How to Prepare Your eCommerce Store for Holiday Season 2024?

November 1, 2021

e-Commerce

Holiday shopping season!! One of the most important and busiest times of the year for all retailers. With multiple shopping holidays in a line offers a great chance for the online business owners to gain a lot from early ecommerce holidays planning. So are you ready or not? Because the countdown has begun for the eCommerce Holidays 2021.

Let’s first have a look at some of the Holiday season 2020 statistics to forecast the target revenue for the upcoming eCommerce holiday season 2021.

During last year’s Cyber week, consumers spent $34.4 billion which represents a 20.7% of YoY increase. These Cyber weeks include Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday which is celebrated for five days.
Cyber Monday 2020 was considered as one of the biggest online shopping days as Cyber Monday sales reached $10.8 billion which was increased by 15.1% over last year.
While Black Friday was one more blast day during the holiday season. Last year, shoppers spent over $9 billion during Black Friday, a year-over-year increase up to 21.6% over last year.

Important Dates: eCommerce Holiday Calendar 2021:

Black Friday 2021: Friday, November 26
Small Business Saturday 2021: Saturday, November 27
Cyber Monday 2021: Monday, November 29
Giving Tuesday 2021: Tuesday, November 30
Green Monday 2021: Monday, December 13
Christmas Day 2021: Saturday, December 25
New Year’s Day 2022: Saturday, January 1

Exclusive Marketing Tips For eCommerce Holiday Planning 2021

● Start Your Promotion Early

The holiday season 2020 was strange for many other valid reasons but most notable was that it started earlier than expected. As per the stats, it was found that in 2020, 42% of the shoppers started their holiday shopping earlier compared to prior years. As a result, the holiday season of 2020 was continued longer than usual.

Businesses were rolling out in mid-October only with their “Black Friday deals” and even they run on a weekly basis throughout October and November month. On the other hand, Cyber Monday was also celebrated as a whole week event rather than occupying a single traditional day slot on Monday.

● Offer BOPIS Service

Due to Covid, all the consumers were concerned about health and safety. This forces the retailers to offer a service like BOPIS (Buy Online, pick up in-store) and curbside pickup. But even after the lockdown has been removed, this trend is still followed more and more.

As per the stats and records of Signifyd, BOPIS and curbside orders are increasing by almost 500% over the pre-pandemic level. In fact, it’s expected that this year’s click and collect trend will be more popular compared to last year. In 2020, BOPIS sales total over $72 billion—almost 10% of total ecommerce sales. According to emarketer, US click-and-collect sales grew by 106.9% in 2020. This year, they will grow by another 15.2%, to reach $83.47 billion, representing 9.9% of all retail ecommerce sales.

This will even be beneficial to store owners as labor shortage is one of the major challenges during the peak season and the biggest shopping holidays. So BOPIS service will be more helpful to retailers during the holiday season. There is no surprise that these click and collect services will be game-changers for the upcoming holiday season.

● Keep Your Shoppers Happy with Free Shipping & Easy Returns

Free!! The word itself drives customers’ attention. Customers are always impressed with the retailers or the online shopping sites that offer the services like free shipping, easy returns, and free return without any charges. They are getting more and more attached to free shipping labels.

Expensive shipping charges are one of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment. As per CPCstrategy, free shipping is deemed “crucial” to 73% of shoppers to complete a purchase and 93% of shoppers will be encouraged to buy more online because of the free shipping service.68% of US shoppers say if there’s no free shipping, they won’t purchase at least half the time.

So considering every aspect of the customer’s experience, retailers need to be sure that the shipping costs are cut to zero, even if they have to increase the individual product price, and also find ways to fall the return process into the former category during this peak season. Otherwise, they face an increase in shopping cart abandonment rates and also lose customers soon.

● Easy and Simple Checkout

One of the most significant factors in determining the conversion rates among buyers is the checkout flow of the store. Not only in peak season but for the rest of the year also, sellers need to make sure that the ecommerce checkout process is easy and user-friendly. So retailers need to optimize the one-step checkout process of their store, especially for the holiday season to be simpler, quicker, and more accommodating to the buyers.

Additionally, offering guest checkout to the customers during busy holiday seasons is strongly recommended as they will find this way easy to checkout without entering a lot of details to complete the purchase.

● Focus on Social Media

Why is social media so important? Social media in the 21st Century certainly cannot be ignored as we move to a more different world due to the covid 19 pandemic in the last year.

Some social media stats for your reference:

67% of online buyers have accepted that they purchase products after seeing them advertised on social media.
The AOV made by a customer originating from a social media source is $81.05 in the 2nd quarter of 2021.
60% of online shoppers consult social media reviews before shopping.
66% of businesses generate leads from social media platforms by just spending 6 hours a week on social media marketing.
B2C businesses have gained 70% of their customers through Facebook.

Being on social media is more than just posting videos and images to your platform, you sometimes need to be creative to grab the attention of your audience. Take your time, think about your posts, and try to understand if your audience will be able to relate to what you are posting.

There are billions of people using social media platforms today, especially Instagram daily. For this generation, Instagram is the absolute place (even before Google!) to research a brand. So having a stunning presence on social media will have followers and customers flow in!

● Keep an Eye on the Review Section

Reviews play an important role in online shopping. Every customer goes through the review section before purchasing it. And these reviews and ratings spike during the holiday season. 93% of shoppers are saying after being impressed with the online trusted reviews, they made the purchase. So always keep an eye on your review section and make sure that every customer of yours is well satisfied with their purchase.

● Shoppers Will Go with the Mobile Commerce

Smartphone usage is increasing day by day. More than half of the day people are on their smartphones. 55.4% of internet users are using their smartphones to make an online purchase. The mobile commerce industry is expected to generate revenue of $3.56 Trillion by the year 2021.

Mobile apps and responsive websites are way better and convenient for customers to purchase things from anywhere and from any device. Mobile-based eCommerce sales are predicted to account for 72.9% of all retail sales this year. So for the retailers, mobile commerce needs to hear of their holiday peak season strategy. Make sure that everything from your website to marketing, customer service, and product catalog should be user-friendly and accessible on mobile devices.

eCommerce holiday checklist along with the predictions is also important which will not only help you to manage the retail holidays 2021 easily but also give you the chance to serve your customers.

The Ultimate eCommerce Holiday Checklist:

Track and analyze the last year’s data in terms of inventory, sales, and marketing.
Keep an eye on upcoming holiday dates. Customer support is needed the most during the holiday season. You can utilise ai chatbot for ecommerce to solve customer queries.
Set holiday goals to achieve this year
Don’t forget to prepare your holiday inventory.
Make a complete holiday marketing and promotion calendar.
Optimize SEO for the holiday season
Don’t risk your sales due to a slow landing page. Make sure you take all the basic page speed optimization measures to test and fix the website loading speed. Website performance plays an important role during the holiday season as no customer likes to wait so long for a website to load.
Optimise voice search in ecommerce store
Make sure social media accounts are ready for the holiday season
Enhance your shipping and return policies
Look at your important ecommerce metrics and ensure to offer such a great experience to your customers so that they keep coming back even after the holidays.
Plan your shopping feeds in advance for the holidays
Email Marketing Campaigns are one of the best options to increase sales during the holiday season.
Along with social media and email marketing campaigns, paid marketing and promotions can also help you to increase sales.

Holiday Shopping Predictions 2021:

According to Deloitte forecast, holiday eCommerce sales are likely to increase by 11-15%, year-over-year, during the 2021-2022 holiday season. As a result, this Holiday season it’s expected that sales reach between $210 billion and $218 billion.
Due to labor shortages, expected to spend more on additional wages this year compared to last year. As per the predictions of Salesforce, there might be $12 billion spendings only on raw materials this year compared to the same period of time in 2020. What’s more, ocean freight spending in the second half of 2021 is expected to grow by $163 billion more year-over-year. These extra costs will directly impact suppliers, then retailers, and finally customers.
Instead of needs, shoppers would like to spend more on what they want. And because of some restrictions after lockdown, it is expected that people will choose to travel more and spend more on luxury products. So according to the Klarna Holiday Report, the top spending categories can be accessories, apparel, footwear, jewelry, etc.

Get Ready to Increase Holiday Retail Sales

So this was the detailed ecommerce holiday planning for 2021 which will be a lot helpful for all the online retailers. The holiday season is the perfect time to show compassion to your customers and communicate with an audience in a better way by preparing for holiday readiness sooner than before.

Online shoppers and businesses both are eagerly waiting for this holiday season this year. Shoppers will grab all the chances to buy gifts and products for their loved ones by purchasing them in-store, online, or any other platform. Make efforts to offer a smooth & easier path for customers to make a purchase and a great shopping experience. This will increase your chance of getting them as your loyal and potential customers in the future also. Take the above holiday preparedness with a step-by-step approach and you will easily be on your way to welcome all your potential buyers.

At Rock Technolabs, our experts can help you to implement new features and make your online store ready for the holiday season. Feel free to contact us. Have a happy holiday season to you all!