It’s that time of the year again! The holiday season is a peak shopping period, particularly around events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the weeks leading up to Christmas.
With global e-commerce sales projected to reach $6.3 trillion by the end of the year, the stakes are high for brands looking to maximize their share through e-commerce holiday readiness tips.
Importance of E-Commerce Holiday Readiness
During the holiday season, consumers are more willing to spend money, driven by traditions of gift-giving and a general desire to find the best deals.
Brands that are well-prepared can significantly enhance their sales potential and meet customer expectations for a seamless shopping experience.
According to Forbes Advisor, Amazon commanded a 37.6% share of total e-commerce shopping, and the number of digital buyers is projected to increase to 2.77 billion by 2025.
EYStudios Chief Operating Officer Jay Brimberry observed that in 2023, 30% of the whole holiday shopping happened on Amazon holiday sales and Walmart. This calls for creating an effective e-commerce holiday readiness guide for brands and sellers.
READ MORE | Interested to know about the influence of digital in retail? Check out our blog on All You Need to Know About Digital Influence in Retail
8 Action Strategies for E-Commerce Holiday Readiness
To ensure a successful holiday season, you should focus on several key factors that leverage digital shelf analytics effectively:
Managing Your Inventory Is Key To Prevent Unwanted Stockouts
It is a no-brainer to ensure that your brand has adequate stock of popular items to avoid stockouts.
If you offer ample stock of different product offerings, customers will tend to feel more loyal and confident about your brand.
You can also update the product assortments according to seasonal and festive demands.
Walmart’s Halloween decor is an excellent example of how retailers and brands offer products that cater to consumer preferences.
Digital shelf analytics can provide insights into which products are trending and help predict demand based on historical data.
This data-driven approach will help you optimize SKU levels, ensuring that you meet customer demand without excess inventory.
Regularly Updating Your PDPs Does the Trick
The digital shelf product page optimization consists of various elements, including product images, descriptions, pricing, and customer reviews.
Your brand’s content on an online e-commerce platform like Amazon, Walmart, etc., should comply with marketplace standards and consumer expectations for the holiday season.
For instance, the product images on your PDPs should reflect the overall mood and spirit of the holiday season.
This small step can have a huge impact on customers, as these images can create a sense of urgency to take advantage of holiday offers.
To make this process easier, digital shelf analytics tools can help you monitor content compliance and identify areas for improvement.
By optimizing product listings, you can enhance visibility and increase conversion rates on major e-commerce retailers.
Identifying Sellers Who Do Not Follow Your Permissible Price Listings
The value of your brand is partially dictated by its pricing. If sellers choose to sell the products under MAP pricing, it can take a heavy toll on your brand integrity.
This tendency can also hamper fair competition among retailers and cause price erosion.
Price wars can also escalate during the holiday season, leading to potential brand devaluation.
So, it is always better to use a MAP monitoring solution that can help you monitor your brand’s price positioning across multiple channels.
This is especially crucial during the holiday season, as ensuring MAP compliance enables proactive adjustments to maintain competitive pricing.
READ MORE | Want to know more about different MAP monitoring softwares available in market? Read our blog on the Best MAP Monitoring Software You Should Consider for E-Commerce
Paying Attention to Your Customer Reviews To Create Relevant Sales Campaigns
Customer reviews and ratings significantly influence a consumer’s purchasing decisions. E-commerce businesses worldwide have been identifying new innovative ways to engage with customers and get their feedback through social media, e-mails, surveys, etc.
As a brand or seller, you should actively monitor reviews using the best ratings and review software to gauge customer sentiment and identify areas for improvement.
A review monitoring software can aggregate review data across platforms, providing insights into customer preferences and pain points, especially during the holiday season when sales can peak.
By addressing negative feedback and enhancing product offerings, you can improve the brand’s reputation and increase sales.
Identifying Trending Keywords Can Increase Brand Visibility
Effective keyword research is essential for improving your product visibility in search results during the holiday season when consumers are searching for more products.
We should be able to analyze new online search trends to identify high-performing keywords that resonate with our target audience.
Digital shelf analytics is a great tool that can provide insights into the share of search for brand visibility.
This can benefit your brand in two ways: it can optimize product titles, descriptions, and tags for better search rankings. Secondly, it can help you understand what consumers are looking for during the holiday season, leading to better product assortments.
Scaling the Holiday Sales With Offers, Deals and Promotions
The holiday season is synonymous with promotions and discounts. It goes without saying that everyone in the market would be developing compelling promotional pricing strategies that resonate with consumers.
Utilizing digital shelf analytics for e-commerce growth can help you identify the most effective promotional tactics, such as flash sales or bundle deals, based on your brand’s historical performance data.
This targeted approach can create multiple advantages for you as a brand or seller. A well-planned e-commerce holiday calendar cemented with strategic pricing options will make sure that your product listings get the right amount of attention from consumers during the holiday season.
Seamless UI Experience Can Do Wonders for Your Business
The customer buying journey can start from any point. One moment, they will casually browse your website, looking for a potential buy, and the next moment, they might end up completing the purchase on Amazon.
So, a seamless user experience, especially during the holiday season, will help combat unprecedented traffic surges and diversions.
All aspects, starting from the product page, checkout page, and payment page, should be optimized for speed, usability, security, etc.
Acquiring relevant historical data on user behavior helps you identify bottlenecks in the shopping process and make necessary adjustments to enhance the overall customer experience.
Knowing Your Competitor Inside Out Puts You a Step Ahead
Whether it’s the holiday season or other normal times of the year, monitoring and analyzing competitors always gives your brand an edge.
Most of the time, during the holiday season, competitive pricing will be so market-focused that a single misstep can cost you the entire season’s sales.
So, make sure that you create an early e-commerce calendar based on competitor price monitoring and benchmarking through digital shelf solutions. This can help sellers and brands surge ahead of the sales game.
This opens up new opportunities for e-commerce businesses to improve their product listings and pricing strategies.
READ MORE | Know more about the top e-commerce trends in the market. Check out our blog on the Top 10 E-Commerce Trends That Influence Sellers and Brands.
Conclusion
As you gear up for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., e-commerce holiday readiness strategies should be prioritized to ensure that you are fully prepared to meet consumers’ needs.
A digital shelf analytics solution plays a pivotal role for e-commerce businesses at this juncture. It provides your brand with valuable insights that can help optimize its online presence, enhance customer experience, and ultimately drive sales.
Here are some of the features that DSA tools can offer:
- Real-time MAP Monitoring
- Ratings and Reviews Analysis
- Share of Search Optimization
- Competitor and Price Monitoring
- Content Compliance
By utilizing these features, brands can unlock the full potential of their e-commerce strategies and ensure they are well-positioned to thrive during the holiday season and beyond.
FAQs
Holiday readiness refers to the preparation and strategic planning that e-commerce brands and retailers undertake to ensure their online platforms and operations are optimized for the peak holiday shopping season.
Surviving and thriving in retail during the holiday season requires strategic planning, leveraging digital shelf analytics, and optimizing your e-commerce presence to meet increased consumer demand.
An e-commerce holiday calendar is a strategic tool that helps brands more effectively plan and execute their holiday sales campaigns.
