Do you know online store owners start implementing their holiday marketing ideas and strategies from October which they start preparing from June and July?
You are not prepared? And want some quick changes for Christmas and New Year?
Don’t worry, you are not alone.
We will be sharing short and easy to implement strategies which can give an instant boost to your business, no matter the business size.
Holidays are the perfect time for connecting with your potential buyers. We have jotted down 9 expert backed tips for Shopify store optimization. Here’s a graphical view.
In this blog post, we will share tips and tricks for your online store optimization and not just Shopify, whichever platform you are using for selling your products.
Table of Contents
How can I optimize my Shopify store?
You may have some holiday marketing ideas or Christmas promotion ideas but how to implement them is where we can help. Here, we may miss few optimization strategies or ideas like speeding up the website or mobile as users wait only for 3 seconds.
1-Give your website a holiday look – use banners and offers
What is Christmas like without any sale offers or discounts? Shoppers visiting your store this Christmas season expect some discounts or promotions.
To engage customers, you can simply put your offers on your homepage banner. Prepare targeted holiday season offers even if you don’t sell any of the typical Christmas stuff.
Developing a successful holiday landing homepage is never tough with ready-to-use templates.
Here is the list of free best Shopify themes:
1-Brooklyn
2-Debutify
3-Debut
4-Minimal
5-Supply
6-Thalia
7-Simple
8-Fashe
9-Boundless
10-Narrative
11-Suitup
12-Bonus app (Nudgify)
Shopify custom theme development cost
Everything you need to know about Shopify app development cost
2-Mobile-first approach, optimize
Mobile-first approach means designing an app or store first for the mobile experience before desktop or any smart device. This reverses the workflow of designing and helps in scaling mobile users.
However, here we are discussing quick fixes for an online store but you can think the same way. When strategizing for holiday marketing ideas, look if your store mobile experience is seamless. Fix any bugs/errors since more than half of your customers come from mobile screens, do not upset them.
You can use various tools to check the mobile speed of the website.
1-Pagespeed Insight(Google)
2-GT Metrix
These 2 tools are ideal for measuring mobile speed.
Here are 22 tried and tested ways to speed up your online store.
3-Integrate live chat, visitors on holidays often reach out
The fastest way to help your customer is via live chat. If you do not have it integrated in your store, no worries you can easily integrate live chat at your backend.
When asked about preferences for support channels, they preferred live chat over social media even (HelpScout). Why? The answer is simple, live chat is fast and convenient. Customers want to inquire about their favorite items ‘then and there’.
Here are some popular live chat integration options you can use:
1-LiveChat (free plan, starts from $19)
2-Userlife (free plan, free)
3-Mylivechat (free plan, starts from $15)
4-Freshworks (free plan, starts from $15)
5-Smartsupp (free plan, starts from $15)
6-Hubspot (free plan, starts from $50)
7-Olark (2 weeks free plan, starts from $19)
8-Pure Chat (free plan, starts from $39)
9-Bitrix24 (free plan, starts from $24)
10-Zendesk (free plan, starts from $83)
11-KeyReply (free plan, free)
4-Channels most lucrative for your business, use promotional video
You might be thinking that ‘the holiday season is just hot’ when we strategize and see which channels are lucrative for our business.
It would hardly take 2-3 hours of research before you have your data.
PRO TIP – You can prepare a promotional video for marketing. It could be as short as 15 seconds and as long as 2 minutes, depending upon your marketing goal. For offers, you can wrap up in 15 seconds whereas for testimonials, you can safely take 2 minutes.
You can add product based videos on product pages. Here’s how.
5-Offer gift wrapping services, gift cards and recommend products
No one likes things the hard way, either it’s choosing the right gift or the right wrapping or the gift cards. Gift wrapping, and gift cards are some promotional strategies many of the companies use and become successful in up-selling additional products.
PRO TIP – Many stores prepare special categories for the season like ‘gifts for teens’ or ‘toddlers’. Although, the categories may not be selling the focus product but upselling is a great idea during the holiday season.
How to add Google product category in Shopify?
6-Use gift guides during holiday season
Customers love shopping during holiday season and they may buy unnecessary items in hopes of utilizing somewhere when they see discounts or upselling. Gift guides are actually one of the upselling ways where you guide the customer by showing ‘you may also like’ section on product pages.
PRO TIP – Incentivize sharing by offering discounts on sharing your store link with family and friends.
7-Expected delivery dates on product pages
Shoppers are on the hunt for special gifts for their loved ones and they want expected delivery dates so that they know when they will get their orders. Nobody risks receiving items after the celebrations, many customers abandon carts when they don’t see expected delivery dates.
PRO TIP – In order to set the customer’s expectations right, add expected delivery date on product pages and in the shopping cart.
8-Mention clear return and exchange policies, offer free shipping
One of the ways of building trust with customers is having a shippings and returns policies page on the website. Also, you should clearly mention the shipping dates, expected delivery date as this influences the purchase decisions.
Like we mentioned earlier, use them on product pages, shopping carts.
This season, after the pandemic, many customers may expect free shipping. If you are offering free shipping, do mention it on your website.
9-Don’t push for sign up, allow customers for guest sign in
During the holiday season, customers shop from different websites and signing up on each and every one of them may seem like a hassle. So keeping this in mind, do offer guest sign in and checkout.
Remembering usernames and passwords for eerie websites is one of the pain points you should consider eliminating. Guest checkout is one of the ways of offering convenience
PRO TIP – Keep track of your abandoned customers. Send an email if your guest user didn’t buy. Set a tab where automatically an email goes to customers, a great way of recovering lost carts.
Final verdict
Holiday season is a huge opportunity not only for big sized companies but for small scale businesses too. Small businesses are like snowflakes, everyone is unique. People are on the hunt for special gifts, you just have to implement these quick strategies and see customers coming.
Essentially, dealing with the expectations of the customers prior to holiday rush is ideal but ‘it’s never too late’. If you want help, reach out.
