4 Tips to Boost E-commerce Conversion Rates this Holiday Season

Now that we’ve seen the rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday come and go, is your e-commerce store ready to make the most out of the traffic for the holiday season? Shopify states that a 35% clickthrough rate for emails sent through a loyalty program generated up to 3% of a retailer’s annual revenue. If you are not prepared for this holiday season, it is not too late to do so. We provide 4 actionable tips on how you can prepare your online store for the holiday rush!

1. Improve the website experience

A majority of search comes from mobile phones. More people are using their smartphones for browsing and making purchases online. According to BigCommerce, mobile orders (including tablets) came in at 53% of total orders during the holiday season. You have to optimise your website for mobile users for your business to tap into this trend. Take the following into consideration:

Web content
Are your products, photos, and website copy displaying well on mobile devices? You need to make sure that they are optimized for smartphone and tablet users.
Photos
For sites to load quicker, photos have to be properly optimised to reduce file size but retaining great quality on mobile devices. Create a better experience for site visitors with fast-loading content on your website.
Multilingual content and support
If you are serving a variety of markets in different languages, you want to make sure your content is translated to fit the local context. This does not mean you should simply translate your content word-for-word. You need to transcreate your content to match the demographics you are selling to.

While your store is ready in different languages, take your customer experience to the next level and have multilingual agents available to answer inquiries and make customers happy.

2. Make the most out of your holiday traffic

A drastic increase in traffic means having more sales opportunities. You want to make the best use of this holiday traffic to drive your business growth.

Offer discounts and personalised product recommendations

With that many visitors coming to your store, make the purchasing decision simple by offering a limited time discount for them to take immediate action. On top of that, provide personalised product recommendations that people will love with an omnichannel personalisation platform like Segmentify.

Provide proactive live chat support

Make sure your customer support team is fully staffed during this period so they can help the visitors that will come to your site daily.

Set up proactive visitor greetings to engage visitors based on specific conditions to drive interactions
Have your agents provide product recommendations based on a visitor’s purchasing history
Be sure to help visitors who hesitate on the cart checkout screen and help them with their questions

It is proven that live chat can boost conversion rates up by 11X, so you want to take advantage of this channel for your sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Tip: Make sure all agent interactions are personalised and of high quality. Great customer experiences matter a lot.

Reduce cart abandonment with retargeting campaigns

If a visitor does abandon the cart, it is not over. You have two options to retarget the visitor to help them make the right decision.

Retarget with advertising

Add a pixel to your site so you can track visitors that browse your products. If they start looking for products like yours after leaving your site, your ads will appear. You can also do this on Facebook. Since they are already familiar with your products and brand, it increases the chance that they will click on your ad to complete their purchase.

Retarget with email

Send follow-up emails. Do this within a short period of time (some say almost immediately) and provide value. Give them reasons why they should complete their purchase. If you want to make the most out of the email, you can also offer personalised email recommendations to increase conversions and possibly drive upsells.

3. Keep stock levels in check

With that many people coming to your website, you will run out of stock pretty fast. Monitor your inventory and make sure that you have enough stock for this season. Find your best-selling products based on trends from previous years and prepare more stock to meet the demand. If you happen to run flash sales or big discounts, you will definitely need to make sure inventory levels are where they need to be to prevent any out-of-stock situations.

4. Provide different payment options

Where possible, offer the best variety of payment options to cater to a larger audience. Enable PayPal, Apple Pay, and/or Google Pay. When working with customers all over the world, you definitely need to provide different currency options for customers from all over. Do not forget to check that you are PCI-compliant to prevent fraud!

Conclusion

Follow these 4 tips and you are well on your way to increase your e-commerce conversion rates this holiday season. If you need a full guidance on preparing for the holidays, contact our growth expert team so they can get you sorted.