Throughout the year, various holiday periods alternate, from Valentine's Day, Easter holidays, to the festive December, which represents the peak of gift shopping for the entire year. It is important for buyers to find their way to your Magento online store before the holidays and purchase holiday gifts there. Several factors can persuade them: the appearance of the store, prices, promotional offers, and more.
To more easily convince your potential customers to purchase your products, we reveal 6 simple steps that will increase your sales before the holidays.
1. Study store data on customer habits
Knowing and analyzing data from your store and analytical tools is crucial for your business success and sales campaigns. If you know the holiday sales data from the previous year, you can determine what positively influenced customers and what deterred them from purchasing. In this way, you can use all this data for this year's campaign and further improve sales. Based on the results of last year's sales campaign, you will know how to choose the right sales channels and advertising paths, thus reaching the maximum number of potential customers who will respond to the invitation to visit your online store.
If you haven't been in business long enough to have last year's statistics, make sure to save this year's strategy and learn as much as possible from it for the next year.
2. Study the competition
If you are not yet subscribed to your competitors' newsletters, do it right now! This way, you will be informed about what they are doing and what steps they are taking on their sales path. With the help of search engines, you can also look into the past and find out what sales campaign they had last year. From this, you can create an even better sales plan for your company and surpass the competition. Let this be a starting point for developing your own strategy, don't just be a "parrot" repeating after someone else.
3. Prepare your sales campaigns before the holiday season starts
If you prepare everything in advance, it will be easier for you – when the holiday frenzy begins, you will just turn on the advertising. It is good to take the time beforehand to study the right keywords that will be relevant before a specific holiday period. You must not forget to include them in your online store, even if they are only seasonal in nature. Among the keywords, it is also good to include more general phrases such as: Christmas gift, Valentine's gift, free shipping, gift voucher... These may not directly call for your products, but they are certainly relevant for all gift seekers.
4. Don't forget about SEO
SEO is aimed at organic traffic from search engines, which accounts for about a quarter of all purchases in online stores. When you have already studied keywords for campaign preparation in the previous point, it is good to incorporate this into your content as well. Prepare a new holiday category, publish an article on the topic of holidays in your blog or a related blog, and make it easier for people to find you in search engines. Since a quarter of purchases is not negligible, it is worth the effort.
5. Start sales promotions for known customers
From the statistics, you can extract to whom you have already successfully sold products from your store. For them, you can prepare a special sales promotion with a personal touch, a special offer, or something similar. Since they have already shown you trust once, there is a greater chance they will do so again. You really must not overlook this, as returning customers can be a strong point of your sales strategy.
6. Mobile app or auto-responsive online store?
More and more people rely on portable mobile devices that go everywhere with them. Fixed and portable computers are less used in favor of smartphones and tablets, so it is important that your online store keeps up with the times. You have two options – either create a mobile app or equip your online store with auto-responsiveness, which means it automatically adapts to all types of screens. This way, you will also receive orders from your customers via mobile devices. Research has shown that at least 20% of people use portable mobile devices for shopping in online stores, so be prepared for them!
And don't forget about the store's appearance: Magento stores are flexible, so you can freely design the graphic appearance for a specific time of year. In winter, let it snow, around Valentine's Day let red and hearts be in the foreground, Easter cannot pass without bunnies, chicks, and colorful eggs, and festive December without good men, Christmas trees, and gifts.
