9 tips to increase eCommerce sales during the Christmas season

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Ben Fitzpatrick – I’m Head of Operations at Webprofits. Today I’m going to give you 9 tips to increase online sales during the Christmas season.

While your campaigns may not have launched yet, if you’re in retail you’ve been planning for the holiday season for some time already. But each of these tips can still be implemented. So let’s get into them.

Make sure people immediately know your delivery options

Make sure people immediately knows your delivery options. It’s the question that every consumer will have, so I recommend putting a header bar across the top of your entire site that gives these details.

The best message you can give is simply “If you order by this date, we guarantee you’ll have it before Christmas.” And if you have free shipping, let people know that as well.

You can use a tool like Sumo to get this message up on your site in minutes.

Promote your gift card heavily in the days just prior to Christmas

Next, make sure you have a digital gift card and make it prominent in the days just prior to Christmas. Once you can no longer guarantee shipping by Christmas, you should change your header bar to promote the gift card.

And if you don’t have this option currently for your business, simply put, you’re missing out on those last minute sales that could be the difference between good and great holiday campaigns.

You can still find a fast way to add digital gift card functionality, even if it means creating a new product in your shop and manually processing the gift cards.

Don’t target keywords like “Christmas Presents”

Looking at your ads, don’t try to target keywords like “Christmas presents” or “great gifts”.

There are going to be lots of inexperienced marketers bidding up these keywords to no end. The keywords you’ve been targeting and optimising through the last year remain the ones that are appropriate to your business.

And during the Christmas period you’ll notice higher search volumes and conversion rates, so take advantage of this by bidding even more aggressively than through the rest of the year.

Target people who have previously purchased from your site

Create remarketing audiences for everyone who purchased during the holiday season last year, and another for everyone who has purchased from your site this year. Then create a remarketing funnel which takes them through different ads each day with different offers so that your ads don’t get stale. These groups could be a huge head start for your campaigns.

Don’t pause your ads on Christmas Day

Don’t pause your ads on Christmas Day. I’ve seen a lot of businesses make this mistake because they think they’re saving money. But we often see strong sales on Christmas Day – likely people who buy something and then give a card as a gift with a note on the gift that’s coming.

So keep your campaigns running.

Do not limit your ad spend

And throughout the holiday period, don’t put any limits on your ad spend, especially for shopping and search campaigns. You can’t expect to be able to accurately predict where the biggest increases search volume will come, so as long as your campaigns are profitable, there’s simply no reason to hold back.

If your campaigns are limited by budget you’re almost certainly missing out on sales.

Update your website to feature best selling gifts

Looking at your website, remember that the products people purchase from you as gifts are often different from those they’d buy for themselves.

So if you’re able to easily make updates to your categories and products, change them to better feature the products that sold best during the holiday season last year. Even better, you can create a new Christmas Gifts category and feature it in your header.

Email your database every day in December

Next, email your database every single day in December.

This may feel like overkill, but you’re trying to break through the deluge of emails that consumers will receive in this period – and volume is the easiest way to ensure that people see at least some of your deals.

You may see some people unsubscribe, but this period is not the right time to focus on list size. It’s all about sales. You have the rest of the year to build your list back up.

Have a follow-up plan for after Christmas

And finally, make sure you have a follow up plan for post-Christmas to engage all your new customers.

By turning them into repeat buyers, you’ll ensure you get even more ROI from the time and investment you’re putting into your holiday campaigns.

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll get back to you. And if you’re worried that you don’t have a good plan in place yet, email me directly.

Thanks for watching.

Ben Fitzpatrick

Head of Operations at Webprofits

With over five years tenure and extensive experience across all areas of digital marketing, Ben Fitzpatrick is Webprofits’ Head of Operations and a consultant for some of our largest Growth Marketing clients.

Across the business, he is constantly working with the team to innovate and improve in order to keep Webprofits at the forefront of digital marketing.