The festive season has always been the most successful season for eCommerce retailers. Not only does a shopper tend to attain pleasure in shopping from online stores; but also it is a crucial period for the merchants and can account upto 40% of their annual sales.
So, explore further to understand how you can analyze your store’s performance, the impact of COVID-19 on the festive season 2020, how you can build your eCommerce store, and the tips to attain maximum profit during the festive season.
- How to set up your eCommerce store during the festive season
- How can you analyze your eCommerce business and its current status
- Analysis of festive season 2019 and what it holds for 2020
- Tips to attain profit during the festive season
- Final thought
How to set up your eCommerce store during the festive season 2020
The year-end festival season sale is considered one of the year’s busiest seasons for merchants, retailers, and shoppers. As a business owner, setting up your eCommerce store for the festive season is crucial for your journey. So, let’s explore the ideas of how you can establish your eCommerce store for festive season sales.
Plan for the holiday in advance
Make a promotional calendar and mark down the festivals you want to participate in. Analyze your last year’s statistics and improve your store performance. You can plan out the celebrations according to the sales you generated last year, its date and time, the medium through which you will promote your business like emails, blogging, holiday season update on your store, date of advertising, etc.
Design your eCommerce store
After planning for your holiday season sales, design the structure of your store. Ensure that your website and shopping cart are running smoothly. Also, keep a check on your inventory and make sure you have additional stock of the best selling products in your cart. Besides, adding a countdown to the header would be a great way to attract the customers to your website as it helps in creating a sense of urgency.
Target your niche
While planning about the festive season sales, try to focus on your niche market. By doing this, you can attract more specific customers and get better conversions. For this, you can use tools like Google trends and Adword to find the trending fashions, monitor your competitors, and create a buyer’s persona and develop your store accordingly.
Adding various offers and return policy
Everyone loves to do the shopping, and it becomes interesting when you get to shop your favorite product with additional offers and benefits. Offering rewards to your customers has a high potential to bring back old and passive customers and attract new ones.
Furthermore, to ease your shoppers’ shopping experience, provide additional payment options like a credit card, MasterCard, etc. to your customers. These additional payment options are easy to switch on and can increase your conversion rate and decrease your cart abandonment issue.
Improve your customer experience
During the festive season sales, customers reach out to your store more often; providing you with an opportunity to drive more sales and increase your brand reach. At this time, you can build a strong network of communication, facilitating your consumers to interact with you quickly. For this, provide your contact details at the top of your landing page or support live chat sessions to have smooth communication with your consumers.
Connecting with eCommerce service providers
Several eCommerce services providers that can help you ease your selling process across various platforms. In case you are planning to sell across various platforms, you can opt for multichannel integration services and provide an effortless selling experience to your clients.
The integration services help you with-
- Easy store set-up- The integration lets you set up your store in a few steps and manage your store through a central dashboard.
- Product upload- You can upload your products in bulk with a single click.
- Order Management- Manage your orders synchronization across various platforms from a centralized location and keep track of your products.
How can you analyze your eCommerce business and its current status
Understanding the state of your store is a crucial factor for a successful retailer. Most of the booming eCommerce businesses make decisions based on metrics. Metrics are the factors by which you can measure how well your business is performing.
There are different metrics you can use to track, analyze, and improve your store performance.
The most popular metrics include sales conversion rate, customer lifetime value, revenue by traffic, average order value, shopping cart abandon rate, etc. Let’s discuss some of the key factors to analyze the status of your eCommerce business.
Website traffic
Website traffic is the traffic you attract on your website through promotions, email posting, blogging, ads, etc. The more traffic you attain to your website, the better chances you have at converting your visitors to potential customers. Besides, your website’s traffic enhances your brands and businesses and widens the horizon for more visitors to your eCommerce store.
Sales conversion rate
The Sales Conversion Rate metric measures the rate at which your visitors turn into potential customers. By estimating the conversion rate, you can strategize your promotional plan across different platforms like Facebook, Bing, Instagram, and expand your business to a broader horizon base.
Shopping cart abandoned rate
The rate at which a customer abandons their cart amidst purchase affects the performance of your eCommerce store. On average, eCommerce business tends to lose $18 Billion in sales revenue due to cart abandonment. So, as a seller, you need to lower your abandonment rate as much as possible.
To reduce your cart abandonment rates, you can simplify your checkout process to ease the shoppers’ shopping experience, provide low shipping costs, multiple payment options, better assistance while shopping, etc.
Analysis of festive season 2019 and what it holds for 2020
The first rule of a business world is to adapt to the changes and use the opportunity provided to the best of your ability. In 2019, the holiday season changed the course of the eCommerce world, bringing into the possibilities for various retailers to sell, explore and attain maximum profit out of their business by participating in the season sales.
Some of the significant changes in 2019 are the increase in the sales of online purchases. Merchants are diverting their attention to online products; there is dynamic growth in the realm of multichannel retail, sustainability became a top priority, and consumers preferred online shopping than their usual retail stores.
As for 2020, the sudden rise of COVID-19 has changed the course of nature; not only is it affecting the personal lives of people but also having an impact on the businesses. This has somehow increased the scope of online businesses, as people are now diverting their attention to the eCommerce sectors, marketplace, etc. to purchase their products.
Here are the significant changes at the end of 2019 and what you can expect for the festive season 2020 sales.
The increase of mCommerce
From the past few years, people are indulging in mobile shopping as a source of exploring, buying, and selling items, making it convenient for shoppers to purchase. It is estimated that 67% of the traffic was generated on the eCommerce websites and accounted for 52% of the sales through mobile phones, paving a path for the mCommerce industry.
The increase of cross channel selling
The festive season is a period for retailers to attain maximum sales and profit by offering discounts, offers, coupons to their clients. It is noticed that during the festive season, shoppers prefer purchasing related items of the searched products—increasing chances of cross-channel sales.
Tips to attain maximum profit during the festive season 2020
Between Qi-Xi festival, back-to-school schedules, and Christmas sales, the festive season is approaching. Now, its time to ensure that your eCommerce store is all ready for the festive season sales. Here are the few tips to increase your eCommerce sales this festive season to help you with effortless selling.
Use omnichannel strategy
When a customer interacts with your brand through your eCommerce store, social media platforms, email, or with your shop on marketplaces, they expect a seamless shopping experience. Thus, you should ensure an omnichannel strategy for your brand. Omnichannel marketing leverages multiple platforms to cater to customer needs and move them through the sales funnel.
Focus on your marketing strategy
One of the essential factors of preparing for your holiday promotions is to develop your marketing strategy. Promoting your business on a broader platform helps captivate the people’s attention to your website, increasing sales and purchases. Some of the few marketing strategies you can opt for are email marketing, Google ads, Facebook Ads, Social media, retargeting your audience, etc.
Display your top-selling products
Your top selling products are the products that are liked by the maximum number of customers. These are the products that your customers buy throughout the year. Therefore, you should display your best selling products in the store; as there are high chances of the purchase. You can showcase the products to your audience in your website’s footer, landing pages, etc., as they are easily accessible for every visitor.
Final thought
The festive season is a time for people to buy, sell, and gain maximum pleasure from shopping. This is the time; people shop in abundance without giving much of a thought. You, as a seller, need to grab onto this opportunity to attain maximum profit and boost your sales.
We hope the methods and tips & tricks we have provided indeed help you set up your eCommerce store and sell effortlessly across the platform. In case you have any queries, you can drop down your comments below.