By As the most profitable time of year approaches, many retailers are eager to take advantage. In the recent year, US shoppers spent over $878 billion on retail goods, with around 211 billion coming from online sales alone!
The upcoming holiday season is an excellent opportunity for eCommerce stores looking forward to preparing ahead to satisfy their customers’ expectations this December.
With the popularity of online shopping, communicating with your customers requires more creativity and forethought than ever. With so many new e-commerce websites popping up each day, it can seem like there’s an endless supply of competition vying against one another just looking to take away potential clientele from themselves, but don’t let this discourage anyone!
You can outperform your competitors by focusing on certain selling factors that will appeal to clients at this time.
With so many people out shopping, you need to be at the best of your abilities to generate sales. But what does it take? We found that creating a strategic plan was key when competing with other businesses in this industry in December.
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1. CREATE A PROFESSIONAL E-COMMERCE STORE:
The first step in ensuring your online store looks professional and welcoming to visitors is creating an aesthetically pleasing website with easy-to-use navigation features. A shopper’s initial impression of a site can determine whether they stay on it or leave right away, so this should be a top priority when designing any eCommerce space!
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2. ADDING PROFESSIONAL, HIGH-QUALITY PHOTOS OF YOUR PRODUCT:
With such a powerful effect on retail sales, it is no wonder that adding images to your website can help turn visitors into customers. A recent study found out how important this was when only 11% of items were sold without any pictures at all, while 88 per cent had an image and turned away shoppers!
E-commerce shoppers want to buy products that look professional, and there are many ways you can make sure your product photos meet this standard. Amazon Product Photography helps make shooting these high-quality images easy with their real-time photography tips, automatic background removal, and styling tools. It gives a great-looking website without hiring expensive photographers or having too many cloudy pictures that will sell nothing!
Read More: 7 Creative Amazon Product Photography Ideas To Stand Out
3. IMPROVING YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE TO ENSURE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION:
The holidays are a hectic time of year for any company with customers. But as online shopping continues to increase, so does the risk that an unhappy shopper or review could do damage both financially and in terms of reputation among potential clients who may fear dealing directly with you because they don’t know how your business handles issues when things go wrong, especially around this season!
The key thing here: Ensuring good e-commerce customer service throughout December -January.
With more people shopping online, providing excellent customer service is important. This means there will be more demand on e-commerce sites like Amazon Prime or eBay Live Help because of all those anxious shoppers as Christmas and New Year’s Eve approach and everyone feels generous with their money (or deadly serious). They can barely decide what they want before Cyber Monday arrives!
The best way for companies in this position to succeed isn’t simply by offering discounts—although these certainly help—but rather by providing an experience worth remembering that makes users feel valued each time.
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4. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS AND REVIEWS:
Reviews are important. They help people make informed decisions about who they buy from and how much to spend on something! Google prefers sites with many verified purchases, so those with lots of lies may rank higher than honest businesses that don’t ask their customers to leave feedback after every transaction! The more reviews your site has, the better your chance of establishing trust with potential customers and improving search engine optimization (SEO) and amazon product listing optimization efforts.
Read More: How to Drive External Traffic to Your Amazon Listing
5. HOLIDAY EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY:
Email marketing is a great way to boost sales during the holidays. However, it can be tough if you do everything the same as everyone else, but that’s optional! Instead of sending out one big email with all your promotions for each day (Black Friday through Cyber Monday), create smaller ones targeting specific days or times when people typically shop online, such as right before they head off on vacation this month.
Marketing emails are a great way to boost Cyber Monday sales, but they can be more than just another generic promotion. Email marketers have found creative ways around this problem by using special offers and promotions as templates for their messages or incorporating them into seasonal content like holiday newsletters. Hence, people always feel excited about the deals coming up soon!
Additionally, creating some abandoned cart emails will help reengage those customers who are too lazy, busy, etc., for example, to complete the purchase but still want the item they left behind to be picked up.
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6. HELPFUL USER-GENERATED CONTENT:
With user-generated content (UGC) now accounting for more than 50% of all online shopping marketing campaigns, it is no wonder that brands need to take advantage by tapping into this rich vein. However, while companies can utilize UGC after its creation with incentives like payment or free products to create original and engaging videos, they should be mindful about where those posts arise because often, users post on social media sites without compensation!
People create UGC without ties to or payments from a company, but they can still be used as leverage when it comes time to market your brand!
UGC has many benefits for your brand, including generating new customers when people are extra busy; If you receive a notification that someone created content about how great a company makes XYZ product or service, reach out! In addition, you can gain followers by posting your work on social media platforms like TikTok if they allow reposts in exchange for tweets, etcetera.
7. TARGETING INFLUENCERS FOR YOUR MARKETING:
The 2022 holiday season is a great time for new partnerships. You can start up on a small scale and work your way up as you succeed, or you can go big from day one by finding micro-influencers who will help promote what they love. These smaller accounts have a 60% increased engagement rate compared to those following larger versions.
“Microbloggers With Followers In The Low Thousands Have A 20% Higher Conversion Rate Than Those Having More Friends.”
Read More: How to Drive External Traffic to Your Amazon Listing
8. CONTENT MARKETING:
The new social media platforms are perfect for brands to advertise their products. These sites have become huge markets that can be compared with selling on Amazon or eBay, but there is one big difference: visitors versus customers! However, it has always been crucial because, with an appealing design, every viewer will notice this screen. Therefore, your brand needs more than attractive language and good photographs to convince consumers to buy what they see in Facebook advertising (or on their computers).
Makers should create exceptional banner graphics by using vibrant colours while ensuring each image provides some form of detail, such as logos or branding alongside price lists, so shoppers know exactly where everything goes.
Read More: Everything You Need To know About A+ Content:
9. OFFERING GIFT CARDS:
The holiday season is a stressful time for many people. This may be relevant if you are looking to buy gifts online, as there’s no telling what will work well with someone else’s personality or taste in music! Luckily, we have some straightforward solutions that make the process much easier for everyone involved—you and your customers.
You may offer gift cards through your website, so they don’t need wrap Nor do we recommend adding a step by asking them whether it should come wrapped up before making their purchase decision; instead, let them choose between different styles of boxes (or whatever product they want), then ship straight away without one.
10. PROMOTIONS AND DISCOUNTS:
If you need a marketing push for the holidays, launching flash sales and product drops can help create some brand awareness. Since they are timely events that bring shoppers in with exciting deals on specific merchandise your company offers while also introducing new products to capture customer interest, these types of promotions are needed! Coupons or customized codes enable users (especially those who might not otherwise come into contact) to get discounts when purchasing online, making them valuable tools during any event with limited time, like this one around Christmas.
Your holiday preparations and marketing efforts should pay off over the long run. Your customers will be encouraged to come back even after Christmas has passed!
The e-commerce market is becoming increasingly competitive every year, but there is still time to get ahead of the curve. Efficient marketing strategies will help you maintain your edge and stand out from other brands during this busy time of year.
Hi there! I’m the content marketing and branding specialist for AMZ One Step. I work hard to create engaging and informative content that helps our readers learn more about Amazon selling and how to make the most of their businesses. I love spending time with my family and exploring literary works when I’m not writing or working on projects.
