15 Holiday ECommerce Tips – Get Ready For A Profitable Sales Season!

According to Salesforce, consumers spent a total of $1.14 trillion online globally and $270 billion in the U.S during the 2022 holiday sales season.

There’s no reason to think this year will be any different. If you run an online store, you had better be ready!

That’s what this post is going to help you with.

We run multiple successful stores across all our brands so we know how to prepare an effective holiday eCommerce strategy.

What follows are the 15 holiday eCommerce tips we use to make sure all our stores are ready for the seasonal sales.

We hope they help you get ready too!

Ecommerce Holiday Planning to Maximize Seasonal Sales

Ask any store owner when they make the most money and they will very likely say the holiday season. The three months from October to the end of December include Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas.

It’s a busy time to be sure, but for many stores, it’s also the most profitable time.

Here are some holiday season store statistics to make our point:

• Over 80% of people take part in shopping during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday events (Source)
• Holiday retail sales reached $943-$960 billion in 2020. (Source)
• Ecommerce sales reached $211.7 billion in the period from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, 2022. (Source)

Much like you have your car serviced and oil changed before a road trip, you should really check your website before sales season. It’s all part of a successful holiday eCommerce strategy.

It may cost a little in time and effort but it will cost far more if your store lets you down during sales season!

15 Holiday Selling Ecommerce Tips

If you want all bases covered in time for the sales season, check out these 15 holiday eCommerce tips.

1. Check Sales Data To Identify Big Sellers and Stock Up

If you have been in business for longer than a year, you should save sales data that illustrates when you’re busiest. If you’re lucky, it will also show you high volume sellers and most profitable items.

Stock up on products that feature in both of those segments in time for sales season.

You’re probably not the only store that sells those items. Demand will increase and so will prices.

The last thing you want to do is run out of big sellers when demand is highest!

2. Make Sure Your Site Is Updated and All Planned Changes Are Frozen for the Holidays

Ever heard of a ‘change freeze’? It’s a time of year, usually around the holidays, when no changes are permitted on essential business systems.

Change freezes are used in every industry, from mobile networks to airlines. The idea is to leave everything alone when support staff are likely on vacation and when demand for systems is highest.

Every system should be updated before the freeze and no technical changes be made during the freeze. This gives you maximum reliability and lowers the chance of outages or unintended consequences.

We consider change freezes a vital part of eCommerce holiday planning.

3. Ensure Your Site Is Ready to Perform – Check Security and Speed

Part of preparing your online store for sales season is making sure your site is fast and secure. It’s a vital part of any holiday eCommerce strategy.

That can include:

• Checking your SSL certificate won’t expire or require renewal during sales season.
• Verifying your security plugin/solution is doing its job without impacting customers.
• Test page load times with PageSpeed Insights and optimize if performance is slow.
• Perform any optimizations such as upgrading PHP or minifying CSS.
• Set up caching if you haven’t already.

The exact process of making sure your store is ready to perform will differ depending on your setup. But, as long as you won’t have to make any changes during the sales season, you’re all good.

If your web host has let you down in the past, consider headless eCommerce. It offers all the benefits of standard eCommerce without the server load.

4. Prepare Sales Product Images and Descriptions

Prepare as much in advance as you can in advance. Add new line items ahead of time and save as draft, prepare any seasonal offers beforehand and have everything in place to transition between holidays.

We all know the power of product images and descriptions so it’s essential to ensure they are at their best ahead of sales season.

If you plan to include sales-oriented product images, create them ahead of time and make sure all you need to do is upload or publish them. The less work you have to do at the time, the faster and easier it will be.

You want your database and web host to use all resources to manage transactions rather than updating product pages!

5. Check Couriers, Packaging and Everything You Need to Dispatch Items

If you ship physical items, it’s a good idea to make sure your courier of choice can cope with increased sales. Most will build it into their processes, but it’s good to check.

Line up a second shipping option if you have any doubts at all as customers really don’t like late deliveries!

It’s also a good idea to make sure you have enough bubble wrap, Sellotape, parcel paper, jiffy bags or whatever it is you use to protect items during shipping.

Build stock levels up during the year, buy them in summer or whatever works for you. Just make sure you’re not trying to buy them just before, or during, sales when every other store is trying to buy them!

6. Prepare Holiday Banners, Calls to Action and Popups for Each Holiday

If you plan to style any aspect of your store for each holiday, prepare the pages, the images and the descriptions ahead of time so you don’t have to rush. Additionally, consider creating vibrant images using AI that can be added to your page without worrying about copyright issues.

For example, prepare any Halloween or Black Friday offer banners or popups in the summer so everything is ready to implement when you need it.

You could also create copies of pages that use seasonal sale elements like call to action block patterns, banners or custom prices. Save them all as drafts and make them live when the time is right.

7. Write Blog Posts for the Holidays

We would recommend preparing seasonal blog posts well ahead of time. Any content you can prepare in advance will mean less to do just before the sales start.

If you know the products you’ll be discounting or promoting, create content around those. Write roundup posts of top offers, showcase posts that show products being used and anything else you can think of.

Concentrate on quality over quantity. Offer value, teach, entertain, inform and the content should be well received.

Once complete, you can use the WordPress scheduling function to set a publish date so each post will be automatically published.

Then all you need to do is promote them on your socials.

Talking of socials…

8. Create Hype on Social Media and in Emails Ahead of Time

Apparently, the best time to begin creating hype for holiday sales is September. This gives you enough time to raise awareness for Halloween before switching to Thanksgiving, then Black Friday and Cyber Monday and then on to Christmas.

More importantly than when, is how. How can you create hype nice and early without causing sales exhaustion?

By posting less often while offering value with everything you share.

We all know those brands that bombard you with pointless posts in the lead up to the holidays.

Don’t fall into that trap.

Use your usual marketing techniques to offer genuinely useful holiday sales posts that educate, inform, entertain and engage. Less really is more as long as the quality is there!

9. Prepare Upsells or Cross-Sells for the Holiday Season

Do you use upsells or cross-sells in your store? If you don’t, you really should.

Upsells are when you showcase a more expensive version of a product in the hope of an upgrade.

Cross-sells are when you showcase complementary products that work with what’s in the cart.

Every online retailer we can think of uses them. From Amazon to Best Buy, Target to General Motors, every brand tries to get you to buy extra stuff when you’re on their website.

Examples of upsells are everywhere. From ‘do you want fries with that’ to showing seat upgrades from coach to business class when booking flights.

You’ll see cross sells everywhere too. Like when you buy sneakers online and are shown replacement laces or products to keep them clean.

10. Add a ‘Buy as a Gift’ Option to Checkout If Possible

The ability to buy something as a gift can offer a huge boost to sales during the holiday season.

It means shoppers don’t have to buy so far in advance. They don’t need the product shipped to them to be unwrapped, the price and/or invoice removed, rewrapped and resent.

That’s why ‘buy as a gift’ can be a big incentive to seasonal sales shoppers.

If you can integrate that into your store and can manage the extra work involved, we recommend offering it as an optional service.

If you sell digital items, it’s much easier to do and we definitely recommend it!

11. Create Dedicated Sales Pages and Optimize for SEO

Dedicated sales pages can be useful when preparing for seasonal sales. Roundup pages, special offer pages, featured product or price pages can all be used to promote the event.

You can also use them for SEO. Optimize each page for specific sales keywords and publish them on a schedule so there’s less to do on the day.

You can integrate them into navigation by duplicating menus in WordPress, giving them seasonal names and switching to them during the sales.

Once complete, you can switch back to your standard menu.

12. Set Up an Abandoned Cart Solution to Recover Lost Sales

Do you send abandoned cart emails? If not, you really should. Ideally, you would have them running 24/7/365, but it will be even more effective over the sales period.

If you have ever received an email reminding you there are items left in a cart, that’s an abandoned cart recovery email process in action.

Over 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. The reasons are many but the result is lost revenue for you. If that’s not reason enough to set up abandoned cart recovery, we don’t know what is!

It’s actually easy to set up abandoned cart recovery in SureCart. There is also an all-in-one solution like CartFlows.

13. Ensure You Have the Time and Resources for Customer Support

If you plan ahead like we have been suggesting, you should be able to dedicate as much time as possible to running your store during holiday sales.

You’ll still be busy though, so be prepared to block time out for picking and packing and working with suppliers and shippers.

Also make sure to set time aside to answer questions and support customers.

If you have time, write some FAQs and place them on your website and consider using an AI chatbot to answer common questions.

The more questions you answer and the more objections you overcome, the more likely you are to convert visitors into customers.

That’s true before and after the sale.

14. Consider Offering Gift Cards

Gift cards work for many types of online business. If they can work for yours, we recommend offering them.

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer.

You’re shopping for gifts for family or friends. You land on an eCommerce store and it looks like somewhere that sells products someone would like but you’re unsure of a specific gift to get.

Do you leave it because you’re not sure? Or do you buy a gift card because there are items in store you think they might like?

If there are no gift card options, that’s a definite lost sale. If there is a gift card option, you have a chance to make the sale.

The customer is also able to buy a gift for someone without risking buying something the recipient won’t like.

Not every shopper knows what they want, or what they want to buy as a gift. That can result in a lost sale as indecision may give them pause.

But, if the shopper knows your store has the type of items the recipient would like, a gift card can turn that lost sale into a sale.

15. Highlight Returns Policies to Create Trust

You don’t need us to tell you trust is key in eCommerce. You will likely already use trust logos and feature reviews or testimonials for social proof.

Now is a good time to highlight your returns policies and include ‘free returns’ or ’14 day money back guarantee’ banners or mentions across your website.

You could use a block pattern to build a trust signal pattern that includes links to your returns policy page and include graphics highlighting free returns or a money back guarantee.

Then it’s simply a case of including it on all product pages or your main store page and category pages.

As long as it’s prominently placed where everyone can see it, you should overcome much of the hesitation people naturally feel when they visit a new store.

Bonus Tip – Offer Free Shipping

We didn’t include this tip above because offering free shipping is something you can do all year round to boost sales.

62% of shoppers said they won’t consider purchasing from a retailer that doesn’t offer free shipping. That’s a holiday season store statistic every store owner should take notice of!

If you can build those costs into your product pricing, you could scoop up some of that 62% who dismiss other etailers because they charge for shipping!

Conclusion

Ecommerce holiday planning can make or break a store at this time of year. The more you prepare, the more time you’ll have to fulfill orders and nurture customers.

We hope these holiday eCommerce tips have given you food for thought and can help your store survive the holiday sales season intact!

Did we miss some essential steps to prepare for the sales season? Do you have any tips to share? Tell us your story below!