6 Quick Additions and Strategies to Boost Your Holiday Sales

Cyber Monday has already come and gone, and the Holiday shopping season is well under way.  Typically, online retailers should be working on their Holiday strategy some time during the summer, making necessary additions and changes well in advance and planning SEO, online marketing, promos and campaigns beforehand.  However, there are a few things you still have time to take advantage of for some quick boosts.

Live Chat

Morningstar retail analyst R.J. Hottovy says that this is shaping up as the best year ever for online retail sales. Online retail sales soared on Black Friday, rising about 25 percent over last year to $816 million. All the more reason for you to invest extra time and energy at this time of year to service your customers and help them make the decision to buy from your website and not someone else’s. Assuming you have full and detailed product descriptions along with lots of quality photos, you next focus should be providing immediate answers to a potential customer’s questions about your products.

Of course you’ve got your toll free phone number prominently displayed for customers to contact you, but some customers prefer a less direct  and more convenient approach.  This is where Live Chat comes in.  There are several third-party online services that you can add to your website quickly and easily for the Holidays. These are monthly paid services that allow you to interact and answer your customers’ questions conveniently, at exactly the moment they have the question.  Plus, you can set up multiple chat operators to service more than one customer at a time.

Coupons and Promos

Everyone loves a deal, and there are many websites dedicated to deals and coupons for shoppers.  Make sure your coupons and promotions are listed on as many of these sites as possible.  Some major sites to consider:

• kaboodle.com
• coupons.com
• save.com
• couponcabin.com
• retailmenot.com

Of course, you also want to make sure you prominently display a coupon or offer on your Home page to entice shoppers, and you should also send out an exclusive email promotion to your subscribers at least once during the season. Set up multiple coupon and discount codes so you can track which ones are the most successful.

Free Shipping Offers

Nowadays, most online shoppers have come to expect some sort of free shipping, especially during the holidays.  One of the most effective ways to offer free shipping on your website is to offer it with purchases over a certain price.  For instance, “Free Shipping on All Orders Over $50.”  This encourages large orders and discourages shoppers from finding a similar product on a site that offers free shipping.

Social Media

This is an offshoot of Coupons and Promos above.  Be sure to offer exclusive deals on Facebook and Twitter and encourage your followers to share the offer.

But you should also find ways to engage your followers and fans with interesting and relevant content on social media.  For instance if you sell home decor, offer a downloadable PDF with holiday table setting ideas.  Or share links to holiday-themed articles and information that your customers would find interesting, helping to keep your store at the top of mind.

Suggestive Selling

Help you customers make purchasing decisions and find exactly what they want by using suggestive selling.  Most shopping carts allow you to add links to related products at the bottom of your product detail pages.  For instance, on the page for your toy robot, you might display similar toys that shoppers might be interested in.  You could also list items that shoppers might also need, like batteries or other accessories to go with the toy robot.  Not only do these strategies keep visitors shopping and exploring, they also encourage larger orders.

Google PPC (with a $100 Voucher for brand new accounts)

You should consider a short-term campaign for the Holidays, if you do not already have a pay-per-click campaign on Google.  Choose your most popular or best-selling item, or perhaps the items with the most profit built in, and build small PPC campaigns around them.  We can help you out with a free $100 voucher available to retailers (and NetSource customers) who have not previously advertised on Google.  Just give us a call to claim your voucher.

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If you have any questions or need help implementing any of the strategies above, please give us a call ASAP so our web developers can help you make this your best Holiday season ever.