Whether you just opened your WooCommerce store or have a few holidays under your belt, you’re likely aware of just how crucial holiday sales are to the success of a business. As approximately 25% of total sales for the year occur in December for many retailers, large holidays like Christmas warrant a certain amount of preparation & special attention to maximize your profits. However, smaller holidays can also be a large part of your profits, so creating a strategy to make the most of holidays is important for eCommerce businesses of all sizes.
Below are some tips to help make your holiday season more profitable for very little cost.
Holiday-Exclusive Deals
With holidays being such an incredibly busy commercial time, there are going to be tons of online retailers vying for the attention of shoppers through marketing campaigns, special offers, and more. You need to stand out on your own to help get customers onto your site. Once you can do that, you’ll be able to put your conversion rate optimization to the test so you can turn them from visitor into customer.
When it comes to entreating new customers to your website or getting them to pull the trigger once they’re there, there’s not much more convincing than an exceptional holiday deal. People are always looking to stretch their holiday budget as far as possible, so discounts, bundles, and special offers can be a great selling point. Creating a marketing email that highlights a special offer for a hot holiday item is sure to get some interest, while a well-placed banner on your website can earn some clicks from casual browsers. If the deal is good enough, they might just buy it.
Even better – put a time constraint on the offers you create for the holiday. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is an effective marketing tool that puts pressure on the buyer to decide whether or not they’re going to place an order. If they wait too long they may miss the discount, and with the average attention span online being just 8 seconds, you need them to act right away for the best chance of converting them.
Free Shipping Countdown
One of the biggest complaints about shopping online for the holidays is shipping. Whether it’s the cost, the time estimate, or the reliability, some people are hesitant to trust the fate of their holiday to online stores rather than picking the item up themselves. After all, they need it before the occasion so it can be wrapped and if it’s in their hand, they don’t risk shipping complications leaving them giftless.
A popular & effective way put shipping concerns to rest is to emphasize holiday shipping on your store. People want fast, affordable, and reliable shipping for their gifts so they can order and forget about it. That means they don’t want to try to guess what day it’ll come based on your WooCommerce checkout shipping estimate – they just want it before the holiday.
To accomplish this, you can offer free, expedited shipping for all customers within a specific shipping region (continental US, Europe, etc.) as part of a holiday promo that guarantees they’ll get it before the holiday. A creative way to implement this is a countdown clock that counts down the days, hours, and minutes until the cutoff for the shipping promotion so that if they order before it runs out, they’ll have their package in time. This also triggers FOMO and can encourage the buyer to order right away rather than waiting so they don’t miss the shipping guarantee.
Bundle for More Complete Gifts
Everyone loves to give and receive gifts, but nobody likes to receive an incomplete gift that doesn’t work out of the box. Batteries, accessories, upgrades, and other extras on top of a basic gift may not seem like a big deal to the buyer, but they could be the difference between needing to run out to the store versus being able to use the gift out of the box. When you’re buying for a teen or child, this is especially important!
By bundling necessities (or upselling them pre or post-sale), you can make it convenient for the buyer to get everything they need in one place. They get a complete gift at a discount, and you get to increase your sales – a win-win!
To create effective bundle upsells that increase your average sale value, use WooCommerce plugins like Handsome Checkout and One Click Upsells. Together, these two plugins will allow you to add products to your order at or after checkout so that you don’t forget them, provide special offers for discounted upgrades, or expedite shipping in time for holidays with just a few clicks.
Push Memberships & Gift Cards
Many customers that you’ll get during holidays are strictly seasonal customers – they buy a gift because you have a great offer, and then they’re gone until next holiday or next year. While the sales are always great to have, getting them (or the person who they bought a gift for) to return to your site is even more valuable. With returning customers being worth much more than one-time buyers, it always pays to find ways to bring seasonal shoppers back.
Memberships are a great way to make a sale during the holidays that offers recurring value. Whether you’re a subscription box, membership software, or any other service that has recurring charges for access, a membership all but guarantees that your customer will return to your site. This may be to upgrade, cancel, or make a new purchase but the important thing is they’re back on your site for free – and your offers can convince them from there to stay a paying customer.
Gift cards are another great option for guaranteeing a returning customer. Selling a gift card during a holiday is basically pre-paying for a purchase later in the year. To use the gift card, they’ll have to come back to the site where you can sell them on your offers that still earn you profit. If they don’t come back, you already have the money from the gift card purchase, so you’re just as happy! It’s hard to go wrong with gift cards, so including a small voucher with a holiday purchase can be an effective reacquisition strategy.
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