It’s not looking good out there on America’s financial horizon. Supply chain problems continue to plague both ecommerce sales and brick-and-mortar stores sales alike. Inflation is at hyper levels. The price of gas is through the roof now that the country again relies on foreign oil sources. Crime and looting spike out of control. Lastly, workers leave their jobs in droves now that the government prints money to keep them at home.
That means running a business and increasing sales just got a lot harder. But there are solutions out there. One solution is investing in a conversion optimization tool that allows you to analyze your sales funnel and identify “path-to-purchase improvements.” In fact, if done right, your ecommerce business flourishes even during stressful times when COVID variants continue to come.
According to a new report, ecommerce actually expanded by an incredible 33.6 percent during 2020, bringing about close to $1trillion in overall sales. Naturally, this was the result of massive store closings all across the country and indeed, the entire globe.
However, now that brick and mortar stores are planning a comeback, one way or another in 2021, some business people have become skeptical over the expansion of online commerce. Marketers, however, are said to fall on the side of optimism while they project a near 14 percent growth in ecommerce in the new year.
Whatever the case, now that the holiday season is upon us, it’s time for ecommerce businesses from booksellers to baseball hat companies to strategize their “optimization efforts.” Here’s just a few ways you can increase your ecommerce sales during what promises to be a difficult holiday season.
Webpage Speed
Customers are especially attracted to an ecommerce purchasing experience that’s both quick and easy. They want a website to meet their demands immediately when they click on it. If it loads too slowly or is difficult to navigate, they will move on to a competitor’s site. This means a higher bounce rate along with a shopping cart abandonment increase.
A recent study shows that ecommerce consumers will abandon your website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Full stop. This is why you need to make certain your site is loading as fast as possible during heavy traffic seasons like the holidays.
You can accomplish by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to get real-time data on your website’s speed. You can therefore identify serious issues that must be corrected.
Personalize the Customer Experience
There’s increased ecommerce competition during the holidays. So, think about tapping into “result-oriented” technology solutions for your conversions that offer customers highly personalized shopping experiences.
Some online store owners use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to bump up their holiday season conversions and sales via direct customer interaction. Your website forecasts what repeat customers want to buy. This is as though a live salesperson worked directly with them.
Through the power of AI, your site can recommend products the customer might be looking for and then provide methods for upselling other related items. You conversion rates will rises if done correctly.
You can tap into machine learning-based solutions and AI that utilizes widgets to display personalized messages including recommendations to customers during their shopping experience.
The engineering of this tailored AI technique is not only for product recommendations, however. For instance, the AI conducts a personal chat with consumers. It makes them feel taken care of and even special.
Take Advantage of Urgency
It’s not always easy attracting customer’s attention during the busy holiday season, especially when times are hard. This is a period when it seems like every ecommerce business is offering discounts and limited time specials.
The solution is to take full advantage of urgency to promote sales that are only available for a short time. By building a sense of urgency, customers feel like they might miss out on a golden opportunity unless they “shop now.” These are customers who are more inclined to FOMO. That is, Fear Of Missing Out.
Create deals for your most popular items and then upsell them on other things that might not be as popular. Create a deal whereby if you by product X at a discount, you also get Product Y for a similar discount. Offer the deal for a limited time so customers shop now.
