Ho, Ho, Ho!
The festival of a rotund, white-bearded man covered in a red coat and white-fur-cuffed red trousers is just around the corner, and we can’t wait to get our share of surprises.
And so do the e-commerce and mobile shoppers.
Over the past few years, the Christmas celebration has been a real frenzy for these users because it’s the perfect time when they get to witness Santa Clause.
Yes. Santa – in their home – right into their mobile devices.
I call them e-Santa.
Don’t trust me?
When all the e-commerce platforms offer gifts and gratuity, they are nothing less than e-Santa.
Just as Santa, they stitch expectations, incites surprises, take care of gratification, and finally deliver.
It’s the period when stores turn into virtuously big-hearted almsgivers.
But the e-commerce stores need to adopt complex measures to present themselves as close as Santa during this righteous festival, and you shouldn’t neglect it if you own a store too.
Just in case if you are planning to brighten-up the festival of your customers – give them reasons to think of you as Santa.
Let’s help these customers discover Santa-figure in you by becoming one.
Table Of Content
- Dress-up as Santa – Convert the store Ambiance
- Keep your gift bag ready – offer schemes and promotions
- Climb up the reindeer sleigh- guarantee prioritize and fast delivery
- Reindeer sleighs don’t charge – follow the same
- Last-minute wish makers (shoppers) – pull off the expectations
- Make the present more presentable – wrap things up
- Sing relevant Christmas songs – make Christmas content
- Run like Reindeer sleigh – use accelerated mobile page
- The bonus method – don’t behave as Santa yet look more like Santa – Have a slim stomach
9 ways to evolve into e-Santa
1) Dress-up as Santa – Convert the store Ambiance.
Well, the first step towards becoming Santa is to dress-up in its attire.
That applies to your store too.
Converting your store into a Santa-based theme is an excellent idea to start with.
Adding up snowy stars or winter-themed elements with a pinch of red lights and green trees bring about a decent flair in the store.
It sets up the festival tone in the heads of the customers, thereby leading to bonafide and tangible store image.
Also, observe Santa’s cloth – the simplicity sits at the par, and he doesn’t try to overload himself with fancy draping.
Similarly, the thematic changes in your store should be simple and easy on your eyes – not something that distracts the purpose.
Minimal changes can give you the best output because major conversion may hit your ranks on the search engine.
So, the responsibility lies in your hands to drape your store in Santa’s wear, but not much that it looks out of place.
2) Keep your gift bag ready – offer, schemes, and promotions.
Well, Santa is a celebrated figure because it fulfills the dreams of all the dreamers.
Just try your hands in its bag, and you’ll get access to the interminable gift store – the bag which has all the worldly gifts.
That’s what you need to make your store – a gift store that has something great to offer on the products.
Also, most of the stores adopt standard sales practices such as theme-specific sales or holiday sales during Christmas.
However, some don’t seem to take it seriously and end up losing a considerable market pie chart.
Christmas sales, promotions, and offers urge users to pick items before the festival season dies – they get the clue that the offers are for a limited period.
I understand that it’s challenging to cut down on your profit to satisfy customer’s interest; however, most of the buyers expect more than 50% discount on Christmas.
So, try devising a generous discounting method, charge less than your competitors, and freeze your profit despite building a Santa-image around.
3) Climb up the reindeer sleigh – guarantee prioritize and fast delivery.
People expect Santa to knock their doors before the festival ends.
And Santa doesn’t disappoint them – his reindeer sleigh is too fast to leave any wish unfulfilled.
And that’s what they expect from your store as well.
Their orders should go as per the promise for any delay that would kill their excitement.
However, it is a tough ask because Santa’s sleigh moves at the speed of 650 miles per second— almost 300 times the speed of sound in air.
Don’t worry! You don’t have to replicate that speed.
You only have to guarantee the delivery before the d-day – make them feel that they are your priority, and you might knock their homes and offices at any time.
It ensures the customers that you empathize with their feelings this season, and recognize that guaranteed delivery will uplift their gifting sentiments.
Give them the assurity that your reindeer sleigh is ever ready to carry their products, and they should be prepared to get hold of the product any time now.
4) Reindeer sleighs don’t charge – follow the same.
You’d shut away Santa when he gets to your door and forces shipping charges.
SC: *I need to feed my reindeers, give me the shipping charges*
You: *Oh, please! Cut that out! I am returning the item. Buzz off*
But Santa doesn’t behave that way.
It is way too generous, and the quality should be the spirit animal for your store – at least till you have online Christmas sales.
Free shipping is the best type of discount/gift you could give to your customers – probably; this is why it has become one of the highly anticipated holiday marketing strategies.
In fact, 75% of the customers support free shipping and 85% back out when they fail to find Christmas sales online. [1]
So, be an ideal Santa who advances to countless homes without expecting anything in return – because you are Santa, your audience isn’t.
5) Last-minute wish makers (shoppers) – pull off the expectations.
Santa likes to cover all the orders.
Whether you make wishes two months before Christmas or two-days before it – the roly-poly chubby man emblazoned in red always ensures that all the gifts get delivered as early as possible.
You have to do the same for your last-minute shoppers.
Statistically, the last-minute shoppers exist in all corners of the world, and you should gear up for meeting their orders as soon as you can.
Fulfilling their orders in short notice develops a sense of credibility and quality trust among customers, which often converge into loyalty too.
Moreover, when you have beaten their expectations, you can look forward to having them in your store more often.
That will push you one step closer to becoming e-Santa.
6) Make the present more presentable – wrap things up.
According to the urban legends, Santa doesn’t give the unwrapped gift.
The purpose of Santa is to generate excitement and unfold them.
And needless to mention that that wrapper creates an air of suspense and delivers the bundle of joy.
You would want to do something of a similar order.
The Christmas season is about gifting families and close ones and recognizing that wrappers can ease up people’s jobs who don’t want to waste their time in finding gift packaging service.
You can add this as an additional service to send the message loud and clear to your audience that you care about them and their bundle of joy— and you are willing to make the items more presentable for them.
You can charge them for wrappers; however, free embellishment has a proven track record for better conversion.
7) Sing relevant Christmas songs – make Christmas content
Could you ever imagine Santa grooving over Pink Floyd numbers?
No.
Because he understands the relevance of Christmas – he knows that Christmas deserves Christmas songs rather than sabbath or Easter hymns, which don’t make sense at this point in time in the year.
So, he goes on to sing Jingle Bells and The Christmas Carol.
Similarly, the customers should find relevance in your store when they shop during the Christmas season.
The web content, product description, and the blog content should revolve around Christmas.
And add more relevance to your store by assisting the best Christmas buys.
Having X-mas content like “Top 5 gifting articles this Christmas” or “Become Santa at your workplace by gifting the top 10 best items” can dispel the doubts of customers who have been keeping patience with the selection.
Linking your products to these blogs, and kicking in the purchase zest with catchy lines like “unfold the product to see the magic,” will further up the shape of e-Santa.
Also, add Christmas flavor to the product description and give users the crispy yet relevant reason to think of your items as ideal Christmas gifts.
If time doesn’t permit, try to add the relevant content for popular products – the products which can lead the way to higher conversion.
8) Run like Reindeer sleigh – use accelerated mobile page.
Santa barely takes a jiffy to reach from one point to another – thanks to its super agile reindeer sleigh.
That should be the priority of your store – in and out.
Your aspiration to become e-Santa may drain to conduct if you don’t speed up your e-commerce store.
Speeding up your store refers to improving the page response time.
Even the wish makers stop making wishes when Santa doesn’t show up on time – you are just a store.
With the help of Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP), show up your page in a wink.
It’s a Google-backed technique which is known to cut-short the page load time, and add cherries on the user-experience.
You can call it vital because an average customer only spends 10-20 seconds on a web page.
It means that the window of attention for you is too small, and you can’t afford to decapitate this opportunity because of page loading issues.
To make this fruit sweeter, get SEO services, and unique holiday marketing ideas from eCommerce marketing agencies and experts of the industry.
They understand that user-experience is directly proportional to user-engagement, and their motivation to improve your page performance can inch you closer to Santa.
9) The bonus method – don’t behave as Santa yet look more like Santa – Have a slim stomach.
While all the above steps ask you to behave like Santa, the bonus method advocates a contrary characteristic.
Go! Get yourself a slim stomach, unlike Santa!
Having a slim stomach means minimizing your profit for spreading smiles at this carnival.
The slimmer your stomach, the closer you get to the Santa Avatar (as Santa doesn’t think of profit this season).
Additional methods to boost your eCommerce sales during christmas
- Analyze which product or services did better or worse than others.
- Analyze the competition.
- Analyze number of audience during intervals.
- Analyze and collect all the information about your past experience, customers and competitors and plan accordingly.
- Analyze which product or services did better or worse than others.
- Analyze the competition.
- Analyze number of audience during intervals.
- Analyze and collect all the information about your past experience, customers and competitors and plan accordingly.
Kick-Start Now
2. Demand
To suit up the business during Yule, all you need are appealing marketing strategies.
If you have an Ecommerce website then you need to do some serious thinking on how to turn any festive season to your business growth advantage.
When Demand is high and the margin for error is low the potential for costly errors is thus very real.
Necessary Groundwork
3. Visual Merchandising
The major audience around the world is lured into the deal by visual appearance and Web Designing plays a major role in that department.
Customizing Web designs in festive themes is the new trend in the digitized world, anyone who owns a business knows the importance of walking hand in hand with web designing trends.
With innovative designs that include festive images, banner placement or even a customized shopping cart, you can now easily add some holiday cheer to your website. If you’ve already completed these prep, do not forget graphic designs, as they play a major role.
Always remember that nothing grabs attention of people more than a sense of emergency. Countdown timers are the persuasive features that you can easily add in your website or emails.
4. Creative Graphic Designs
Graphic designs tend to attract eyes as honey attracts bees; many people don’t know this but graphic design is a component of a web design. With the right color, contrast, and balance, you can now easily entice potential shoppers and traffic easily.
In this century, mobile dominates the world; make sure to ready your website for heavy mobile traffic spike.
A mobile-friendly website is not just an added option it has become a necessity that drives more traffic in.
5. Determine Your Campaign Strategy
It might sound surprising but most people start looking for Christmas presents as early as November, so make an offer or deal that nobody can refuse.
You know those ads you often see in Google searches? Those are Pay Per Click particularly Google Adwords PPC that are responsible for a ton of web traffic you see on all online channels.
Hiring the top PPC Gurus in the game who you think will be able to make a cut for you is not a bad idea after all.
If you need help planning your ads, here’s some resources from our blog:
- Get $75 in ad credit when you spend $25
- Spend $25 and get $75
Adding festive spirit in your PPC campaigns by using holiday inspired images, Ad text and keywords can boost up the business aptly.
Targeting Holiday-Related PPC Keywords is a great way of increasing chances of potential clickers and buyers.
Everyone is a big fan of discounts and coupons so place an appealing deal by placing coupon or promo code in your PPC Ads and voila! Your sales will spike up magically.
Christmas Email Marketing Prep
6. Deck Up The Pre-Christmas Emails
Email is the most common feature that every mobile consist and email is how most marketers convey their deals with.
43% of marketing experts has agreed upon the fact that Pre-Christmas marketing plays an important role in generating additional sales during this nut cracking festival.
If you wish to reap on the marketing profit nirvana then you must be prepared for following email marketing strategies:
- Pre-Holiday
- Shopping Stage
- Christmas Countdown
- Christmas: The D Day
- Post-Christmas
7. Send Abandoned Shopping Carts Emails
Cart abandonment emails are a big opening for store owners to recover otherwise lost bunce.
These Follow-up Emails gives you opportunity to engage with your customers which increases the chances of turning these customers into potential customers that leave your site without completing the purchase.
8. "Plan B's" That Can Save Your Business
As an entrepreneur you are destined to face some challenges along the road, and you always need to be prepared with a Plan B if you wish to succeed.
If your Plan A fails you won’t be facing failure if you come up with a re-approach that can save you from the fall.
Being adaptable is the best trade of a businessman. It’ll help any business person it sharpen their strategy and approach making them more evaluating.
Unwrapping the final words
Christmas is not about disappointing anyone, but spreading words of Santa – to care, love, and prioritize.
And if you own an e-commerce store, you have the opportune moment to share those words by following these simple optimizing techniques.
If you are proactive in understanding and executing these measures, you can quickly drive traffic on your will— and nothing could stop your e-store from turning into e-Santa.
