From a consumer perspective, the Christmas season is a season of holiday eCommerce shopping, sales, and discounts. Hence, online entrepreneurs prepare their eCommerce businesses for the upcoming Christmas season and other year-end celebrations.
Taking advantage of online sales and other year-end sale events can help maximize the profitability of your eCommerce business.
If you are an Amazon seller, prepare your Amazon store for the Amazon Christmas Sale 2023 and the Amazon Year-End Sale, which usually starts in the third week of December.
Why Should You Prepare Your eCommerce Business for Christmas Holiday Shopping?
To provide insight into how Christmas sales can influence the retail eCommerce enterprise and the Christmas shopping trends for 2023, here is some vital information:
• Around 85% of American consumers intend to participate in the gift-giving season by purchasing gifts for their friends and loved ones. On the other hand, approximately 47% of UK shoppers plan to spend less this Christmas.
• 74% of holiday shoppers intend to use credit cards to buy holiday gifts this year. It is estimated that online shoppers plan to charge $680, on average, for holiday gifts, including Christmas gifts.
• Almost 27% of holiday shoppers plan to support their community by shopping more for holiday gifts at local business centers.
• Less than 5% of consumers intend to spend more this holiday shopping season because consumers continue to feel the impact of price increases on consumer items.
• 6 out of 10 consumers are facing more significant challenges when managing their finances for holiday gifts compared to the prior year. Meanwhile, 43% of consumers desire brands to provide them with product information tailored to their shopping history and preferences.
Since an influx of online shoppers is expected in the coming Christmas holidays of 2023, it would be beneficial for sellers to prepare their online stores to meet consumer demands. This preparation will help your eCommerce business be more efficient when faced with high-volume orders.
When your overall business operation is well-prepared and running smoothly, you can provide your Christmas sale shoppers with high-quality customer service which translates to customer loyalty or repeat purchases.
How Can You Prepare Your eCommerce Store for a Successful Christmas Sale?
This festive season is something eCommerce business owners need to plan for to have better results in terms of engagement and sales conversion.
If you have not started your eCommerce store preparations for the upcoming Christmas sale or other year-end activities, here are some essential preparation tips that you should follow.
Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research is crucial whether you are selling on Amazon or other online platforms. Keyword research can help you identify powerful keywords that can improve search engine result page rankings.
There are many ways to find keywords to use for your online business, whether for Amazon or your own online store. The most convenient method to find relevant keywords for your listing optimization is with the help of keyword research tools, such as Semrush and Ahrefs.
If you want to evaluate the effectiveness of these tools without having to pay the premium price, you can try their free versions. In particular, Ahrefs offers a Free Keyword Generator that showcases keywords with limited information.
Image Source: Ahrefs – SEO Tools & Resources
When using keyword research tools like the one highlighted above, you can quickly evaluate the possible keyword’s performance with the help of its Keyword Difficulty (KD) information and the search volume. As much as possible, avoid keywords that are highly competitive if you wish to improve your ranking on search result pages.
In addition to premium software tools, you can also use Google Keyword Planner and Google’s Related Searches, found at the lower portion of the search result page. You can use these Google tools to find keyword phrases that can help enhance your listing or product pages. Incorporating these keywords into your product description or relevant tags can bolster your Christmas sale campaign.
Image Source: Google SERP
Keyword research is a vital component of your eCommerce business SEO strategy. By understanding which keywords rank, your product listings or online stores can achieve better online visibility, increased visits, and conversion rates this Christmas season.
Optimize Your Store for Conversions
After you have dealt with keyword research and related SEO strategies, you should proceed with store optimization for better eCommerce sales conversion. Apart from listing in-demand Christmas sale gifts and other trending Christmas sale items, you should also look into price optimization as part of your holiday campaigns.
Using third-party repricing software can efficiently improve your pricing strategy. For example, Amazon sellers rely on Amazon repricers to automate price adjustments. Thus, giving them a competitive advantage over competitors, especially during Amazon Christmas sales.
You should also optimize site speed if you have your own website for your eCommerce business. Your eCommerce site should load within two to three seconds. Most online shoppers will not wait more than three seconds before abandoning a website.
Another avenue for optimization is your checkout process. Try to simplify the checkout process of your eCommerce site for better customer experience. See to it that your checkout sequence is simple and multiple payment options are available for shoppers, for a complicated checkout process contributes to cart abandonment.
Ensure A Mobile Friendly Online Store
To maximize the profit potential of your Christmas sale, you must keep your eCommerce business mobile friendly. Unlike the previous years, consumers do not only rely on desktop computers for product searches.
Accordingly, nearly 51% of digital buyers shop through their mobile devices at least once a week. Mobile devices now drive half of the global web traffic. In Q1 of 2023 alone, mobile devices generated more than 58% of global website traffic.
If you wish to boost sales conversion, you should likewise optimize your online business for mobile-based shopping. Ensure that your eCommerce website theme, including the mobile device interface, is responsive for a better customer experience.
Keep text and buttons visible on smartphones. Similarly, navigation tabs and images should likewise be optimized. If needed, you can redesign your website to incorporate a mobile interface.
Implement Christmas Sale Promotions
Online shoppers are already anticipating Christmas sales and deals from online businesses. You should implement holiday retail sales promotions to maximize consumer expectations and capture a large portion of the market.
A sale promotion campaign can help you generate more interest and encourage more online shoppers to check or purchase your Christmas sale items.
Aside from increasing sales conversion, you may also use Christmas sale promotional campaigns to attract new customers, enhance retention rates, offload more inventory, and even deepen your relationship with existing customers.
Most eCommerce websites have their own sale and advertising tools you can use for your campaign. For Amazon sellers, you can use their Amazon advertising tools to develop effective sales promotions for your Christmas sale campaign.
Some of the popular Amazon Ads you can use for your Christmas sale campaign include the following:
Sponsored Products: If you wish to create effective cost-per-click (CPC) ads to promote individual product listings on Amazon or select premium apps and websites, you can rely on Amazon Sponsored Products.
Sponsored Brands: To increase brand discoverability this Christmas shopping season, you can also use Amazon Sponsored Brands. With Sponsored Brands, you can reach and engage with new customers through unique headlines, videos, and images.
Sponsored Display: To maximize your Amazon Christmas marketing efforts, you can also use Amazon Sponsored Display. This Amazon advertising solution is designed to help sellers advertise their products across the Amazon store, plus thousands of apps and websites.
Maximize Social Selling for Christmas Sales
Social media can be a great tool to help you prepare for the upcoming Christmas sale events. You can perform social selling as part of your holiday marketing strategy.
If you are unfamiliar with social selling, it is the process of building relationships with potential customers on social media. The purpose of social selling is to engage with prospective buyers with the purpose of providing them with a product.
When engaging in social selling, it is best to first identify the right social selling platform that will fit the Christmas sale campaign or holiday promotions.
LinkedIn is an excellent resource if you wish to share long posts, which typically results in driving more traffic to your website and getting more leads. On the other hand, TikTok and Instagram are ideal social media platforms if you wish to connect with younger audiences.
Your social media account and posts serve as a gateway to product purchases. It is a great way to introduce your new product to online shoppers.
Accordingly, more than 75% of social media users have purchased something they saw on social media, which substantiates the necessity of having unique and engaging social media posts to attract consumers.
To make your social media campaign this Christmas season, follow the steps below:
Be Honest
It is estimated that around 77% of consumers trust brands or companies that make legitimate claims about products.
Be More Proactive
Through your social media channels, you can reach more audiences proactively. An estimated 85% of consumers want to be proactively reached online. Start your social media approach by responding to indirect social mentions or creating posts with open-ended questions.
Share Engaging Contents
When sharing a post for your business, you can follow the 80/20 rule for creating engaging content. It simply means that 80% of your social media posts should educate, entertain, or help online users solve a problem, while the remaining 20% directly promotes your business.
Use Visual Assets
It is estimated that a social media post has only 3 seconds to grab an online user’s attention. That is why it is essential to incorporate visual assets into your posts. It may include but not include videos, photos, and infographics.
Consider eCommerce Automation
If you are overwhelmed with the overall operation of your eCommerce business, you can integrate eCommerce automation into your Christmas sale preparation. eCommerce automation relies on utilizing software to control some processes involved in your eCommerce business.
With the help of eCommerce automation, you can now convert mundane, repetitive manual tasks into automated tasks. Automating some aspects of your business as part of your Christmas sale preparation can help streamline your business operation, scale your eCommerce business faster, and reduce the stress of managing an online business.
eCommerce automation can be implemented in some aspects of your online business, including but not limited to inventory management, repricing, marketing, advertising, accounting, and even in your customer service team. Automating the aforementioned tasks and departments can help your business handle the eCommerce holiday rush efficiently.
Post-Holiday Sales
Given that the holiday shopping season, including Christmas, contributes significantly to sellers’ revenue, some sellers often witness declining sales activity after the holidays. Rather than incurring expenses like storage fees for remaining inventory, you can implement these post-holiday sales strategies mentioned below.
Cross-Selling and Upselling: Information gathered from the prior holiday shopping season can facilitate the introduction of products that are well-suited for cross-selling or upselling. This not only accelerates the movement of your stock but also provides customers with a comprehensive shopping solution.
Introduce Other Promotions: There is no need for you to wait for another major shopping event to introduce promotions on your eCommerce sites or business. You can offer discounts or promotional coupons to encourage online shoppers to purchase your items.
Social Media Engagement: You can increase your post-holiday sales by maintaining an active presence on social media. Sharing additional content about your products and showcasing promos and discounts can also elevate store engagement and sales conversion.
Customer Service: Maintaining high-quality customer service is crucial beyond the holiday season, particularly when handling product returns, including Amazon returns. This approach not only fosters repeat purchases but also helps obtain favorable online feedback for your eCommerce store.
Prepare Your Online Store Today
Christmas sales and other year-end sale events present sellers with an opportunity to increase their profit before the end of the year. To ensure a successful holiday season, you should prepare your store for the Christmas sale rush.
Integrating new tools and strategies into your online business can significantly improve your Christmas sale output and overall holiday readiness. With the help of these seller tools and strategies, you will allow the opportunity for your business to be more manageable and successful.
