There are several times a year when online sales surge: one is the Christmas season and the other is the sales periods, both winter and summer. During these periods, when consumers are more willing to buy online, eCommerce businesses need to plan marketing strategies to attract shoppers and drive more sales.
Now that we’re in the middle of sales season, I’d like to share some tips on how to increase your eShop’s sales during this period.
1. Promote the sales on your own online store
The best showcase for boosting online sales during the sales period is the eShop itself. Nowhere else can we present discounted products more attractively and in a way that drives purchases. I recommend investing in good design and site structure so it’s highly intuitive and appealing.
In terms of design, it’s crucial to include elements that clearly show it’s sales season, such as discount percentages, sale-related words…
In terms of structure, eCommerce stores should select the products they most want to sell, or those most likely to interest shoppers, and feature them on the site. It also works very well to group products by price or discount percentage, best sellers, newly reduced items, outlet or final clearance sections… so users can quickly find what interests them. I also recommend working on cross-selling to further increase your sales ratio and take advantage of impulse buys.
Photo source: http://blog.inside-shops.com
2. Bet on personalization during the sales
A new trend in today’s marketing is offering personalized discounts instead of mass markdowns. Online stores have a lot of information about their customers from various sources: past purchases, newsletter sign-ups, social media… You should use this information to benefit shoppers and offer them more personal purchase options suited to their tastes during the sales. The more personal these options, the more likely customers are to buy and come back to the online store in the future (loyalty).
3. Strengthen your email marketing
During the sales you should also step up your email marketing strategies to tell customers about the store’s offers and/or provide more personalized purchase benefits to specific segments. Email marketing is a great tool to announce the start of the sales and weekly deals, promote special discount campaigns (coupons/discount codes) and/or offer purchase perks to VIP customers.
I can assure you that email marketing is one of the best ways to announce your sales and, at the same time, one of the most useful channels for personalization strategies. Just one warning: don’t overuse it or customers will unsubscribe. Too many emails with offers and/or news about your store can end up boring shoppers. Manage this channel very carefully.
4. Create content to strengthen your search rankings
To attract customers to your online store during the sales, strong search rankings are decisive, and great content is crucial to achieve them. It should include sale-related keywords such as discounts, final clearance, half price, 50%… Besides working on your site content, especially product descriptions, I also recommend strengthening the content you publish on social media and on your company blog.
5. Strengthen customer service
The sales season is probably one of the times when customer service receives the most requests. During this period customers often have more questions about product prices or return policies. Customer service must be highly efficient across all channels, including social media, so you don’t lose customers or sales opportunities.
6. Promote your sales on social media
Social networks have become a very important communication channel between online stores and their customers. Take advantage of the interaction and virality that networks like Facebook and Twitter offer to drive sales during these periods. Your social media fans, who are more engaged with the brand and/or the eCommerce store, can help you share information about your sales on their profiles and spread the message to their circles.
You can also use social media to send your followers more personal offers or perks. Make the most of it!
In short, all the tips I’ve shared in this post can help you get more visits to your eCommerce store and increase sales during the sales season. But for sales during these periods to succeed, you need to consider other decisive factors, such as solid technical planning (eCommerce traffic grows enormously during the sales), good stock forecasting and good logistics management.
