Festive eCommerce 101: How to Sell Successfully in the Holiday Season

Whether you’re celebrating Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or Ōmisoka, December is a huge month for big festivities. That means it’s also a huge month for gifting. 

eCommerce retailers around the world are preparing for their busiest time of year, tingling with anticipation for the sales they’ll make leading up to the holiday season. 

This begs the question: is your eCommerce store ready?

Sure, you might have ordered more stock and added festive messaging to your homepage, but have you done everything you can to prepare?

In the next 8 points, we give you a rundown of the best things you can do before the gifting season kicks off in earnest. 

1. Offer big deals 

We say this every year, but one of the most reliable and foolproof ways to catch attention in the festive season is to make a splash with a massive deal. Think of it as a rerun of Black Friday; what’s the biggest discount you can afford while still being profitable. 

Think about big percentages off, buy one get one free, extra free gifts thrown in, or bonuses for spending higher values. It’s up to you exactly what discounts you decide to run, but just make sure that they’re eye-catching. 

2. Decorate your website 

If you want to make your holiday sale seem special, then you need to make your website feel special to visit. That means updating the look for the season. 

This might sound like a lot of effort, but really you can achieve pretty remarkable results with relatively low effort. If you have a Zyro website, the changes should only take you a few minutes to apply. 

For instance, things you might want to change include:

• Your homepage header image. What sells better than fun, family, and festivities? Show them off to new visitors. 
• Festive landing pages. If you’re expecting lots of visitors for the holidays, why not create a dedicated landing page to greet them?
• Product descriptions. Spell it out for your visitors and make it clear in your product descriptions that they’re right for gifting. 
• Product images. Where suitable, why not give your products an update for the season?

3. Make gifts easily accessible 

Is it obvious that your products are giftable? Ok, theoretically, anything can be given as a gift, but do your products make attractive options? 

Highlighting that your products are perfect for giving to loved ones certainly wouldn’t hurt your sales. 

One of the neatest ways to achieve this is by creating a brand new product category dedicated specifically to gifts. This could simply include your entire product catalog but is an effective way to prime your visitors to think about your products as presents. 

For even better results, you could add your new gift category to your homepage, suggest items that would match each other if gifted together or even create your own gift sets. 

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4. Start sharing the word 

There’s absolutely no point in having a big holiday sale if no one knows about it. You need to make sure that enough people hear about your blowout to make the whole thing worth it. 

We’re not going to go into detail about how to market a sale, we’ve got enough other blog posts that cover that kind of thing. Just work out which marketing channels work best for you and focus on them. There’s no point taking big bets and risks during the holiday season; just do what you do well. 

Don’t forget, it’s always cheaper and easier to convert existing customers than new ones. So, instead of spending a fortune targeting new folks for the festive season, consider making the most of your mailing list and social media reach to entice your loyal customer base back. 

5. Sell gift vouchers 

How do you turn purchases from the future into revenue today? With a little bit of magic by the name of gift vouchers.  

Let’s be honest, we all know someone who’s a challenge to shop for, and short of just giving them cash (or nothing), gift vouchers make it possible to be generous without thinking too hard. 

If you don’t have gift vouchers available in your online store, you’re missing a trick. On Zyro, it takes literally 5 minutes to set up gift vouchers, and then you have a great way to generate sales now without having to worry about shipping until later. 

Want to know another little secret? Billions of dollars worth of gift vouchers go unused every year. That means that you might just be able to pocket the money without parting with your goods. 

6. Make shipping free 

Want to know a secret? Offering people free shipping if they order over a certain amount is one of the most surefire ways to ensure shoppers spend more online. 

Even if your eventual purchase value will exceed what you would have paid with shipping, your brain still tells you you’re benefiting from a good deal if you’re seeing the word ‘free” on screen. 

So, what’s our advice to you? Choose your regular average order value, add 10% to 15% more on top of that, and say that orders over that value will qualify for free shipping. You can thank us when your AOV over the holiday season increases. 

7. Be prepared to offer support 

Hopefully, the holidays mean more customers, and more customers mean more customers to support. Once a sale is finalized, your job as an online retailer is not over. Aftercare is just as important. 

As mentioned earlier, existing customers are easier to convert than new customers, so keeping your existing customers sweet is how you’ll ensure they come back to your store next year. 

Try to make your support accessible 24/7. Even if you just add a chatbot that can take a message and tell customers when you’ll next be available to answer, that’s much better than leaving valued customers to shout into the void. 

Did you know you can easily integrate a chatbot function with your Zyro store?

8. Ensure your returns policy is fair

There’s a good chance your great aunt doesn’t exactly remember your shoe size or whether you prefer green or blue. In short, the holidays bring a high risk of unwanted, unloved gifts. 

So, how can you make yourself useful? Easy returns, of course. You might lose out on some money, you’ll build a good reputation in the long run. 

You could even make it super easy for customers to exchange unwanted gifts for items they’d really love, giving you the opportunity to hang on to the revenue. 

However you’re celebrating this December, make sure you can celebrate high sales, by following our tips and choosing Zyro as your eCommerce platform. 

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