The holiday season is officially here! It is not only the time when you target for enhanced conversion rate and sales, but it is also the time that you build your reputation and increase in eCommerce sales opportunities, this is the perfect time to invest in conversion rate optimization. According to Statista, in 2017, holiday season retail eCommerce revenues amounted to 106.14 billion U.S. Dollars.

In fact, Statista also mentions that in 2018, holiday shopping eCommerce is projected to increase by 16.2% compared to the previous year.

Picture credit: Statista

Every year, the customers try their best to spend more time and money in picking the products for the holiday season. According to a survey conducted by National Retail Federation (NRF), consumers say they will spend an average $967.13 this year.

Picture credit: NRF

1. Offer faster shipping as well as free shipping

Shipping has always been an essential aspect when it comes to enhanced sales and conversion rates. In fact, it is also one of the major reasons why customers abandon the cart. Ship Station laid down some quite interesting facts about holiday shopping stats for the year 2017 and out of them would be:

80% of consumers say that FREE SHIPPING is what encourages them to shop more whereas; 54% say that it is FASTER SHIPPING.

Amazon laid down a series of data that more and more customers are opting for Amazon Prime Delivery in order to get what they ordered within a matter of few hours.

Picture Credit: Amazon.com

So, you can work on providing faster deliveries in addition to free deliveries if you want to encourage more customers to shop.

2.Invest in email marketing to drive traffic and sales

Email marketing is quite a powerful tool for the growth of your eCommerce business. Email is still one of the best medium for directly reaching out to your customers and pushing them towards sales. Now, there are other mediums like Push Notifications and more to reach out to them. By Search Engine Watch, email converts at a 4X higher rate than any other source and continues to be the channel of choice for e-commerce.

Picture Credit: Search Engine Watch

When you are planning the email marketing campaign for the holiday season, make sure that the email format contains the content which is helpful, interactive, promotes and offers the product suggestions. This way the customers would be able to go straight to the products and offers that you mentioned in the email.

3. Offer Live Chat and 24*7 Support

Live Chat is one of the major services that you should not be missing out on if you have an eCommerce business. Your existing customers are well versed with your online store and know how to go about searching the products in a flawless way. However, the new visitors might not be so well versed. That’s where you place that Live Chat option on your website and let them come to you in case of any help. They can ask you all the questions that they have in mind and you have a potential customer right there.

Picture credit: Helloify

The holiday season is a crucial time for most of the eCommerce businesses and if you offer 24*7 support, you would be on the winning side with increased conversions and sales. Live chats reduce the time in getting the resolution or answers and will increase the chances to make the purchase.

4.Create urgency on your store

Creating an urgency is a useful tactic, as it forces customers to come to a faster decision about a purchase. If they were planning to go away and think about, a message about low stock levels might change their minds. Being the holiday season, you would want your customers to act fast and increase your sales, you would want to give a heads up to them about the limited time offer they have to buy the respective products.

Picture credit: Econsultancy

The customers stay on a lookout for craziest deals and when they get one, they take advantage of the same. And, that’s exactly where you have to play catch and give them that opportunity. Create the urgency in your holiday sales and you’d be taking your sales to a new level.

5. Focus on last-minute or post-holiday shoppers

There are procrastinators out there and it’s important to cater the shopping experience to them, especially when it’s getting close to Christmas. You should have a plan ready for them considering those late comers this year as well.

How to deal with the last minute shoppers?

• Free shipping and likely increase the average order value
• Gift E-cards
• Large discounts and promotions to create urgency.

There will be some shoppers who will shop after the holiday sales such as customers coming for redemptions, using the gift vouchers received or for the exchange of gifts. You can grab this opportunity to engage with those shoppers and give them advanced shopping experience.

Use the above-described tips to offer a better shopping experience and to expand your holiday sales ROI.