Even though it feels like we've just wrapped up summer, now's the time to start thinking of how to get your shoppers to close their shopping carts and increase conversions as the e-commerce business peak at the holiday season.
As always, competition will be especially fierce with free shipping, discounted deals, coupons, and free returns as well. Major online retailers have already figured out what it takes to get customers to convert, and many are already sweetening the deal with free returns as well.
But what else can you do to make sure your holiday launches are a success? Despite freebie, discount and sales, there are several tested conversion tips that could really help scale the growth of your company.
Read on for five ways to increase those holiday conversions:
1.Keep Up with the Mobile Web Market
Trends predicted for 2017 indicate that the mobile web market will continue to surge. As an e-commerce business, you must have a mobile friendly version of your existing website as a downloadable app that will quickly get your customers into the browsing and buying mindset.
An increasing number of sales are happening already with mobile devices, with Apple Pay netting 50% of annual sales from which 40% were from mobile devices.
Don't rule out desktops and ipads. Aim for all types of digital users to optimize conversions from all devices.
2.Help Customers Make an Informed Purchase
Before they actually pull out their credit cards, your customers need enough details and information to make an informed buying purchase. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for an e-commerce retailer is to encourage the shopper to close the sale as part of check-out.
If they are first-time buyers or prospects, they may be hesitant about buying from you especially right before the holidays. This is why it's especially important to build that know-like-trust connection before the stress of the holidays becomes an issue.
Also buyers are especially feeling rushed and frazzled, and high-quality customer service can actually help close the sale, leaving them with a positive experience, and encouraging them to be repeat buyers.
Provide content rich video tutorials, blog posts, live chats to increase engagement that lead to a call-to-action. Providing an incentive like a freebie when they sign-up for your e-zine or newsletter can be especially attractive. And don't forget those coupons for free shipping and other discounts and deals!
3.Create a Sense of Urgency
As the holiday looms, your customer may start getting easily get nervous about missing important deadlines for gift purchases, so adding a countdown timer to the ordering deadline and final shipping deadlines can actually keep them on track without getting stressed.
Let your shoppers know when items must be bought to be delivered on time by providing a delivery information page that also listed the "delivered by" dates along with the various shipping ranges from the least to most expensive. Providing free-shipping will help you win over the hearts of your customers.
This method can also be an incentive for shoppers to close their abandoned shopping carts.
4.Encourage Checkouts of Abandoned Shopping Carts with Follow-Up Emails
Gather analytics to monitor your shopper's browsing habits and then follow-up with a targeted email campaign to make recommendations or encourage checkout of an abandoned shopping cart. Offer additional product suggestions that are more in line of what they are looking for.
5.Display Popular Gifts and Payment Icons
Make life super easy for unsure and hesitant customers by telling them what to buy. One suggestion is to display best-selling gift recommendations in various price ranges so they can just click and checkout.
Display these highly ranked items in a prominent eye-catching place along with comments to help sell the product. Display the kinds of payments you'll accept including Apple Pay. One of the reasons why customers end up abandoning their shopping carts is because they don't know which payment forms you accept.
As you can see, these tried and tested action steps can be used all throughout the year, but specifically before the rush and last-minute frenzy of holiday shopping that can impact the growth of your e-commerce store. Use these strategies for maintaining brand loyalty and attracting new and repeat buyers as you continue to expand the products to your e-commerce store.