Now is the time to put this prediction into action!
Is your eCommerce store ready for holiday season? According to the statistics, holiday season of 2014 saw record eCommerce sales and 2015 is being forecasted to be even better. Last year online retailers made over $101 billion during the holiday season, which is expected to increase further by 6-8% this year.
Now that you know what’s at hand, you too can rake in the benefits this holiday season. Here’s how.
Prep up Your eCommerce Store for Mobile
Data coming from the Adobe Marketing Cloud says that nearly a third of all sales of the holiday season of 2015 will take place on mobile devices. Adobe’s analysis majorly stems from the “aggregated and anonymous data of more than one trillion visits to 4,500+ retail websites.” Now, with that information up your sleeves, you can perhaps begin immediately to put this prediction into action.
Mobile has the moxie, and if your online store is yet to step up to the mobile bar, you’re definitely missing out as it is estimated that mCommerce sales is expected to grow to over 32%, which is twice the sales that 2014 saw during the holiday season.
What’s Mobile-friendly Store?
- A mobile-friendly store is designed to optimize users’ experience, irrespective of the device your visitors are using – be it a laptop, desktop, smartphone, or tablet. Whether they navigate, pinch or zoom in to view your site, the exact version of your existing webstore should display properly.
- With swiping, scrolling or tapping, the mobile site should be designed for touch screens focusing on user engagement.
- Call-to-action buttons, e.g. Buy, Call, Sign up, etc., must be easy to find.
- Completing a transaction should require minimal number of steps.
- For optimal site loading speed, images need to be correctly compressed, or in SVG format.
Fight the traffic, be Tech Ready
It is imperative to prepare your online store for increased traffic during holiday seasons. However, this becomes even more important if this is going to be your first holiday season or if your business has stalled thriving since last year. There will be an upsurge of traffic to your website during holiday season and you probably cannot make the mistake of losing out on your potential customers due to your websites inability to handle the traffic. If your website is down or is taking too long to load will make your customers to move to your competitor’s website. It takes less than three seconds for your customers to bounce to other sites.
Launch marketing campaigns early
You might believe that it is too early to start your holiday season themed PPC and social media campaigns, but your potential customers don’t believe so. They are already researching about products and services they intend to buy during the holiday season. Believe it or not, early marketing is crucial to have customer’s attention towards your products and services. Providing customers with all the answers they are looking for through blogs and other content can help in converting their research to purchase during the holiday season.
Decide the best price from before
Like early marketing early price planning is imperative, whether you are thinking of offering special holiday discount coupons or introducing special holiday prices, it should start early. Making price tweaks in the last minute can create blunders for your business during the holiday season.
If you have taken all these points into consideration, it is suggested that you perform few trial runs to ensure that your processes are running as intended. There are chances that you might not be fully equipped to take on these cumbersome and time taking processes. But don’t panic, you can always outsource all your worries to experts who have years of experience of developing mobile-optimized eCommerce Stores, Catalog management, product listing services, PPC campaign management, etc., and who can also help you with preparation of your eCommerce banners for holiday shopping season. Go ahead, here’s wishing you a great holiday season and a big share of the big billion days.
