How To Stay Ahead of eCommerce Seasonality Trends
Today, eCommerce platforms are gaining more power. The recent pandemic and lockdown have even contributed to its widespread popularity. Customers, in trying to avoid any form of infection, are making purchases from home. Shopping from home is convenient and stress-free for many. You don’t have to push your way through the crowd to get out of your favorite physical store. Most businesses are now focused on online sales because of the increasing demand and growth. They implement various strategies, including online advertising and customer satisfaction, to ensure customers’ continuous flow. However, in certain situations, the inflow of customers depends on the season. How do you stay ahead of eCommerce seasonality trends and improve your sales? What is eCommerce Seasonality? Seasonality is all about a seasonal demand for a particular product or service. Basically, it involves a business focusing on a particular period for customers to buy more or less. When we talk about the season, it cut across winter, summer, spring, and autumn. It also encompasses special events and holidays. To understand better, people buy warm clothes when the weather is cold. However, in late spring and summer, they spend more on sandals and shorts. Holidays could represent everything, such as Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas. While these seasons and holidays might not change yearly, businesses can track the situation regularly to re-strategize their marketing plans. Here are a few things you can do to help improve your sales to stay ahead of eCommerce seasonality trends. Strategy to lead eCommerce seasonality trends Think ahead for seasonal sales and deals Planning ahead of time is the first step to increasing your sales in a seasonal period. You need to develop a strategy you will use. The strategy will depend on your location and events. The particular objective might include winning new customers, selling off old stock, retaining your existing customers, increasing brand awareness, and managing your community. Once you have enlisted your goals and objective, you can create an action plan. Your action plan will enable you to determine what steps to take and the risks involved. In doing this, you can leverage statistics from previous seasons to make an executable plan and choose a suitable type of eCommerce promotion. Create a plan for online communication channels Once you create your objectives and goals, you need to devise an online communication channel to use. If your goal is to attract new customers, you need to determine if email marketing, social media campaigns, or content creation will be the best option. Furthermore, you need to automate order and schedule newsletters and publications on social media platforms. Whatever the objectives might be, an effective communication channel is crucial to your success. Therefore, leverage every online communication channel at your disposal to improve your brand awareness and sales. Prepare inventory Another essential step is to plan and prepare inventory to cope with demand fluctuation during peak seasons. For instance, reorganize space for fulfillment convenience, conduct stock counting, implement demand forecasting, or configuring backorder options. Further reading: Top inventory management techniques to implement in 2021. Optimize website and train staffs After all the marketing, your customers will order products through your store. Therefore, you have to optimize your website to generate more sales. You need to ensure you have a fast-loading website with all links working perfectly. In all, optimize your website to make the journey for your customer seamless. Furthermore, train your team because they are vital to the success of your campaign. You will receive more orders, and that means more packages to ship. Ensure your customer services are top-notch and available all through the clock to meet customers’ challenges. You can use email, telephone, and instant messages to receive feedback and complaints from customers. Remember, the goal is to respond quickly to each customer.
eCommerce automation checklist for your business
Managing every department of your digital store requires optimization, experimentation, and creativity. Beginning from the site design, themes to the layouts, the customer experience will affect your traffic, conversion, and sales results. Today, eCommerce automation allows you to spend time on other productive things. It frees your brand from time-consuming processes and the user experience you desire. What is eCommerce Automation? Automation is not a new concept. Moreover, with the advancement of technology, we have seen automation of various systems. eCommerce automation allows online store owners to automate their stores with inventory management, supply chain, and marketing systems to improve sales and revenue. At the present time, there are several eCommerce automation tools at your disposal to help grow your business. You can automate the process for your store following these three simple workflow steps. Trigger: Here, you choose a trigger that will begin the workflow process Condition: Certain conditions or parameters must be might for the workflow to run Action: What action (s) to take place when the condition is meant. For instance, once a customer creates an order and spends $5000, tag that customer as a VIP. Best eCommerce automation Checklist for your Business You can distinguish your brand from the crowd through a memorable customer experience. Additionally, you can address negative experiences, forecast future demand, and personalize your online store based on data collected. A store worth shopping at Utilize customer data to personalize your online store to buyers and drive growth. Email customer segments using an incentive to create an account Segment and tag customers based on browsing history, gender, and purchase history When tagged customers visit, display relevant and personalized products Are you experiencing low stocks? There is a solution Stimulate product demand through custom alerts when going low on a product. Check inventory whenever a stock gets low and place an order to the vendor Allow customers to sign up for back-in-stock alerts and automatically notify them when stock level changed Do you receive bad reviews? Receive automated alerts when customers leave negative reviews or feedback. Define a negative review When reviews meet particular criteria, create a ticket using the customer support tool Assign tickets to the customer support team to address before the next purchase How to turn shoppers to brand ambassadors You can turn shoppers to brand loyalists when you allow wish lists, improve store merchandising, and reward repeated purchases. Another option is to use referral programs and let your customers spread the word. Further reading: How to turn shoppers into loyal customers. Sell in real-time You can improve your customer experience through real-time merchandising. Show products on your store once your order is back in stock Make sold-out product hidden to avoid unhappy customers Set a threshold to notify you once you have a low inventory Rewards and wishes Allow your customers to create their wish lists and provide incentives when possible. Allow customers to create wish lists Send follow up emails marketing campaigns Reward customers using a rewarding system Keep your customers coming back Increase loyal customers using gift cards and personalized discounts. Send discount code to customers through email or text messages Segment customers based on purchase history Send an email, Facebook Messenger, push notifications with a gift card More ideas Need more room for improvement? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled a 40 eCommerce automation ideas checklist (and it’s interactive!) for your convenience. Register below to download the checklist. A little sneak peek: We hope this checklist can give your store a performance boost, since we’ve helped teams with not so many people (7, or even only 1) to manage their store effectively.
