Excellent Tips for Online Retailers on How to Make Their Site Ready for The Festive Rush
The festive season is here! This is an excellent opportunity for retailers to sell a large number of products thereby making huge profits. With festivals like Thanks giving and Christmas approaching, there is a huge surge in the market for gifts. Most people who have a busy schedule often end up shopping at the last moment. Since this year, shopping trends have shifted online due to the current situation, online retailers need to pull their pants up if they wish to make the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Usually, the sales made on such occasions contribute significantly to the annual earning of not just retailers and online stores, but also manufacturers. Apart from opting for POS eCommerce integration here are some tips that can help you be prepared to tackle the holiday shopping rush….
- Keep enough stocks to last the festive season
Festive seasons see hordes of shoppers thronging the marketplace to buy items. As an online retailer, you must be aware of what your most popular selling items are. Your previous sales records for that period can come in handy to determine which stocks were the most in-demand. It is therefore important that you keep your stocks updated so that the items do not run out of stock. The worst thing that could happen during the peak season sale is you running short of popular items.
When you opt for POS Integration with your eCommerce platform, you will be regularly updated on the vanishing stock. This way you can avoid overselling any item that can result in delayed delivery resulting in a dissatisfied customer. Moreover, running out of stock will result in the client leaving your site for good, thereby earning your competitor another lead. Thus, if you wish to make the most of the festive season sales, ensure your inventory is ready for it. As a precaution, you can keep enough stock to last the sale period up to mid-January so that you can cover lack Friday, Cyber Monday, pre- and post-Christmas as well as New Year and end of season sale.
- Decide your promotion and sales strategy in advance
Advertising is an integral part of the sales strategy. You need to decide your marketing strategy in advance else,despite storing large quantities of your most popular products you will not be able to make any progress. If you want to cater to the holiday festive frenzy, you need to plan carefully. Some of the best ways to attract customers to your eCommerce platform include:
- Free shipping – A sure shot way to attract more clients to your website to make the most of festive shopping is to provide them with a free shipping incentive.
- Festive gift wrapping – There is no better way to promote your website than to provide your clients with gifts wrapped in your company’s distinctive festive wrappers. This way your customers do not need to make extra efforts to wrap the presents during the holidays. The time spent on getting the gifts wrapped can be spent with their loved ones. You can also include festive decorations to provide your clients with an entire festive shopping experience.
- Excellent return options – Apart from providing clients with free shipping, you can boost sales with an easy return policy. This works wonders during the holiday season as many people would like to return the gifts for either a voucher or replacement. This way you are guaranteed to attract more clients to your platform.
- Providing gift cards – One of the best gifts you could give someone is a gift card. Though people think that it is impersonal, gift cards are quite good as people can use them to buy anything that their heart desires. Moreover, this reduces the risk of catering to returns and exchanges.
To make the most of the festive season, you need to ensure that all these gifts, branding, decorations, etc. are prepared well in advance.
- Advertise your special offers on different platforms
If you are providing your clients with some exclusive offers like gift wrapping, special discounts, coupons, etc. then you need to advertise it to them through either email marketing, social media posts, and similar notifications. However, instead of waiting to do it at the last moment, you need to time them perfectly to make the best impact. Planning your holiday marketing strategy will reap huge benefits. You should start sending teasers for the big announcement. This can be done by guest posts, logs, video advertisements, or social media posts.
- Check the performance of your site in advance
Irrespective of how attractive your site is, and how excellent your products are unless your site can handle the humongous volume that is part of festive sales, you will not be able to make much progress. Thus, it is important to check your site’s performance beforehand. Ensure that you have updated the website to handle a large volume of traffic, removed any bugs present in the system, and check the security of the website too! It is advised to get all this done before the festive holiday season starts. This will ensure that there are no surprise hitches that can ruin your festive selling spree.
Once you have opted for updates, it should care should be taken to test them on different devices. This will give you a better idea of how your website performs on different platforms. Any issues you face can be tackled with an ample amount of time in hand. Since most eCommerce platforms are offering digital wallets, it would be wise to get one for you too, well ahead on time. However, before going ahead with any such investment, it is important to find the pros and cons of it as well as whether it is an economically wise decision or not.
If you have tested the strength of your site as well as loading speed on both website and mobile and are satisfied with the results, you can make it more relevant by removing any useless information available on the website. This will not only streamline the content available on the website but also make it more relevant.
Now that you know what steps you can take to improve your site’s performance; you are all set to take on the holiday rush. This checklist can come in handy for you to make huge bucks on not just the Thanksgiving weekend, but also during the Christmas and New Year holidays. However, do not forget to get POS eCommerce integration so that you do not lose clients due to the overselling of products.
