Drive more traffic and stay ahead of your competitors this Christmas!
It happens every year, call it Peak Season or even Silly Season but for most retailers, the Christmas Season is the most important time of the year. For eCommerce merchants it’s vital to get it right, most online Christmas campaigns launch in August (believe it or not) so planning can start as far back as early May or June. If you haven’t really got all your ‘ducks in a row’ regarding this years Christmas Season don’t worry we have the perfect insight to Driving eCommerce Sales at Christmas with these 10 Steps to Maximise Your Revenue.
From developing your homepage strategy, understanding how to use paid search and social media advertising effectively to providing a robust platform for customer queries. Our latest article will give you some inspiration on how to enrich your customer journey and maximise your eCommerce revenue this Christmas season.
Driving eCommerce Sales at Christmas with these 10 Steps to Maximise Your Revenue.
1. Homepage Strategy – Navigation is the Key to your Christmas Shop Offers.
It’s important to control and manage what your customers see first. One of the most important pages on your website is your homepage, most of your traffic will flow to and from this by organic or paid means. So it’s vitally important when an eCommerce shopper lands on your homepage they don’t bounce off due to poor navigation with the lack of a homepage strategy. Here are some tips to building a robust strategy for your homepage that will reduce a high bounce rate from occurring.
2. Keep Click-Depth in mind!
This means developing Christmas Shop Landing Pages that are less than 3 clicks from your homepage.
Click-depth refers to the number of clicks it takes you to reach a specific page. It’s vital for search engine spiders to be able to crawl your website easily so they can index the page content. A page directly linked to your homepage will have a depth of two and the homepage itself being one. So ensuring that your eCommerce website has a more horizontal architecture should alleviate any difficulty with search engines crawl-ability and ensuring all the important Christmas shop web pages get indexed quickly. The best practice is to integrate a temporary link to your Christmas Shop on your main navigation menu (if you have the room) and then integrate an attractive graphic with a call to action button that links directly to your seasonal landing pages. This way it provides an easier route for web traffic to reach your Christmas Store.
The impact of not having a more horizontal architecture will mean important seasonal product pages will not be crawled by search engines and rank high with organic search queries. Running a website audit will highlight pages greater than three clicks. In order to re-align them within the three click-depth range you possibly will need the skillsets of a web developer to redesign the architecture of your website ensuring that the flow is more lateral and user friendly.
3. Use PPC Campaigns to drive more immediate traffic and awareness to targeted seasonal landing pages.
Google Ads are extremely useful in driving more immediate traffic to your website. Because they operate on a ‘pay-per-click’ basis the cost of advertising is only incurred when a user clicks an ad, allowing you to control more of your advertising budget (this does exclude advertiser rates in setup and maintenance). You will probably need the expertise of an advertising agency to help you get the most out of your ad spend. It’s wise to get started with these campaigns early in the Autumn as some people can start Christmas shopping in September.
The Best Ways in using PPC campaigns at Christmas.
‘Christmas gifts’
‘Christmas gifts for her’
‘Christmas gifts for him’
4. Add more content to create more value and relevance to your website.
Good content is always a welcome addition to any website. Google loves it and rewards with higher search visibility for relevant searches. When it comes to your Christmas eCommerce Store it’s the perfect opportunity to craft some really useful seasonal content topics that will drive value in your brand.
Christmas is a creative time and always provides people with ideas on how to be diverse with common day things. Social media has also got some great purpose for sharing creative ideas and can really drive a buzz about a brand with user generated content.
Be sure to plan blog content as part of your Christmas content strategy, blogs are very useful also for internal linking (to product pages) building a more solid SEO presence.
5. Leverage your Social Media to offer another channel for selling directly to your audience.
Online merchants are relying more than ever on social media as another opportunity for selling to their customers. ‘Social Commerce’ as it has become more commonly known as is the process of using social media platforms with integrated eCommerce functionality.
The origins of social commerce started with eCommerce Merchant providers Shopify and BigCommerce seeing the potential of social media as a reach platform for eCommerce merchants. By developing their eCommerce marketplace app and partnering with Facebook it gave them unrivalled access to a global audience of business owners through their Facebook business pages. They also spurred the growth of startup operators with affordable subscription based eCommerce packages and user friendly platforms to build their empires on.
But social commerce has moved on. With the rapid advancement in electronic commerce creating more and more immersive online shopping experiences, social media channels (like Instagram Business, Pinterest Buyable Pins and Facebook Shop) have integrated enclosed buying platforms. These allow brands to connect closer with their customers providing a more seamless purchase journey whilst keeping them within the confines of the Social Media platform.
6. Product page design and development.
Your product pages are the most important pages on your website, they are the money generators, high bounce rates here will no doubt result in a low conversion rate for your website. When developing your Christmas store especially your seasonal product pages it best to keep the following in mind.
It would be worth having a look at your competitors on a regular basis, but especially for the Christmas period. See what they are doing in terms of marketing activities and offers.
You should design your eCommerce platform with a ‘mobile first’ approach, as the mobile shopping trend continues to scale in popularity, ensure your eCommerce experience is not left behind with old technology platforms, processes and check out systems. Integrating the likes of Instagram Shoppable posts (which naturally operates as a mobile app) can greatly increase your ability to connect closer with your social media audience. As imagery is a vital asset, ensure you use high resolution mobile optimised imagery and video to greatly increase the knowledge base of you products.
Compelling content will reassure users landing on your product pages that they are making the right decision to purchase from you. Highlight the unique selling points, key benefits and features of your products, what makes them different from others? Offer aftercare advice so the quality of your products can be maintained. Most of all social proof! leverage user generated content and customer reviews to drive brand authenticity.
Why not check out this article on Best Product Page Design Principles.
7. Test your checkout process is seamless and efficient.
Like most eCommerce retailers you are planning to have a bumper year in eCommerce sales this Christmas. So to make things as efficient as possible in your shopping experience it’s wise to test your check out process and ensure that there are no cumbersome experiences which could drive shopping cart abandonment. It might even be prudent to test the experience with some mystery shoppers allowing them to run through the checkout process and measure its speed and user friendliness.
8. Check your email marketing platform is integrated correctly with your eCommerce store.
If you attract new customers to your online store over the peak period it’s a perfect opportunity to keep them coming back through your email marketing automation. The post purchase experience is a vital stage in the customer journey as it builds trust and brand loyalty. As was mentioned earlier social proof and customer reviews can be valuable elements to have embedded on your product landing pages. But it’s more than that in terms of sustaining loyalty for your brand. Having an automated email system at your disposal can be fruitful in terms of accelerating customer satisfaction and positive feedback. Sequenced emails pushed out from the time of purchase to beyond the due delivery date will keep your brand in the minds of your customers. Customer feedback loops (through email marketing) provide useful insight on how to improve the quality of your brand whilst personalised offers (through email marketing) keep you connected with your eCommerce shoppers post purchase.
9. Develop a Shopping Cart Abandonment Strategy.
Most eCommerce sites experience a shopping cart abandonment rate of over 65%. With this in mind and even with the usual Christmas spending splurge due, it would be prudent to have a solid shopping cart abandonment strategy in place.
The drop off is mainly due to cumbersome check out processes or adding a simple distraction leading them users away from the sales funnel. But if this isn’t the problem it can be due to product selection or even users not reaching their product choice through poor keyword search themselves.
For account holders: If you are experiencing high drop-off rates there are simple ways to try and alleviate the issue and win your regular customers back. Personalised email marketing works a treat by sending targeted campaigns to customers who were in the process of buying products on your site but for some reason didn’t and abandoned their shopping cart. By identifying what the customer was searching for initially and providing recommendations on suitable alternatives. (note you might not see a change in abandonment rates in your analytics but return visits should increase and setting up email marketing click through goals and tags on specific URLs should help you track web traffic and conversions)
For non account holders: As you don’t have any customer data, setting up re-marketing campaigns can greatly improve return visits from abandoned shoppers. There are two main re-marketing options at your disposal, Google Ads re-marketing and Facebook custom audiences. With these you can re-advertise to customers (across a range of platforms) who have already been on your website and expressed an interest in your products. They work by adding tags and widgets to your website from Google ads and Facebook. When a customer leaves and goes to another site they are added to a program that pushes a display of products to them which they had previously showed interested on a site. This strategy has vastly improved return traffic and lowered the cost of conversions for many B2C online operators.
10. Have clear options for support lines and customer queries.
One of the best methods in gaining trust in your brand is looking at every stage of the customer journey and seeing how you can enrich the experience and add value to it. The post purchase stage is no different. As highlighted earlier the need for an automated email marketing system is invaluable to increase the lifetime value of your customers. Things can go wrong so having a robust customer service element will only add more value and trust in your brand and the overall buying experience.
Some things to consider:
What was covered might seem somewhat overwhelming, but there’s plenty of time to put all of these strategies in play. Why not Get in Touch with the team here at izest Marketing if you need any help.
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