8 Ways to Harness Holiday

Conversions

The holiday shopping season is alreadyhere. If you have ignored many of the urgesover the past few months, get ready. Thereare a few things you can do to help reapthe benefits of what is to be the mostsuccessful year ever for ecommerce.

1. Provide a Fast-loading Mobile-friendlySite

How your site loads on a smartphoneaffects its search engine rank. How fast itloads also plays a role. In fact, fast loadtimes are essentially a requirement onconsumers’ list of what mobile-friendlymeans.

Reports vary, but it’s estimated that morethan half of this season’s online purchaseswill be made using a smartphone. If youalready have a responsive site or amobile-friendly counterpart, great. Be sureto run tests regularly to ensure pages load

quickly and properly. If you’ve beenprocrastinating, or just haven’t had the timeto implement a mobile interface, now is thetime to contact your shopping cart providerand see if there’s a stock template that canbe used for mobile. It may not be theprettiest design, but a so-so mobile site isbetter than none at all.

2. Simplify Everything

Eliminate distractions in your site’snavigation and during the checkoutprocess. Use prominent and definitive callsto action and make the buying process aseasy as possible.

Whatever you’re doing on desktop has tobe even easier on mobile. Remember, thekey selling components are images andvideo, price, calls-to-action, productdescriptions and reviews.

3. Display “Ships Free” on Category andProduct Pages

If any (or all) products have free shipping,say so. If free shipping is triggered by acertain order amount, configure a “shipsfree” label to display on all products thatreach the threshold on their own.

Additionally, tell the customer the orderships free on the floating cart or cart page.

4. Display Stock Statuses and AccurateInventory Counts

Shoppers need to know if products are instock. You don’t want to miss a salebecause of inaccurate inventory and youcertainly don’t want to oversell. Don’tforget that beyond boosting revenue thisseason, you should also be paving the waytowards turning November and Decembershoppers into loyal customers. No onelikes receiving notices that an item alreadyordered is not available.

5. Display Shipping Times

Beginning early December, people will belooking for a solid answer to theever-important question, “Will my order

arrive in time?” You can save shopperstime and capture more sales if you displayarrival dates on the page where they selectshipping. Remember to take orderprocessing time into consideration.

6. Minimize Upselling

It makes sense that you’d want to offeradditional items at a discount duringcheckout. This is great for products thatoften warrant or require the purchase ofaccessories. Before taking the step tointerrupt the checkout process, think aboutmore logical places to entice add-ons, such

as on product pages or on the cart page.Take note that related items should neverbe used as interceptors to the checkoutprocess.

7. Streamline the Checkout

Don’t ask for any information you don’tabsolutely need. This includes phonenumbers (unless vital to the sale orpayment processor), fax numbers, andoptional fields. Please don’t utilizeCAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA – instead look toone of many fraud tools that may beavailable for the shopping cart you run.

Additionally, make sure input fields areformatted correctly, especially for mobileusers. Don’t override the user’s preferences,including the ability to auto-fill everything

8. Follow up three times

Email notifications keep customers happyand the phone from ringing off the hook.They also help encourage the shopper topatronize the store again.

Each order should result in three separatenotifications:

*) Order confirmation: This shouldinclude, at least, the ship-to address, anygift message entered, the products orderedand an estimated ship date.

*) Order shipped confirmation: Thisshould include the ship-to address, any giftmessage entered the products ordered, thecarrier and method used and a linkedtracking number.

*) A follow up email: Sent 7-10 days afterthe expected date of arrival (or at least 12days after the order shipped), this remindsthe customer of how to contact you and ofappropriate policies for the item(s)purchased. You can also prompt him towrite a review about any products, eithernow or at a future date.

While this is by no means a complete list, itdoes highlight some of the most importantneeds for most types of online stores. Formost of you, these would all be fairly quickto implement, getting you a little moreahead of the game. If you implement anyof these, I’d love to hear how they workedfor you.

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