12 days of eCommerce – Our Top Tips to Help You Take Advantage of the Year-End Sales: Part 2

It’s New Year’s Eve! There is no doubt that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve are the three most profitable holidays for merchants of all kinds. One place you can miss out on is social media. A New Year post on social media is a great way to get the conversation started and get your brand noticed all over social channels. So get your customers excited about your brand by using social media posts. Also, by enabling social selling links, you can enable some last-minute sales by having your customers purchase directly on their favourite social media platform. If you’re not sure where to begin, our TRU Connect solution can assist you in integrating this system and facilitating easy payments.

Is another short respite for you as customers are recovering from welcoming the New Year. Now is a good time to check in on your stock and ensure that your website check-out process is optimized. Add support for digital wallets to speed up the checkout experience. Use an eCommerce platform to enable personalised shipping estimates and product availability based on your customer’s location. And make things easier for your customers by enabling website features that will pre-fill their details during check-out to avoid mistakes.

You can offer Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) purchase options to customers shopping online by partnering with companies that allow them to pay for a purchase in interest-free instalments, as long as they make their payments on time. Consumers are cash-strapped after the holiday season so tap into their mindset and make things easy for them. This way you can also reach a younger demographic who may not have had the option to purchase with traditional payment methods like credit cards, because of concerns about credit card interest, hidden fees, and revolving credit.

Pique your customer’s interest with real-time auctions. Offer products auctioned at a lower price and let your customers compete for them in a set timeframe. Consumers experience FOMO when they see countdown timers. Scarcity creates a desire for fleeing products as the brain wants them before they disappear. Promote short-term discounts for your high-value, signature products via countdown timers in your email marketing. Keep these sales semi-private to prevent brand dilution and boost online sales. Finally, enable common payment options like PayPal and eWallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay to make the purchase experience frictionless.

Improve pop-ups, forms, and messaging on your website. In the process of re-optimizing seasonal content, website micro-copy -button names, call-to-actions, forms, and pop-ups – are often overlooked. Small details like this can add an extra feeling of delight and prompt conversion. Add some holiday twist to your pop-ups – make the colours, messaging, and value proposition more suitable for the season. However, make sure to align your seasonal messaging and offers with your regular brand personality. Optimising call-to-actions is the trickiest part. Before launching a new campaign, test new variants in the preceding weeks.

It’s time to give back to your customers. What better way to do that than with a giveaway? Timed in January it would be the perfect time to delight and engage them. Giving away also contributes to that feeling of generosity and sharing joy. Find a worthy cause and host a contest. Here are some examples to boost your inspiration: make a donation from every sale to a local charity; match referral entries with extra donations to encourage shares; provide a £1 donation for every customer entry.

You now have a proven set of eCommerce tips to increase your year-end sales. Time to get to work! Lastly, make sure that you have a properly staffed customer service team readily available to respond to any customer queries. You may also want to contact your shipping partner to ask about possible delays and make backup arrangements.