1. Host Social Media Events
If you want to see explosive holiday sales this year, I suggest hosting social media events, such as giveaways and interactive livestreams. According to Statista, 4.7 billion people use social media, and most are interested in tech products that will improve their lives. Tap into this audience and you can easily connect with new users while building rapport with existing customers.
2. Test Your Communications Infrastructure
E-commerce businesses should bulletproof their customer experience by making sure phone lines, phone systems and other critical infrastructure systems are working and can handle high volumes. Fully tested chatbots can help live agents better manage surges and help companies save time and money, create better user experiences, and, if done right, increase customer satisfaction, which helps generate more qualified leads and higher revenues.
3. Optimize Using Last Yearโs Data
Retailers should get consumers excited about the holidays with a build-up campaign that includes exclusive products, discounts and so on. Leverage last yearโs performance data to help optimize your e-commerce site, and take an omnichannel approach to ensure online and physical store campaigns are cohesive. Additionally, create virtual stores to provide more engagement and ultimately increase sales.
4. Ensure An Omnichannel Presence
E-commerce companies need to make sure they have an omnichannel presence and meet their customers where they are. In addition to websites and mobile apps, customers now shop from social media platforms and messaging platforms. Retailers and e-commerce companies need to have an omnichannel strategy and take advantage of all the channels.
5. Test All Avenues Of Breakage
Preparing for a mega sales rush? Think outside of the box as it pertains to your technology. Consider pushing your product catalog into a static site hosted on CloudX. Ramp up the underlying horsepower for your cart, and ensure your payment providers wonโt cause show-stopping glitches. Test all avenues of breakage to see how your site behaves. The best way to deal with issues is to have a plan.
6. Build Up Your Staffing Levels
Staff up now, and pay more than the competition. The labor market is already tight, and people are resigning at rates not seen in decades. If you want to maintain good levels of customer service, you will need to be prepared to pay for it.
7. Draft And QA Your Holiday Website
Do you plan on running different holiday sales? Will there be different sales funnels, requiring different graphics? Donโt forget that you can build out much of this before the holiday rush. Draft and QA your new website in the weeks prior. All you should have to do is hit โPublish,โ because your focus needs to be on product delivery and customer service instead of technical issues.
8. Optimize Your Mobile Site
Todayโs customers mostly use their mobile devices to make online purchases. According to several academic surveys, users are still hunting for gifts online to avoid interacting with others. Itโs crucial to prioritize your consumersโ holiday shopping experiences when preparing for the season. Optimize your mobile site for conversions by offering specific promotions and a streamlined purchasing process.
9. Carry Out Surge Testing
Before the beginning of the holiday season, do a lot of testing and make sure that your website, payment gateways and all other systems are ready to handle the expected surge in traffic and transactions. You donโt want your website or payment system to crash. This will cause you not only to lose a large number of sales during the holiday season but also to lose customer trust in the future.
10. Ensure Your Platform Is Scalable
Be sure youโve covered scalability. Todayโs e-commerce organization has to be ready for tremendous ebbs and flows in business. To address this, use a cloud-native, infinitely scalable solution that grows based on demand. This can help you optimize costs and ensure consistent services are delivered to your customers.
11. Explore Marketing Automation Tools
This is a great time to take advantage of marketing automation tools to create targeted campaigns and drive more sales. You can segment your list and create targeted emails with special offers and deals that will appeal to your different customer groups. Automated campaigns can help you boost sales and keep your customers engaged during the holiday season rush.
12. Solidify Your Logistics System
โTis the seasonโfor logistics, logistics! Get your internal processes down when it comes to delivery of information around order tracking and statuses. As consumers, we all know how comfortable we feel once we know our package is on the truck for delivery. Work with your shipper to deliver auto-updates to your customers when their packages ship. Itโs the last piece of the puzzle before you get paid, so make it count!
13. Have A Disaster Recovery Plan In Place
It is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place. With the seasonal uptick in sales and increasing reliance on e-commerce platforms, what is your businessโ backup plan? If needed, your business must be able to recover lost data from a second location where the data is backed up.
14. Consider Offering A Buy Now, Pay Later Option
In 2022, I would strongly suggest having a buy now, pay later option for your customers, especially on lower-priced items. It can drive those impulsive extra purchases that wonโt occur if there isnโt an option to pay in installments.
15. Manage Your Full Technology Risk
Manage your full technology riskโincluding security testing and assessment, addressing cybersecurity and privacy, managing confidentiality and integrity, and ensuring adequate technology capacity to ensure availability. The ultimate need is to provide confidence to your customers that they can trust your platforms. This will help you avoid consumersโ fickle transfer of their business from your company to your competitors.
