COVID –19 has upended the consumer retailer relation worldwide, this covers both consumers’ expectations and shopping trends. The November-December holiday sales season, is the best of times for retailers, for sure but this year may be the purchase mode will change – offline to online.
Consumers will continue to increasingly buy online or mix internet and in-store purchases when the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror. Maybe the family friends get together on thanksgiving and Christmas won’t be a reality this year but nothing can stop you to share gifts with your dear ones and the best mode in this pandemic situation is online. Among these all uncertainties one thing is obvious everyone is going to celebrate this holiday may be virtually but surely, we will. So, let’s be prepared to bring back the boom in the retail industry
Early Indicators of Holiday Sales
An analysis from Nosto “eCommerce web traffic stabilized to +3%. After a 66% spike in global daily ecommerce sales in at the height of lockdown, this has levelled off to an average 7% above levels recorded last year, as of early August.”
Prior to the pandemic, Retailers were already under pressure, they are struggling to adapt the new normalcy – Growing online buyers – and surrounded by a plenitude of competitors. With more people shopping online, the Covid-19 outbreak has accelerated the trends of e-platform.
The biggest shopping drivers for consumers and win-win seasons for retailers are the festive seasons. Holiday peak season will likely follow suit if back-to-school shopping spends is less this year than last. Maximum consumers are busy in spending on products like disposable gloves, hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes, as the current season is – back –to- school. If not already finished, consumers with kids are in the midst of school shopping.
This year there is a chance of going unpredicted. Going forward, it is quite obvious that this online shift will continue.
“One structural change I see over the next few years is fewer occasions for new clothes.”
– Aneesha Sherman.
So, far it has been a challenging year, and as per the Accenture’s 14th Annual Holiday Shopping Survey, even the share of eCommerce rises, but this year overall holiday spending is expected to be lower. This makes the challenge for the retailers tougher; they have to be cautious and exceptionally thoughtful to win over customers.
Start Point – Holiday Checklist for eCommerce
To make a heavy portion of their annual revenue, retailers rely on this holiday season. This year brings many changes in consumer buying habit but retailers can do business just by creating a seamless experience for customers. After such calamity in the retail industry, a business can still expect a boom in the coming holiday season, but to ensure we are not missing anything let’s start with preparing a checklist.
Before preparing the holiday eCommerce checklist, make sure that your site is ready to deliver a personalized online shopping experience to all the customers and you have updated third-party integration and solid infrastructure.
Provide the Best User Experience
Let’s take a look at some of the crucial points you should take care:
- Building a personalized shopping experience
- To complement the sale for visiting customer, you should cross-sell and upsell products
- Ensure that you can handle the surge in traffic and transaction
- Use user content to speak to the consumer
- Longer loading time can increase bounce rate – make sure your page load time is less than 3 secs
- Test and check your third-party integration
- Enable push notification for abandoning cart full of items
- Deliver content and product recommendations that are relevant to the individual customer.
- Showcase holiday gifting products, discounts offer.
- Follow customers’ buying pattern to surface relevant products to inspire customers to buy
- Create a seamless checkout experience by enabling multiple payment gateways, guest checkouts etc.
Automated Selling & Shipping With Proper Declaration Of Return & Refund Policies
A clear plan of selling and shipping the products is vital to execute a great customer experience strategy. Consider every sales channel to spread holiday cheers. To eliminate the pains of shipping and processing, this holiday season, retailers can enable BOPIS while delivering a convenient and safe shopping experience.
- Going Global: it can be a good step but you need to get a better understanding about the requirements of the countries you are looking for and the rules & regulations for selling there.
- Research and get a clear idea about the buyers’ persona of those destinations
- Enable payment gateways which can be preferable for all the customers across the globe
- Install a multi-language toggle and clearly display the relevant shipping and delivery info as per the destinations/pin codes.
- Determine how you will handle shipping for the surged traffic. There are majorly three options: In-house shipping arrangements, third party logistic provider or outsource sipping service. Whichever option you choose, just make sure that you should have a clear vision about rates, delivery time and the quality of delivery. A better shipping experience can improve conversion and brand loyalty.
- Mesmerizing unboxing experience can steal the show. Try to connect story which reminds buyers why they are buying the product only from your store.
- Detailed return policy: Clear return policies can avoid future miscommunications and also mention the instructions about the shipping packages for returns. Strict policies can take away your customer. Make it flexible and easy for the customers.
Train Your Customer Support Team For Holiday Traffic
Make sure your support team can handle the surge 24/7. To handle any questions and concerns, be prepared and make information readily available.
- Need adequate support for holiday traffic. You should have a dedicated team to take care of your customer.
- A positive customer support experience can lead to a loyal customer, even when something goes really wrong. Be sure to respond spontaneously and quick. For all this, you need a robust service plan.
- To enhance customers’ trust, add updated contact information to your website and all order confirmations. FAQ page that offers quick and easy answers may also lighten the load on your customer service team
- On every conversion ask for customer’s feedback. From this, you can learn a lot about how and where to improve and also you are obtaining customer testimonials. This simple human interaction brings a lot of value to your business. To share a review in text or video, you can incentivize your customers with a special one-time discount.
Strategic Marketing & Promotions
To sell their products most efficiently, the stores have to meet lots of unexpected changes this year. Before big holiday spending periods start it’s important to make sure your store is fully optimized. Here are some points to follow to make sure you are completely ready for the frenzy of holiday selling:
- To increase overall sales, it’s essential to use the holiday season. Adopt strategies to connect celebration with your products. Plan to bring in customers with promotions. If you offer some sort of free shipping deal during the holidays, you can expect to drive more conversions.
- Launch some holiday contest and arrange gifts for the winners, It’s a great idea to connect with customers. To turn one-time holiday shoppers into lifelong customers, good rewards program, membership-only benefits, are the good ways.
- Relevant and up-to-date content increases the chance of a conversion. So keep a constant flow of content to boost your holiday sales. Send newsletters to the subscribed clients to spread the awareness about new launches and discounts. Keep your landing page appealing and navigable to decrease the bounce rates.
Keep A Keen Eye On The Metrics Of The Holiday Campaign
Having a clear idea about the metrics of Your Holiday Campaign is vital at this moment. The performance of your promotions and campaigns a predict your percentage of profit.
Major KPIs to measure marketing success
Metrics to measure success of your website
- Social followers
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Blog traffic
- Number and quality of product reviews
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Average position (search)
- Banner or display advertising CTRs
- Subscriber growth rate
- Email open rate
- Affiliate performance
- Number sales
- Traffic (new vs returning)
- Conversion rate
- Average order value (AOV)
- Mobile site traffic
- Site speed
- Product affinity
- Bounce rate
- Shopping cart abandonment rate
- Traffic source
Gather all the necessary data and optimize your plan accordingly. Increase the effort in the promotion where engagement is more and adjust with the promotions which are not that much effective. Suppose make a new plan for increasing traffic from other channels, if a majority of your site traffic is coming from a single source.
Get More Information on eCommerce Optimizations From Our Whitepaper
Conclusion
COVID -19 has a very worse impact on the retail industry and retailers are eagerly looking forward to this holiday season to bring the graph of profit in a considerable range and start the new year 2021 with a positive note. On the other hand, consumers are also longing for this as they want to send some token to loved ones, they haven’t seen all year. This year, more people will be ordering online and preparing your business for this paradigm shift is no small task. Both the customers and business owners need to make the whole process – from choosing items, shipped to deliver – to be smooth.
A safe holiday season for shoppers will be ensured by the extra attention of the retailers. So, retailers – be ready to pivot fast and to stay ahead be up to date about the new norms and regulations of COVID -19.
About ETG Digital
ETG is a Crest Level Salesforce Partner headquartered in Plano, Texas. We are ISO 9001:2015 certified company with a global delivery center in Hyderabad, India. We have dedicated teams of professionals spanning continents located in US, Canada, UAE, UK, Australia and India. Our ability to maintain talent hubs in multiple locations and working on projects for clients from various domains gives us a very unique advantage. An advantage to leverage proven technologies like Salesforce Commerce, Sales, Service, Partner and Marketing Clouds and using them to deliver tailor made solutions for clients to suit their business requirements.
If you are looking to take your business into the next league, you are at the right place. Connect with us at info@etg.digital or call us at +1 469 666 1119
