getty
The end-of-year holiday season—traditionally the busiest time of year for shopping—brings both excitement and stress for retailers, especially in the age of e-commerce. Whether some or all of your sales come from online shopping, there are many steps that it’s essential to get right if your business is going to stand out and compete in a very crowded, very competitive online marketplace. And it’s important to ensure nothing disrupts the ease, convenience and security of shopping on your e-commerce site—or your customers will head to someone else’s.
Fortunately, with some smart prep work, e-commerce companies can leverage technology tools to ensure their customers have an exceptional, worry-free experience. Below, 15 members of Forbes Technology Council share tips to help e-commerce companies prepare for the holiday season sales rush.
1. Host Social Media Events
If you want to see explosive holiday sales this year, I suggest hosting social media events, such as giveaways and interactive livestreams. According to Statista, 4.7 billion people use social media, and most are interested in tech products that will improve their lives. Tap into this audience and you can easily connect with new users while building rapport with existing customers. - Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
2. Test Your Communications Infrastructure
E-commerce businesses should bulletproof their customer experience by making sure phone lines, phone systems and other critical infrastructure systems are working and can handle high volumes. Fully tested chatbots can help live agents better manage surges and help companies save time and money, create better user experiences, and, if done right, increase customer satisfaction, which helps generate more qualified leads and higher revenues. - Alok Kulkarni, Cyara Solutions Corp.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
3. Optimize Using Last Year’s Data
Retailers should get consumers excited about the holidays with a build-up campaign that includes exclusive products, discounts and so on. Leverage last year’s performance data to help optimize your e-commerce site, and take an omnichannel approach to ensure online and physical store campaigns are cohesive. Additionally, create virtual stores to provide more engagement and ultimately increase sales. - Olga Dogadkina, Emperia
4. Ensure An Omnichannel Presence
E-commerce companies need to make sure they have an omnichannel presence and meet their customers where they are. In addition to websites and mobile apps, customers now shop from social media platforms and messaging platforms. Retailers and e-commerce companies need to have an omnichannel strategy and take advantage of all the channels. - Selva Pandian, DemandBlue
5. Test All Avenues Of Breakage
Preparing for a mega sales rush? Think outside of the box as it pertains to your technology. Consider pushing your product catalog into a static site hosted on CloudX. Ramp up the underlying horsepower for your cart, and ensure your payment providers won’t cause show-stopping glitches. Test all avenues of breakage to see how your site behaves. The best way to deal with issues is to have a plan. - Andrew Siemer, Inventive
6. Build Up Your Staffing Levels
Staff up now, and pay more than the competition. The labor market is already tight, and people are resigning at rates not seen in decades. If you want to maintain good levels of customer service, you will need to be prepared to pay for it. - Blair Currie, Snibble Corp.
7. Draft And QA Your Holiday Website
Do you plan on running different holiday sales? Will there be different sales funnels, requiring different graphics? Don’t forget that you can build out much of this before the holiday rush. Draft and QA your new website in the weeks prior. All you should have to do is hit “Publish,” because your focus needs to be on product delivery and customer service instead of technical issues. - Nicholas Domnisch, EES Health
8. Optimize Your Mobile Site
Today’s customers mostly use their mobile devices to make online purchases. According to several academic surveys, users are still hunting for gifts online to avoid interacting with others. It’s crucial to prioritize your consumers’ holiday shopping experiences when preparing for the season. Optimize your mobile site for conversions by offering specific promotions and a streamlined purchasing process. - Chintan Shah, Brainvire InfoTech Inc.
9. Carry Out Surge Testing
Before the beginning of the holiday season, do a lot of testing and make sure that your website, payment gateways and all other systems are ready to handle the expected surge in traffic and transactions. You don’t want your website or payment system to crash. This will cause you not only to lose a large number of sales during the holiday season but also to lose customer trust in the future. - Peter Abualzolof, Mashvisor
10. Ensure Your Platform Is Scalable
Be sure you’ve covered scalability. Today’s e-commerce organization has to be ready for tremendous ebbs and flows in business. To address this, use a cloud-native, infinitely scalable solution that grows based on demand. This can help you optimize costs and ensure consistent services are delivered to your customers. - Marc Fischer, Dogtown Media LLC
11. Explore Marketing Automation Tools
This is a great time to take advantage of marketing automation tools to create targeted campaigns and drive more sales. You can segment your list and create targeted emails with special offers and deals that will appeal to your different customer groups. Automated campaigns can help you boost sales and keep your customers engaged during the holiday season rush. - Fabio Moioli, Spencer Stuart
12. Solidify Your Logistics System
’Tis the season—for logistics, logistics! Get your internal processes down when it comes to delivery of information around order tracking and statuses. As consumers, we all know how comfortable we feel once we know our package is on the truck for delivery. Work with your shipper to deliver auto-updates to your customers when their packages ship. It’s the last piece of the puzzle before you get paid, so make it count! - Kevin Huber, IT Outlet
13. Have A Disaster Recovery Plan In Place
It is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place. With the seasonal uptick in sales and increasing reliance on e-commerce platforms, what is your business’ backup plan? If needed, your business must be able to recover lost data from a second location where the data is backed up. - Matt Pierce, Immediate
14. Consider Offering A Buy Now, Pay Later Option
In 2022, I would strongly suggest having a buy now, pay later option for your customers, especially on lower-priced items. It can drive those impulsive extra purchases that won’t occur if there isn’t an option to pay in installments. - Igor Khalatian, Iris Dating
15. Manage Your Full Technology Risk
Manage your full technology risk—including security testing and assessment, addressing cybersecurity and privacy, managing confidentiality and integrity, and ensuring adequate technology capacity to ensure availability. The ultimate need is to provide confidence to your customers that they can trust your platforms. This will help you avoid consumers’ fickle transfer of their business from your company to your competitors. - Mark Brown, British Standards Institution (BSI)
