and mid-sized retailers occur within the last two months of the year.
This year especially, is expected to see a massive 17.2 percent rise in holiday eCommerce sales. Also, Adobe predicts mobile shopping visits to surpass desktop for the first time, with an expected 53 percent of shopping visits happening on Mobile compared to 47 percent on desktop.
So keeping these very encouraging stats in mind, here are some hacks that will help boost your sales this holiday season. So bring it on, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas…we’re ready for you!
1] Plan Your Holiday season Ad Spend
Little advertising goes a long way, and online advertising gives you many options like Facebook ads, affiliate marketing, AdWords, etc. However, the bids get pricey during this highly competitive season, so hurry! Research, select your ad channels strategically, and don’t forget to track ROI for later use.
2] Watch Your Content
Create as much content as possible and optimize it before the holiday madness. In your listings, emphasize the benefits of your products instead of features because that’s what makes the sale, and for products that aren’t unique to your store, make the descriptions attractive. Pay attention to email marketing, so keep ready emails for your promotions, newsletters, and transactions. Gift guides are also win-win!
3] Increase Your Mailing List
See that you have plenty of email addresses before the holiday season. Use a prominent call-to-action on your website or popups to attract signups for your newsletter. Popups, though annoying, seem to work, as discovered by a study revealing an increase in email signups by as much as 1,373 percent! Are you convinced yet?
4] Go Mobile
Make your site mobile-friendly and highly responsive on tablets and mobile devices if you don’t want shoppers to abandon your mobile website. Better still, get a mobile app because they’re grabbing 52 percent of the time spent on mobile phones! This can be your most effective marketing tool through the ease with which it integrates with social media and its evident reach. A mobile app allows for targeted push notifications that connect you with your customers, letting them know about exclusive deals, sales, and the like while reminding customers about your brand.
Mobile apps are becoming more affordable for SMBs, a fact that levels the playing field, provides a strong presence for the brand on mobile devices, and gives them an excellent chance to compete.
5] Provide A Native Shopping Experience
Millennials are significant shoppers, and mobile apps seem to be their favorite route to making purchases. A survey from Forbes and Standford concluded that 47 percent of millennials had downloaded a mobile shopping app to their smartphones, and 54 percent of millennials who downloaded a native app did so because of the superior user experience it provides compared to a brand’s mobile website.
Why don’t you start with these while we bring you Part 2 of ‘Handy Hacks To Boost Sales Holiday Season 2016’ coming up soon?
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