Retail has undergone a major transformation in 2020. As physical stores were forced to move online, consumers’ buying habits also changed exponentially. Thus, the growth in eCommerce accelerated quickly. As a matter of fact, pressure is created to amp up their online marketing strategies and ensure it delivers to their peak performance, especially during high traffic seasons. Delivering this seamless customer experience online also adds to successful sales and consistent growth. Therefore, in this article, we will share 5 peak season planning strategies for BigCommerce stores.
Personalize your shopping experience
If we have to consider one aspect that is missing from online sales, it’s often the personal experience. 80% of the customers now are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. Like in a store, where the salesperson knows what a customer is looking at and how interested they are, brands should be capable of providing similar customized services online.
Combining data on visitor behavior and marketing automation ensures that each visitor gets a unique experience that matches where they are in their purchasing journey. This can be done by offering your seasonal promotions, offers, and interactions according to:
- What page your visitor is on
- Where your visitors are on your page
- Where they came from – so their traffic source or campaign URL
- Which country they are from
- The number of times they have been on your website
- Their shopping basket value
Be proactive in your approach
Just like selling in-store, online customer service should also be proactive, not reactive. You can archive this by targeting visitors based on their behavior and actions on your website and accordingly approaching them with relevant information.
For successful peak season planning for online sales, make sure to use real-time customer behavioral data to your best advantage. Just like in-store, where you can advise the customer or guide them to a specific direction, based on what they are buying. Online customer service must be equipped with such abilities too. Insights about your customer’s shopping patterns will enable the sales team to do upselling and cross-selling efficiently.
Up-sell and cross-sell strategically
Shoppers with items in their baskets provide a real opportunity for cross-selling relevant products and up-selling a higher value product. Real-time visibility of a shopping cart with a record of a shopper’s previous history, creates multiple sales and marketing opportunities. Here are a few to take advantage of:
- Cross-Sell: When a shopper places an item in the basket, you can suggest a value pack of other relevant items that are often purchased along with it in a chat message.
- Up-Sell: When an item is placed into the basket, a pop-up suggesting a newer and better version of the item of a higher value can be suggested instead.
- Offers: When a shopper has a basket with a value of £60, for instance, remind them of discounts and offers available only if they increase the value of their basket to £75 or £100.
Automate this process as much as you can, to focus on high-value leads at the right time and effectively. This might sound a bit complicated, but it will get much easier thanks to BigCommerce Product Recommendation App. This is an application that creates & manages multiple rules. They can base on customer behavior and choose specific conditions to show recommendations. These can be pages, cart items or values, and customer behaviors. In conclusion, this is a simple and flexible solution for upselling and cross-selling products. Read more: Bigcommerce upsell
Stand out with interactive ads
Interactive video ads can extend the number of time consumers spend with your brand’s ads by 47% more than static non-interactive ads.
Interactive ads typically react to a user’s movements i.e. widening when a user scrolls down the page, playing a video when clicked on, or expanding as a user hovers over it. It’s a powerful way for marketers to prolong the time consumers spend with their brand.
Think mobile-first
Over the past decade, mobile usage has grown significantly. The share of mobile commerce or “m-commerce” in all eCommerce seems to rise to over 71% by the year 2021. This can be accredited to the quick adoption of new smart devices and an ever-growing screen size that makes browsing and purchasing online easy. Long gone are the days of just buying on desktop – many consumers now complete their entire customer journey via mobile. Even today, consumers who buy on the desktop will first research products on mobile. Clearly, not optimizing your eCommerce website for mobile can cost online retailers a loss of market share!
As the holiday season approaches, we want to help you optimize your eCommerce website for the most hectic time of the year. We hope these peak season planning tips give you new ideas on how to succeed in the new normal. More than that are tools to get ahead of your competitors, and actionable insights to increase your sales in 2021.
