Dear Santa, this year I would like to have a better conversion rate on my site…
For business, there’s no better time than the holiday season. During this peak season, every businessman wonders what to do to get the most out of it. But it’s often not a piece of cake; there are many factors that must be taken into consideration if you don’t want to waste the opportunity that holiday peaks offer.
If your business focuses on mobile sales, you can get quite excited when you see that your mobile traffic is pretty high – but there’s a trick. You have to remember about the phenomenon called “the mobile gap” which means that the number of sales on mobile is still significantly lower than on the desktop.
Moreover, you have to think about what to do to satisfy the various types of Christmas customers. The strategy should include and anticipate different behaviors of potential buyers and not focus only on one of them.
Types of (eCommerce) customers
American professor Paul D. Mac Lean carried out research in which he distinguished three main types of consumers resulting from how people behave on a daily basis.
Featured groups include smartshopper, now shopper and social shopper.
The smart shopper is a person who always tries to analyze everything, takes prudent decisions, shows patience. He is a clever and practical person. He likes to compare the prices and quality of products from various stores, if he has the opportunity to see the product in a regular store, and then buys it online.
The now shopper is a more spontaneous person. He likes to be independent. Every day he’s a very energetic person who likes a fast pace of life. To speed up the purchasing process, he uses logins from social networks, he counts on a quick search and express delivery of the product.
The social shopper is someone undecided and only a little independent. In his decisions he is usually very careful. On the store’s website, his attention is drawn to comfortable navigation and he pays particular attention to opinions about products. He likes things he already knows and which are safe for him.
Prepare eCommerce for the holidays
Based on the personality types, you need to consider what solutions on your eCommerce site will affect the purchase in each case.
Use language of benefits for the smart shopper
The smart shopper is resistant to marketing tricks, he doesn’t buy off-hand. On the webstore, make sure you have a detailed description of the product, especially its functionality. Use the language of benefits that your product will bring. Reviewing other people’s recommendations would also be useful for him; he will appreciate it if he can find them on the store’s website instead of searching for it on the internet.
Patagonia explains product specifications in a short and plain description suitable for the smart shopper (Source: https://www.patagonia.com)
Care about details & personalization for the now shopper
If you want a now shopper to buy your product, take care of a personalized offer and promotion – e-mail marketing may be helpful. Also, do not forget about the packaging of the product, which can also make a difference. Give your client a small gift, he will be pleased even with a small gadget or coupons for future orders.
s uses personalized emails to help customers feel unique during the Christmas time (Source: https://www.neomorganics.com/)
Support building relations of the social shopper
For the social shopper, emotions are the most important. It is worth using them in your online store, you can tell a story about the product, put it into the product description so as to intrigue the consumer or give the product a voice to speak for itself. In this case, social media are also important, which, as you know, is a great place to build relationships with clients. The social shopper mostly trusts in products used by his friends and family. When buying products for loved ones, he could be convinced by the promotion of buy one, get another one for a family member.
Bodyboom created interesting and humorous product storytelling to engage their female customers. Source: (https://www.bodyboom.pl/en/ )
Seamless and engaging UX in holiday peaks
Don’t forget to add some Christmas design to your eCommerce store, use seasonal keywords or create holiday pop-ups to let consumers know that you’re ready for Christmas. Creating a gift guide can be also useful to help customers find the perfect present, which is sometimes not so easy to choose. Furthermore, an important factor for each group is a fast loading time of the website.
When a consumer wants to buy a satisfying gift for a loved one, he wants to do it as soon as possible and in the most pleasant possible way. In order to significantly minimize the page loading time, it is worth using Progressive Web Apps. This new technology decreases pages’ time-to-load even to 0.5 seconds and its architecture is ready for season peaks like those occurring during the holidays or black friday.
If you have implemented at least a few tips, you can be sure that your online store is ready for the holiday season!
Published December 19, 2018
