How to Prepare Your Online Store for the 2020 Holiday Season
The holiday season should be one of the most profitable times of the year for your online store. But there’s no doubt about it, holiday shopping will look different in 2020. Get ahead of the curve and prepare now for a new kind of holiday shopping.
Improve Shipping & Deliveries
Almost a year after the country first shut down for COVID-19, retailers are still dealing with its impact on the supply chain. Delays in shipping and stocks selling out are common. Some of this is out of your control, but pieces of it can be improved with an advanced dispatching solution. Optimize routes and your delivery workflow to get purchases into the hands of customers faster. Consider offering free or discounted shipping for bulk orders, new customers or promotions to give a sales boost and remind customers that December 21st is the last day for Ups Next Day Air and USPS Priority Express mail to be delivered by Christmas.
Streamline The Buying Process
After doing the hard work of marketing and bringing customers to your site, the last thing you want is for them to click off before they buy. Make the buying process as easy as possible. Your Logicblock site is already designed to help you make sales; all you need to do is take advantage of it. Get creative. Use a chatbot service to engage customers or cart abandonment recovery software to make additional sales.
Replace One Day Sales With Season Long Discounts
This year’s theme is to extend the buying period instead of the usually larger, one-day sales event. Many retailers are treating Black Friday as a month-long sale, for example. Instead of cramming it all into one day or week, longer sales periods will help to offset COVID delays and system overloads.
Offer Multiple Payment Options
Due to fears of crowds and the ongoing pandemic, customers are buying online more now than ever before. But they still expect the same conveniences as shopping in stores. Offering additional payment methods, such as Paypal, gives the customers more flexibility encouraging them to spend more.
Use Google Search Console
Google search console is a free tool to help you improve SEO, driving more customers to your site and increasing sales. You can see data for how many visitors come to your site, what products they look at and when they convert into customers. Watch for bounce rates that show site visitors who leave quickly, before making a purchase or viewing other pages.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Offer shoppers the convenience they crave with an easy to use, mobile friendly website. Many holiday shoppers buy in the moment, wherever they are, from a mobile device. If you’re already a Logicblock customer, we have good news: all our sites are automatically mobile friendly. If you’re experiencing issues or have questions about your site’s mobile status, submit a ticket request to Logicblock and we’ll troubleshoot it together.
Connect With & Engage Customers
It’s not enough to offer great pricing and products for the holidays if your customers don’t know about them. This is the perfect opportunity to re-establish communication with existing customers or spend time engaging new ones. Logicblock offers users multiple ways to connect with customers. It’s easy to use third party services, such as Mailchimp, to email promotions or a connected social media app (FWB, for example) to blast your company through all available channels. Offer a loyalty program that can be set up and managed on your Logicblock site to encourage new and existing users to keep coming back long after the holidays are over.
You’ve already made the smart choice of trusting Logicblock with your online store. All you need to do is tweak it slightly to get the most out of this holiday season.
Not a Logicblock customer yet? See how Logicblock can help you create a secure and profitable eCommerce site.
