10 Tips to Optimize Holiday Sales
According to Shop.org, online sales are expected to increase more than 8 percent to reach nearly $105 billion this holiday shopping season. Is your website ready for the online rush? Below are 10 tips to help you get through the happiest, busiest time of the year:
1. Make sure you're optimized for mobile. While the growth of mobile commerce is skyrocketing, many shoppers won't complete their purchase if they're experiencing problems browsing or at checkout, which could mean the potential loss of millions of dollars in sales for retailers. If that does happen, maintain dialog with your customers through retargeting and emails for abandoned carts.
2. Learn from last year. Analyze metrics and results from your 2013 holiday season. Glean insights and apply them to your strategy for this year. Identify what were your winners (and losers) last year. Where were the peaks and valleys? What drove the most traffic and what had the highest conversions, as well as the lowest? Learn from the past and apply those lessons to 2014.
3. Ensure website scalability through stress testing. In the rush to get ready for the holiday buying season, it's extremely important to test and retest everything. Conduct stress tests to make sure your website, apps and e-commerce assets can handle any surprises that may come up. Expect, and plan for, the unexpected.
4. Automate as much as possible. In order to adapt to the influx of holiday traffic and ensure a pleasant shopping experience, it's important to automate as much as possible, especially credit card processing, authorization, fulfillment and shipping, etc. Just as important? Knowing which critical processes not to automate, such as A/B testing, synchronous testing, etc.
5. Manage inventory fanatically. Keep shipping times short and change advertising and promotions based on inventory. Furthermore, ensure you have the tools in place to be agile and flexible with the campaigns you're running.
6. Collect the right data. Not all data is created equal, and it can be easy to be overwhelmed with all of the information collected during holiday peaks. Use key data to become better, faster and stronger in the new year. Review the types of offers and promotions that performed well and use that information to target specific audiences in your post-holiday campaigns.
7. Create holiday-themed landing pages for highly targeted experiences. From small boutiques to large department stores and big-box retailers, brick-and-mortar stores are decorated to create a festive atmosphere for the holidays. Carry the feeling through and emulate that experience on your website.
8. Get social and be social. Create a connection with your customers through social media. Make it easy for customers to share their holiday memories with you through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Creating a custom hashtag can help you organize your customer engagement efforts.
9. Personalize as much as possible, and create memorable experiences that transcend the holidays. Be customer centric. Keep in mind that the holidays are a stressful time for many people. Create meaningful interactions with your customers that will keep them coming back throughout the year.
10. Prepare for a post-holiday rush. The holiday buying season extends well into January with gift returns, exchanges and gift card redemption. Put plans into place to ensure easy customer transactions and high customer satisfaction well into the new year.
Jay Calavas is the chief evangelist at Tealium, a provider of real-time unified marketing solutions.