Ecommerce Tactics You Should Be Using to Boost Holiday Sales

If you’re new to ecommerce, enticing customers in the day-to-day may feel a lot like throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. That’s what they call “A/B testing,” right?

The holidays are a different animal though, with 89 percent of consumers making their Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day purchases online. If your ecommerce website isn’t already optimized for conversions, there’s no time like the present to make it so.

Here are just a handful of ecommerce tactics you should be using to boost holiday sales.

Make Sure Your Website is Easy to Navigate

Once a visitor enters your website, you’ve got a finite amount of time to move them toward the shopping cart finish line. This is even more true for someone previously unaware of your brand or what you have to sell.

Help your website help you when you’re starting from scratch with a customer by making it easy to navigate. Display only what’s necessary for your top bar navigation and eliminate the unnecessary steps standing between your customer’s consideration and the buy button.

Engage the Visitors to Your Site That Do and Don’t Buy

Any visitor that lands on your site has the potential to become a buyer. And studies show a purchase takes time — the average shopper makes around nine visits to a website before pulling the trigger.

Pair this with the fact that there’s plenty of competition vying for their return and you’re dropping the ball by simply hoping they’ll return. From email marketing campaigns to display advertising, there are a number of ways to keep your brand top-of-mind with customers, even when they’re not on your website.

If you haven’t already, get your website set up on Google Analytics to start tracking where traffic is coming from. This way, you can more strategically organize your team around which channel sources would benefit most from extra effort during the holidays and beyond.

Give Product Visuals and Descriptions a Refresh

Your shoppers are compelled by visuals, especially online. When they can’t hold a physical product in their hands before buying, they rely on things like reviews, images, videos, etc. to provide the next best thing — or AR and VR if you’re looking toward the future.

Make sure your visuals are high-quality and representative of your product from all angles. Additionally, review product descriptions from an SEO perspective. Are you using the keywords most likely to drive traffic organically to your product pages?

Simplify and Incentivize Customers Toward Checkout

Studies show that 80 percent of shoppers are likely to abandon their cart before ever making a purchase. Meaning you can easily sabotage a sale based on the number of hoops you require someone to jump at checkout.

These hurdles are realized in everything from not having auto-generated form fields for billing to only accepting certain forms of payments. And don’t even get us started on delivery.

Many ecommerce websites are now adopting a buy now, pay later form of payment at checkout, utilizing services like Afterpay and Affirm. This requires less upfront investment from shoppers, which during the holidays, is especially helpful for managing mounting credit card balances.