10 Tips to Boost ECommerce Sales this Christmas

Here at The Web Bureau we are fast approaching our 10^th birthday! To celebrate a #DecadeofDigital, we’ve put together our 10 top tips to help you win at ecommerce this Christmas!

1. Think back to last Christmas
Nothing to do with Wham wailing about festive love lost, but everything to do with looking at Google Analytics and other data sources to see what worked and what didn’t work last Christmas.

Try picking out trends for things like popular shopping days, advertising spend, best-selling products and top landing pages and use this to help shape this year’s plan – make tweaks to your website, plan budgets and allocate resources accordingly!

2. Sprinkle your site with festive cheer
Online Christmas shopping often lacks the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from the decorations, the music and the atmosphere of a real shop over the festive period. Help create this amazing experience online by using festive banners, graphics and photography on your website. Be sure to avoid and Christmas mood-killers!

3. Customer confidence is key
Nobody wants to contemplate a no-show from Santa, so do everything you can to build trust with potential online shoppers. Providing a prominent telephone number, email address and street address can give that feeling of trust, encouraging shoppers to buy from you and not your competitors!

Try offering multiple payment options - especially those that people know and trust, such as PayPal. Be sure to include visual cues in the footer of your site to instantly demonstrate that your site is credible and secure.

4. Think mobile, mobile, mobile
Mobile is forecast to account for 50% of all online Christmas shopping this year, so make sure you optimise for mobile in every way possible. This includes having a mobile-ready or responsive website, performing usability tests and integrating mobile-friendly payment gateways. Your aim is to make the user journey as seamless as possible on mobile!

5. Channel the power of email
The secret to having a profitable Christmas depends on being in the right place at the right time. Email marketing is the perfect channel to help you achieve this and it’s cost effective too. Make sure you’re sending plenty of emails throughout the festive season – consider festive promotions, targeted remarketing and automated cart abandonment to entice users back to your site to make a purchase!

6. Re engage those who abandon you – show them some love!
Once your product has caught someone’s attention, don’t let them forget about it. Remarketing is a great way to keep any product at the forefront of someone’s thoughts and tempt them to make that purchase!

7. Plan for busy days (and create your own!)
Use your research on last Christmas to identify busy days, which might account for a big chunk of your Christmas sales for example, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Plan ahead for these key days with additional PPC spend and shape other marketing activities around them.

Why not make your own busy day with a limited time offer? Create a sense of urgency by offering a deal or special offer with a clear end date to boost sales.

8. Don’t forget about the last minute, panic buyers…!
Never underestimate just how late some people will leave their Christmas shopping! Make sure you have appropriate stock, pay-per-click budget, shipping options and staffing levels to cater for people who don’t give their Christmas shopping a second thought before December 17.

9. Upsell & cross sell at every opportunity
There’s always one more Christmas present to buy, so make sure it’s bought from your website by using tried and tested upsell and cross sell techniques. Something like a ‘recommended items’ or a ‘people also bought’ section on the website or an automated post purchase email with some “hand-picked” items just for you…

You could also try creating different product groups or categories which may be more appealing to your target audience, for example, ‘Gifts for Motorcyclists’ or ‘Present Ideas for 8-year-olds’. These pages also great for SEO.

10. Offer a freebie
It’s no secret that offering free delivery massively increases the chances of making an ecommerce sale. Displaying deadlines for guaranteed Christmas delivery and offering a clear (and possibly extended) returns policy can also help seal the deal. 

So, there you have it – all the tips you need to help you boost your online sales this Christmas.

However, if you need more advice or training we are running an “Ecommerce Analytics for Beginners” course on 17^th November. If you have any questions or wish to attend, please contact dean@thewebbureau.com or call us on 028 90 7311910 for a chat.

Remember; keep following our #DecadeofDigital hashtag to make sure you don’t miss anything!