Recently on the Logicblock blog we aggregated some great information about when to market your ecommerce store for the holidays. Today we want to talk about how to make your ecommerce store stand out during the holiday season. These ten outside-the-box ideas will get you started with a few creative marketing ideas of your own:
Offer Wish Lists – Give users the ability to create a wish list of their most coveted items on your site. When they share the list with their friends, you’ve just attracted more potential customers to your online store!
Create a Gift Guide – Many potential customers start their holiday shopping with a list of who they need to buy for and not much else. Take a cue from Amazon.com’s Gift Guides and create gift guides “For Him,” “For Grandma,” or for “The Gadget-Obsessed Nephew.” Get creative! If you own a bookstore, offer up titles for “The Incurable Romantic” or the “Mystery Maven.” Sound complicated? We’re here to help. Logicblock’s 7Cart eCommerce solution makes creating landing pages and gift guides simpler than ever.
Cross Promote with Other Online Stores – A cross promotion between your peanut butter store and your friend’s jelly store will go together like… well, you know. Find other online stores that fill the gaps in your inventory and perfectly complement your own offerings, then put together some packages. Their customers will discover your store, your customers will discover theirs, and everybody will win.
Offer Free Shipping – When shopping online, customers prefer WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get. When you offer free shipping, your customers are assured that the prices they see in your store are the prices they are going to pay at check out, minus a surprising shipping charge.
Offer Combined Shipping – If you – and your bank account – can’t see your way clear to offer totally free shipping, try offering a discount on shipping when customers order multiple items.
Offer Gift Wrapping and Decoration – Many people shop online because they are too busy to make it out to the store. It stands to reason they’d be too busy to get out the scissors, tape and ribbons and wrap their presents, too. So offer to do it for them, and add a pretty bow and a holiday note, too!
Include Plenty of Holiday Themed Pictures and Videos – Sure most ecommerce sites “decorate” for the holidays by adding a sparkling snowy header or a banner featuring shiny wrapped presents, but you can be more creative than that. Add pictures of people enjoying your products around the holiday feast or a video of your staff carefully gift wrapping the presents your customers will soon be ordering from your site.
Coupon Codes – Offer coupon codes around the web. Facebook advertising has been especially lucrative this year. Targeting your audience with a Facebook ad, then offering a coupon code in exchange for clicking the “like” button on your Facebook fan page is an excellent way to snag sales and build up your social media presence – even after the holidays are a thing of the past.
Give Discounts for Taking Action – Coupon codes are not the only way to keep your customers coming back for more. Offer a discount or freebie in exchange for site visitors signing up for your email list, referring a friend (or five), or even Tweeting about your latest sale.
Email Blasts – From announcing sales and promotions to reminding former customers to return to your store, there are plenty of things you can do with email blasts this holiday season. And Logicblock’s Enterprise Business Suite makes managing them easy and, dare we say, fun!
We hope these ten ideas get you thinking outside the box with your store this holiday season. Happy selling, and happy, happy holidays!