If you have an e-commerce business, the holiday season must be your favorite time of the year. It’s when you have lots of opportunities to attract customers and increase sales. However, not all your strategies might be suitable for this high-traffic season. You have to incorporate e-commerce holiday practices into your overall digital campaign to gain a significant advantage.
From the chief executive officer to all the departments, every employee needs to contribute to the business’s success. To help you emerge with an impressive net profit, we give you some of the best holiday e-commerce strategies.
12 Holiday E-commerce Strategies
Here are the most effective e-commerce holiday practices to integrate:
1. Test communication technologies
Customer service is critical throughout the year, but you have to improve it during the holiday season. The e-commerce holiday strategy you need to perform before high-traffic seasons arrive is testing your communication technologies. Here are the two things to do:
- Call 800
- Chat with chatbots
Doing so helps you catch and address communication glitches in your system before they even arise and affect your customer service negatively. This way, you’ll have seamless communication with your customers during peak seasons.
2. Focus on cybersecurity and ensure complete endpoint security
Customers spend more time online during the holiday season, but do you know who else does? Cybercriminals. With the volume of traffic and transactions on the web, hackers see peak seasons as an opportunity to look for site vulnerabilities. They target business owners and shoppers alike. For that reason, you have to factor in cybersecurity as a part of your holiday e-commerce strategy.
On the other hand, endpoint security is the process referring to securing endpoints of end-user devices, including mobile phones, laptops, and desktops. This e-commerce holiday strategy blocks access attempts and other malicious activities cybercriminals perform. Additionally, it prevents data breaches during both work and off-work hours.
3. Streamline customers’ shopping experience
Another e-commerce holiday strategy you need this holiday season is to gear up your web infrastructure performance and capacity for high traffic. You need a site that performs well and fast even when many transactions coincide. Consider utilizing AI chatbots if you can’t answer all the queries your customers are sending. These measures can help guarantee a seamless shopping experience for them.
4. Provide a convenient checkout process
Often, e-commerce businesses make many mistakes regarding their checkout processes. Here are some practices made by companies that cause inconvenience to customers when checking out items online:
- Putting distracting headers and footers
- Asking for information twice or thrice
- Utilizing unnecessary pages
Avoid these mistakes and improve your checkout process. Your e-commerce holiday strategy should include:
- Ensuring that your checkout page is straightforward
- Asking your customers’ information only once
- Designing a one-page checkout process if possible
5. Utilize automation
Even if you have employees working during peak seasons, you still can’t expect many customers and orders coming in. The best e-commerce holiday strategy is utilizing fool-proof automation as a backup. With this technology, you will only need minimal human input. You will have a business that earns you money automatically and independently during high-traffic seasons.
6. Implement a tech freeze
The holiday season is not the time to experiment with new strategies. By implementing a tech freeze in your holiday e-commerce strategy, you don’t have to worry about system failures that may occur with the latest updates. Additionally, your employees are more likely to know the solution if the problems are not entirely new to them.
7. Leverage system redundancies
It always helps to have a backup system you can rely on if your primary system fails because of network congestion. Your customers expect you to provide them with consistently instant response times, so leveraging system redundancies in your e-commerce holiday strategy is critical.
8. Enable a failover system
Utilizing redundancies requires server failovers, which means your main system should switch seamlessly and automatically to your backup system once it encounters issues. The purpose of having server failovers in your e-commerce holiday strategy is to eliminate or minimize the impact of system failures on your customers.
9. Perform load testing
Performing load testing before peak seasons arrive is also an effective e-commerce holiday strategy. It helps you see and assess your system’s performance under real-life conditions. Further, it determines your website’s breaking point and gives you enough time to conduct mitigating methods.
10. Send out inventory alerts
To avoid delays in shipments and other processes, notify your customers once your stock levels are low. This way, they’ll know when to expect their orders or packages. Sending out inventory alerts is a holiday e-commerce strategy utilized by some of the most successful businesses to prevent losing regular customers.
11. Boost cross-channel support
If you’re utilizing different platforms, such as websites, social media, and apps, you have to bridge the gap between them. Your holiday e-commerce strategy should include conversational AIs to provide customers with smooth experiences across such platforms.
12. Launch customized campaigns
By analyzing customer data on your website, you’ll understand their purchasing history and behaviors. With these pieces of information, you can launch customized holiday marketing strategies. Here are some for you to consider:
Start Planning Early
The best holiday marketing strategy to start with is early planning. You need to get your marketing team ready by July or August. Collect ideas that can help you attract new and existing customers.
Show Gratitude to Customers
Shoppers tend to be loyal to businesses that make them feel valued. A holiday marketing strategy can motivate them to go back to your website and buy more items. Send out thank you emails or cards for your customers to feel that you’re grateful to have them.
Offer Promos and Discounts
When it comes to holiday marketing tips, promos and discounts should always be on the list. If you think that people shop online only because it’s convenient, you’re partly wrong.
Customers find great promos and discounts online. These things are one of the main reasons they love to make purchases on the web. You can attract more customers with vouchers and rebates too.
Webroom Your Products
Another holiday marketing tip to consider is webrooming your products. Some businesses with physical locations have showrooms where customers can see products in person. The same concept applies to webrooming.
You can prepare a presentation of your products, so your customers can see them at every angle. This holiday marketing strategy consumes time but is powerful. When executed early and well, it can bring you lots of profits.
Engage Your Audience
One of the best holiday marketing tips for building connections with your customers is encouraging discussions. Many platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, give e-commerce businesses this opportunity.
For instance, you can ask your followers what they are most excited about this holiday season. When they respond in the comment section, have your team respond to them as well.
Use Hashtags
Approximately 81% of people in the U.S. have social media accounts. Reaching them through different holiday marketing strategies, such as hashtags, is a smart move.
By inserting popular hashtags into your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, more people will know about your products, promos, discounts, and brand.
Utilize Paid Ads
Since people spend more time online during the holiday season, you can benefit from subscribing to paid aids on social media websites. You can have an ad copy that says, “Get the perfect gift for your loved one this Christmas.”
An advertisement as simple as that can already attract lots of customers.
Spark Positive Emotions
During the holiday season, people want to feel positive emotions. If you publish content as a part of your e-commerce holiday strategy, consider writing about happiness and hope.
You can also include sharing inspirational messages on social media and other platforms in your holiday marketing strategy. This is an effective way to catch the attention of prospects and make them respond to your calls to action.
Launch Videos
Another holiday marketing tip you can do is launch seasonal videos. According to statistics, with the narrowing of people’s attention span, interesting videos can tremendously benefit your business by attracting more and more customers.
Contact Advanced Digital Media Services Today
Advanced Digital Media Services is here to provide you with e-commerce holiday strategies and help you increase sales this year-end. We offer various services for e-commerce businesses to dominate the digital world. We have a team of web designers, writers, SEO experts, and web developers to build you a website that stands out. Contact us today for any inquiries!
