David Schwartz: 8 Tips to increase conversions during the holiday season

With the holiday season fast approaching, the ever-increasing competition makes it important to stand out. It’s not recommended to completely revamp your online shop as it might throw off customers; however, it’s definitely a good idea to slightly tweak and improve your website in order to encourage potential customers to get in the spirit and shop on your site.

Here are eight tips on how to boost your online business during the holidays:

• Build a stunning shop window
  Your home page should act as your shop window and promote your top products in an enticing manner. If your product photos are low resolution or have poor lighting, it’s time to re-shoot them. Consider giving your home page a festive feel using banners or images to show off your Christmas spirit. Try a zoom-in or colour option to allow customers to see the product in detail; it’ll help them make a decision quicker.
• Consider promotions and coupons
  Introducing discounts, coupons and promotions codes encourage spending. During this time of the year, everyone is looking for a bargain. Consider promotions such as buy one, get one free; gift vouchers; free gift wrapping service; among others.

• Organize your products into categories
  Update your product pages and add a section on your website with gift ideas in order to help shoppers find what they’re looking for easily. You can also add a filter to allow shoppers to easily sort what they are looking for and boost conversion. Consider listing the different categories by buyers such as children, dog owners, girlfriends, etc. Make sure that you have sufficient stock of all your listed products so that you can handle the increased number of orders, and don’t forget to refresh the website as often as you can to remove out-of-stock or discontinued products.

• Free Shipping
  Customers love the concept of free shipping, especially during seasons where they’re bound to shop a lot. If you don’t normally offer free delivery, consider doing it for a limited period during December or offer free delivery to customers who have reached a specific spend amount. Another service to consider offering might be express delivery for shoppers that are impatient to receive their gifts and get them under the tree as soon as possible.
• Optimize Your Website
  The holiday season can attribute to a large amount of a retailer’s yearly revenue so ensure that your online store is visible when people search online. Place festive-related keywords in meta-descriptions and be sure you have content on your site that matches terms your customers are likely to search for. Use the Google Keyword Planner to help you get keyword ideas. You should optimize your site for the keywords at least a month before Christmas so that Google has time to properly index your pages. Optimizing your website’s SEO can also help you attract more people and potential customers to your site. Here are some additional tips.

• Mobile Compatibility
  Nowadays, many modern consumers browse and buy their products on their phones, so it’s crucial to adapt your site so that it’s compatible with various browsers. From browsing the website to purchasing the product, there should be a minimal number of clicks and procedures for the consumer to go through.

• Email Marketing
  Use email marketing to encourage your existing and new customers to shop at your store. Plan your email campaigns over few weeks before the actual holiday period. By December you should have enough information to segment your customers; this is beneficial to ensure that you’re delivering the right message to the right customers. Sending customers offers and information about products they’ve shown an interest in before or that are related to their searches is a proven way to boost your conversions.
• Commit to a Blog
  The holiday season is a great time to share some engaging posts or articles. Blog posts are great to give potential customers an insight into your business and help build a connection with them. Tips, behind the scene videos, and light-hearted instructional guides are always welcoming content. Moreover, these can be shared across various platforms such as email and social media channels.

The holiday season ahead is a great opportunity for you to engage loyal and potential new customers. Have a look here for additional tips and advice and you will be ready to go!

David Schwartz, VP of e-commerce at Wix.com

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