Christmas shopping has been a magnificent source for sellers to earn profit during the year-end sales. Since it is the only festival that is celebrated in each and every corner of the world, anyone can benefit from it with just a few minor adjustments to their Christmas selling patterns. Over the years, more shoppers have turned to online shopping to avoid crowds in stores. This brings sellers massive opportunities to introduce their brand, grow their business, and make profits during Christmas.
To know about last year’s Christmas trends and shopping predictions for this year, I have created this Christmas selling guide. It has everything you need to know about this year’s sales and tips for making it more profitable for your store. Additionally, I have included bonus tips for new sellers who are participating in the sale for the first or second time.
Here is an index if you want to jump to a specific section right away!
Index:
- Christmas Selling Trends 2021
- Christmas Shopping Predictions 2022
- When will Customers Shop for Christmas 2022?
- Best Amazon Products Sold on Christmas 2022
- Last Minute Christmas Selling Tip 2022
- Bonus Tips for New Sellers to Make Long-Lasting Impressions
- Conclusion
Before moving forward, let’s understand what Christmas trend says about last year’s sales:
Christmas Selling Trends 2021
- 2021 holiday shopping season recorded 14.1% YOY revenue growth with $886.7 billion sales
- US retail sales grew by 16.1% reaching $1.221 trillion, fastest growth rate in over 20 years
- Overall holiday retail sales increased by 8.5%, largest annual increase recorded in 17 years
- ‘Apparel & Accessories’ eCommerce sales surged 22.5% reaching $45.35 billion, making it No.1 category both in terms of dollar and growth figure
- In 2021, 46% Shoppers started festive shopping earlier than expected
- 37% shoppers who shopped during holiday season wished they had started even earlier
- Only 4% of holiday shoppers in the US didn’t use any digital channel for shopping
- 61% consumers joined loyalty program to receive additional discounts during holiday sale
- 53% US shoppers checked the product online to make sure it is in stock before going to store to buy
Christmas sales were good last year, so what can we expect this year? Let’s understand:
Upcoming Christmas Shopping Predictions 2022
- As per eMarketer, Holiday sales will increase by 3.3% reaching $1.262 trillion in 2022
- 69% global consumers are planning early holiday shopping to avoid products being out of stock
- Inflation can affect 2022 shopping trends as shoppers are paying high prices for necessities
- Due to Inflation, 37% American shoppers & 47% global buyers are likely to start shopping early
- Shoppers will turn more to eCommerce for low prices, reduce shipping charges, and environmental impact
- Sellers are likely to offer early access to deals & discounts, also add ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ options to reduce stress on budget
- 56% shoppers are planning to buy thoughtful gifts for friends and family this Christmas
- 30% plan to buy functional gifts while 23% will buy essential items for present, suggesting gifts that are useful
When to Start Christmas Sale Offer?
According to Google Consumer Insight of 2021, people are way ahead of the holiday rush. This year inflation has hit hard and shoppers have a tight budget. But festivals are nothing without buying and giving gifts to family and friends. Shoppers are going to shop for Christmas but this year, things will be a little different. 37% American shoppers & 47% global buyers will start their Christmas shopping earlier than last year.
The high prices of food items and gifts will be the encouraging factor to shop early, when the prices are lower to reduce impact on their budget and make the most of the deals & discounts. It will further help them spread their spending over several months.
Previous year, about 54% shoppers made their holiday purchase even before Thanksgiving. Continuing this trend and seeing the upward trend in the graph, we can expect more & more consumers will finish their Christmas shopping by Super Saturday (the last Saturday before Christmas, 17th Dec 2022).
How To Leverage Early Shopping This Holiday Season?
With shoppers looking for holiday deals and offers earlier than usual, you need to plan holiday marketing campaigns and prepare your stores even earlier. Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be the key milestones to boost sales.
First, make sure your store is up and running. Check if your store needs speed optimization and use proper extensions like Multichannel Marketplace Integrations to streamline online selling processes and ease order & inventory management. Secondly, launch early holiday deals and product discounts, offer inexpensive ways to shop by providing gift bundles or vouchers to be spent in-store.
Amazon Top Selling Christmas Items
- Advent Calendars
- Artificial Snow
- Bows & Ribbons
- Christmas Tree Stands
- Greeting Card Holders
- Nativity
- Stockings & Holders
- Tree Decorations
10 Last-Minute Christmas Selling Tips for Sellers:
- Analyze The Customer Demands This Christmas Season
- Decorate Your Online Store with Christmas Theme
- Multichannel Listing of products
- Work On Promotions
- Special Discounts
- Christmas Gifts & Decorations (Bundled Products)
- Get Creative with your product descriptions
- Accept Various Paying Methods
- Perform Website speed Test to check the performance
- Plan for the coming year
Let us dive into the details.
Analyze The Customer Demands This Christmas Season
The first and foremost Christmas selling tip for sellers is to understand the current & upcoming demands.
Unlike any other time of the season, Christmas follows a very different trend and shopping pattern raising unique customer demands.
So,
This Christmas Season, as a seller you need to be very sure which type of customer demands you need to meet. Understand what your customers buy.
I hope the infographic below may serve helpful for you to decide:
There are three broad categories in which customer demands can be divided. It’s advisable to target any one of these categories.
These customer demands can be categorized as:
- Fad Demands
- Trending Demands
- Evergreen Demands
I will be explaining the demands in detail.
1. Fad Demands
These product demands are very short time demands that come with a blast and last very soon. These could not be easily forecasted as they start trending at a random rate.
For Example: A Fidget Spinner came into trend in the year 2017 around the Christmas holidays and lost its popularity in a few months.
These demands start trending in a flash. You just need to act quickly or in no time they go out of craze and you will be left with nothing but regret. Fad demands last up to a year maximum.
From a sellers’ perspective, Fads are an easy way to earn a lot of money in a short period of time.
2. Trending Demands
These product demands are similar to infatuation. They arise because of some need and become a short-lived desire that sticks around for a little while.
For Example: The Pokemon Go Game was released in July 2016. There was a huge buzz all around the world and it engulfed almost every mobile phone user. We are at the end of 2022 now and how many people still remember Pokemon Go?
These Trending Demands stick around for a little while, but ultimately they last in 3 to 4 years, tops. As a seller, you have to be aware when the trend is fading and very subtly need to get rid of all the products soon.
3. Evergreen Demands
These demands are a result of a basic need or a tradition that is being carried out for years. These are long-lasting demands and they grow into a stable market that lasts forever.
For Example: Christmas Decorations are an annual demand that arises every year during the month of December. The stats from Google Trends explains the evergreen demand for Christmas decoration around this time of year.
Do you know what the best part of these demands is?
These never actually go out of style because consumer demand continues to build over time. A seller can always count on this as this will never disappoint you.
Now coming to the second tip for selling in Christmas.
Decorate Your Online Store with Christmas Theme
Christmas is all about celebrations and festive spirit. Your website is the first thing that a customer notices while shopping.
You need to be very sure that your eCommerce website is attractive and attention fetching. And the best way to do so is to use a Christmas theme for your site.
You can get many Christmas or Holiday based themes online for your store.
Be very careful while choosing since your website must reflect a sense of festivity that your customers can not say no to.
Remember: Unless you are not a developer yourself, we suggest you consult a Magento developer to implement the theme for your store. The reason being you have to keep backups at multiple stages in order to revert the changes once the season gets over.
Multichannel Listing of products:
Since this Christmas season you are planning to go big then you must consider showcasing your product to the maximum audience. And in the case of eCommerce, you can get maximum customers at the marketplaces.
So our third Christmas selling tip for sellers is to list products on more than one channel.
Remember this simple rule:
More Channels = More Customers = More Sales
To bridge the gap between your products and customers you simply need to list your products on multiple platforms.
Doing so manually may take time and this Christmas Season you don’t have much to spare so try Multi-Channel Integration.
A real-time solution to connect your store/s to numerous global marketplaces seamlessly, saving you from handling multiple platforms.
Work On Promotions
Consider that You are selling a product at the most affordable price but how will your customers know about it?
Promotions!!
Selling the product isn’t quite enough. You need to plan a promotional campaign for Christmas sales and the best tool to do so is social media.
According to a report by Crowdtap, 67 % of consumers have purchased a gift they saw on social media.
Start your social media campaign a few weeks before Christmas on Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can also give out discount vouchers to customers visiting your social media posts. This is one of the effective strategies as by doing so you ensured that the customer will at least once visit your website.
Special Discounts to Customers
Getting new customers is comparatively harder than getting sales from existing customers.
An average shopper spends more than $100 on themselves during Christmas Shopping. And Special discounts are the best way of getting your previous customer’s attention on your products.
You can use email, phone, and social campaigns to get in touch with your existing customers.
Get Creative with your product descriptions:
This is a pro tip and can serve as the greatest booster for the conversion rates during Christmas sales.
Give additional juice to your products with flashy product descriptions.
Done?
You have the theme and you have the festive product description.
Now you just need to lure the customers to your website and they’ll automatically drool onto the product page. Rest is all taken care of.
Now let’s discuss a few Technical tips that sellers need this Christmas season:
Accept Various Paying Methods
Ensure that all the required payment gateways are embedded in your website.
Customers especially during the Christmas sale time can turn out to be very choosy when it comes to payment methods. Quite often a customer chooses to leave the shopping cart empty if their preferred payment method is not available.
Remember the payment methods should be considered based on the region where your target audience exits:
For example, if you are targeting the US region to sell then make sure to include these payment gateways in your store:
- PayPal.
- Stripe.
- Square.
- SecurePay.
- Worldpay.
- Authorize.net.
- 2Checkout.com.
- Braintree.
One more thing to remember – You must be comfortable with cash on delivery also because a mass number of customers wish to see the goods before payment.
Moving on to our next Christmas selling tip for sellers
Perform Website Speed Test to check the performance
Now, this tip is quite basic but needs to be listed.
A fast-loading website aka responsiveness of your site is a must if you are planning not to lose a single customer this Christmas season.
So perform a full website performance check and analyse metrics such as page loading speed, DNS lookup speed, server load, plugins compatibility, etc
Get a free Magento 2 website performance check here.
Now comes the second last Christmas selling tip for sellers
Plan for the coming year
Since Christmas is the last holiday of the season, now you have to focus on the things to come ahead. You need to plan the whole next year and how are you going to enhance your sales in 2022.
You need to make sure that your store is ready in all aspects before heading to the new year.
Our last tip is generally part of the customer demand section. But since it’s so important I mentioned it as a separate tip.
Christmas Gifts & Decorations (Bundled Products):
Christmas won’t feel merry unless there are decorations. Every household big or small, rich or poor, rural or urban uses Christmas decorations to light up the festive mood.
62% of US shoppers buy gifts in the week before Christmas. (Fortunly, 2021)
According to a survey by wearetop10, Consumers spend an average of $200 each on decorations each Christmas season.
So, my advice is to add a gift section to your website. This section must include decorations products such as stockings, Santa figures, decorative lightings, caps, ornaments, etc.
The festive spirit will automatically drive customers towards these products giving an additional boost to your sales.
Although I’d suggest not to stock up on these items, only limited products will do the trick. Trust me you are not gonna regret it.
Christmas is the last sale of the festive season so make the most of it. Your next chance to make first impression on new customers will come after 9 months. So, use this time in building strategies that your customer will return to you.
How to Make a Long-Lasting Impression on your Customers [New Sellers Special]
This special section is for sellers who are planning for their first or second Christmas sales this year. Many sellers fail to earn much profit during these big festive sales as they focus more on sales than building their brand & engaging audience. So, here we have listed down some tips that will help you attract the right customers & make the most of this Christmas sales.
Customize Packaging
Who says packing can’t be attractive? Packaging of the product can say a lot about you and your brand, its about how much you care about your customers and how much effort & thought you put it. An attractive packaging can make your product irresistible as compared to others. Moreover, it is the best way to get attention from your target customers who may miss your product because of its normal or boring packaging.
You can offer customized packaging based on the Christmas theme to make it look festive ready and more relevant.
Leave a Hand-Written Thank You Note
There is something about hand-written notes, isn’t it? It shows the human side of the retailer which may be missing while buying something online as you are not in contact with anyone during the whole process of exploring product to buying it finally. So, once you are successful in attracting your customers to engage with your product and make purchase, you can add a personalized hand-written Thank You note with the product.
It will make a long-lasting impression on customers and they will be more likely to consider your brand next time.
Surprise by Adding Little Gifts
Who doesn’t like surprises and free gifts, even if they are small ones? You can leave a happy purchase memory on your customer’s mind by adding little & relevant gifts with the products; such as chocolates, bookmarks, Santa figurines, etc. You can also add some items that your customer can add to their Christmas decoration considering it unique and show it off in front of their friends and relatives.
It is also the best way of getting your brand promoted through your customer for free as word of mouth is more effective than any other way of promotion.
Discount for Next Purchase or Reference
Want customers to come back for their next purchase? Then, send them a discount card with a coupon code that they can use in their next purchase to get additional OFF on the desired product. Alternatively, you can offer them cashback for referring your brand to others.
You may feel like you are at a loss here, but consider it like an investment. Being a new seller, initially, you should work more on leaving an impression on your customer’s mind and surprise them with gifts and additional discounts. SO, they will remember you when they are making the purchase of similar products.
Wrapping It Up
The Biggest festival of the year is on our doorsteps and as a seller, it becomes your responsibility to realize the significance of this eCommerce opportunity and make the most of it. So, utilize the information mentioned in the blog to understand the shift in consumer behavior & plan for Christmas sales accordingly. Since the next festive season sales will start only after the next nine months, it is the best period to attract customers, make your best first impressions, and work on building your brand.
Did I miss anything? You are welcome to drop your suggestions in the comment box below.