Tips & Tricks For Growing eCommerce Sales This Holiday Season
Tuesday, November 13, 2018Lauren Macdonald
eBridge Connections is participating in “
Take Our Kids to Work Day” today! To celebrate, we’re sharing on our blog a few ideas for growing eCommerce sales, straight from the mouths of Grade 9s’ who have grown up in an eCommerce-driven world.
Top Tips & Tricks:
1. Advertising
One suggestion this Holiday season, is to use online and offline advertising as a means to increase sales.
Online Advertising:
- Banners on websites
- Social media advertisements
- Using micro-influencers (i.e. famous people using your products as a means of promotion)
- Targeted advertising based on interests, geography, age, gender, etc.
Offline Advertising:
- Newspapers/magazine ads that point to your website
- TV commercials that direct people to your eCommerce store
- Bulletin boards at recreation centres, seniors residences, or anywhere that your target audience may frequent
- Posters, billboards, ads on park benches, signs on mailboxes, etc., that showcase your products and direct people to your online store
2. Discounts, Promotions & Upselling
Another suggestion for growing eCommerce sales over the Holidays is to offer discounts and promotions. Some examples include:
- 20% off
- Buy One Get One Free
- Create urgency with time-specific promotions (i.e. "This weekend only")
- Coupons
- Loyalty discounts to repeat customers
- Email promotions (i.e. "Spin this wheel and receive the discounted amount that you land on")
- Upselling (i.e. If you spend X amount of dollars, you can get this product free, or free shipping after you spend X amount)
- Reminders to avoid shopping cart abandonment (i.e. emails that say "you left this item in your cart, don't forget to checkout!")
3. Beat the competition
Growing eCommerce sales requires being better than your competitors who are selling similar products. A few ways to beat the competition include:
- Make sure your pricing is competitive (Do your research!)
- Make people feel good about buying from you. Especially during the Holiday season, people are always looking for ways to make charitable donations. Therefore, one idea for increasing eCommerce sales, is to say that a certain amount of the proceeds from every order will be donated to a specfic charity.
- Get positive online reviews. If you have tons of great reviews about your products, people will trust your products over the competition.
- Have professional product photos. Make sure your product photos are high-quality and set you apart from your competitors.
4. Optimize your website
There are a few ways to optimize your website to get it ready for the busy Holiday season and increase your sales:
- Make sure your website is equipped to handle higher than usual traffic.
- Host your eCommerce website on a trusted platform with reliable uptime.
- Make sure your eCommerce website is simple and easy to navigate on computers, tablets, and mobile devices
5. Make it easy!
People are more inclined to shop online if the process is simple. Some ideas for making it easy include:
- Offer free shipping
- Offer fast shipping (i.e. one or two days)
- Make returns nice and simple (i.e. don't charge them extra to ship the products back, offer full refunds instead of store credit, etc.)
- Limit the amount of information a user is required to type in to make the purchase, and offer the ability to remember and pre-populate the information when they make future purchases
From all of us here at eBridge Connections, we wish you the best of luck this Holiday season with your eCommerce sales
- Guest blog written by eBridge's Grade 9 visitors: Jonah, Ava, Kiona, Amara, and Anthony
