Improving Conversion Rate Optimization provides an opportunity for your business to generate significant revenue. The prime focus of any business is to create as much revenue as possible during holidays; Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc. Optimizing your online store for conversions boosts your annual sales by attracting a more significant number of potential clients who are ready to make larger, more generous online purchases.
Your conversion rate optimization (CRO) initiatives, on the other hand, must go beyond simply increasing sales. Focusing on clients who continuously engage with your brand and pay for your products all year long is far more worthwhile, which involves communicating and building relationships with your customers long after the holiday season has passed.
Keep in mind that one-time sales aren’t the only conversions that matter when you plan your post-holiday promotions and marketing strategy for 2022. In truth, a loyal client base has numerous advantages in sustaining business growth, growing your brand’s reach, and increasing revenue.
Holiday Season: Market Insights
According to eMarketer, holiday sales in the United States broke the trillion-dollar barrier for the first time, with average household spending of $1,536.
The amount spent on eCommerce in the United States reached a new high of $142.5 billion. According to Adobe data, it increased by 13.1%. According to Adobe, smartphone sales accounted for 84 percent of eCommerce growth.
- eCommerce Spending increased by 13.1% during the last year
- Average online spending increased by 17%
- Cyber Monday sales surpassed $27 billion
- Smartphone purchases accounted for more than $50 billion during seasonal sales for the first-ever time.
- Over the holiday season, average daily online revenue surpassed $2.3 billion, up from $2.1 billion, representing a 13 percent increase and surpassing total retail growth of 4%.
How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization
Attention is in short supply, and many brands are vying for it. In March, most major brands begin to consider their holiday marketing strategies. Yes, you read that correctly. If you haven’t already started your holiday season campaign, feel free to steal some of these eCommerce last-minute holiday marketing ideas.
Define Customer Loyalty Goals
Understanding your data is the first step in improving your bottom line, but there is often a distinction between pure conversion rate statistics and customer loyalty data. You probably already have a lot of data, but you need to organize it and focus on your company’s essential customer loyalty KPIs.
Some of the customer loyalty KPIs to keep in mind are:
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Customer Purchase Frequency
- Conversion Rate by Time Interval
- The average time between purchases
- Churn Rate Reduction
- Reducing Customer Complaints
- Number of VIP Customers
Compare the performance of these KPIs from last year to this year if you’ve already developed them. If you’re creating goals for 2021 for the first time, think about how you’ll achieve them and how you’ll measure them in the future.
Capture Leads During Holiday Season
The months coming up to peak season and the months preceding it are ideal for expanding your email list. Email marketing is undoubtedly vital to include in your holiday marketing initiatives, especially as it is routinely regarded as the highest ROI marketing channel.
According to Campaign Monitor, 116 million emails were forwarded on Black Friday, with the most clicks. Similarly, on Cyber Monday, another 106 million emails were sent. In total, email accounted for almost about 20% of the whole holiday website traffic.
To capture the leads effectively, keep these steps in mind:
- Start the campaign early to get the maximum number of signups.
- Propose holiday-specific discounts and incentives, such as time-limited discounts and pre-sales discounts.
- Upgrade your eCommerce store and campaigns to match the holiday theme.
- Post your lead-capturing forms to relevant and high-traffic websites and forums.
- Play with timing and methods to capture leads.
Persuade Customers by Converting Content
One of the most significant resources for obtaining loyal consumers and developing your business is the content on your website. To boost customer loyalty among holiday-specific conversions, your material should be designed with the purpose of relationship-building rather than selling in mind.
Concentrate on fully understanding your customers’ emotional demands and getting into their thoughts. Learn more about their motivations and personal interests, and try to figure out why they choose your brand over a competitor’s.
Send them more information about how others have liked using the same thing if they’ve recently purchased a new technological item, such as a smartphone. It’s also a good idea to get their input on what they liked and didn’t like and make sure they know how to contact customer support for assistance (this last element assures they don’t return the product!).
Offer Coupon Discounts
Make the customer meet a minimum order value to receive a discount. For example, if the order totals $150, offer a 15% discount. You can also improve the discount offer by analyzing shoppers’ previous average “order size” and gathering relevant discount offers. People with a $70 average cart value, for example, can receive a 15% discount if their order value exceeds $80 during the holiday season. This allows you to increase order values without giving too much discount. This is common in many industries and should work for you as well.
Leverage Social Proof to your Benefit
The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a potent derivative, and with more Christmas eCommerce buyers looking online than ever before, social proof will be a powerful tool to create urgency and drive sales.
Consider launching social proof campaigns on product listing pages (PLPs) and product detail pages (PDPs) throughout the holiday shopping season. Make use of a copy that implies scarcity and creates a sense of urgency to buy, such as:
- High Demand
- Limited Stock
- Best Seller
- Almost Sold Out
Use real-time social proof to show where and how customers are active. For example, “X things sold in the previous 24 hours” or “Only X goods left.”
Determine Areas where you can Improve
Your previous promotions successfully generated the first conversion. Still, you must now ensure that your website and marketing strategy are ready to generate additional conversions in the future, which means continuing to provide them with a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience – even after the holidays.
Going through your checkout process and looking for places of friction is one of the most critical factors that can not be missed. Is it necessary for your clients to navigate through many pages to reach their shopping cart? Is there an excessive number of steps between selecting a product and paying for it? Do you have a wishlist feature that customers may use to save their favorite products for later? The fewer efforts people have to expend to purchase your stuff, the more likely they will become repeat consumers.
Some areas you should consider when optimizing your store are:
- Website Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- Easy Navigation
- Continuous Customer Support
- A wide range of Payment Options
Include Shopping Cart Reminders
While cart abandonment is an ongoing concern for eCommerce marketers, it appears that COVID-19 has been the latest addition to the list of things to be concerned about during the peak holiday season. According to Statista, In March 2020, the average cart abandonment rate across industries was 88.05 percent. (It was previously estimated to be around 75.6 percent).
While the rate may vary, the reasons for cart abandonment are consistent. High shipping charges, unexpected taxes, and expired discount codes are the most common reasons shoppers abandon their carts. The practice of comparative shopping is also to blame.
Clever cart recovery strategies are essential for any holiday marketing strategy, given the importance of holiday eCommerce sales to a company’s overall income.
Some of the tips are:
- Include exit-intent overlays to attract an existing customer base.
- Use a time-limited offer to create urgency and grab the attention.
- Include a “save to cart” feature to build trust.
- Build a robust email marketing campaign. Send follow-up emails to people who abandoned carts.
- Recognize shoppers’ comparison shopping behavior and display encouragement messages to pursue them to buy.
With shopping cart reminders, visitors will be reminded of previous shopping sessions, and their path toward checkout will be streamlined. They might be supplemented with urgency techniques like inventory warnings and discount deadlines to encourage quick conversions.
Segment your Audience
In 2021, having a highly engaging and converting nurturing funnel based on audience segmentation will be the most effective approach to staying top of mind. Micro-segmentation allows you to provide unique and tailored messaging to your audience, which they will appreciate and respond to.
The method you employ to segment your audience is very dependent on your industry, products, and the type of audience you’re targeting with your promos. Start by defining an audience group for the new conversions and subscribers from the Christmas promotions to keep things simple. Then, use the site and sales data to propose the best goods, content, and advertising for them afterward. Micro-segmentation comes into play if you’ve learned more about this audience and have created further segmentation within this group over time.
Overall, the most crucial personalization aspect is sharing the most relevant information. If you are in the pet sector, for example, and your customer buys their dog a new toy for Christmas, they are unlikely to be interested in receiving follow-up content regarding cat products.
Conversion Rate Optimization
While most people think of loyalty marketing and conversion rate optimization as two distinct methods, they are entirely complimentary.
Make use of email, SMS, and Messenger as you make the most of the post-holiday season to keep in touch with new subscribers and consumers. These three channels are the most effective means of communicating with your audience, ensuring that you always provide the right message at the right moment.
As a second stage, implement loyalty marketing with a referral program. This is a wonderful way to build mutually beneficial relationships between current customers and potentially new consumers, which often turns into the most powerful type of marketing available: word of mouth.
You obtain the full-scale benefits of increased conversion rates while also guaranteeing that those consumers return by combining the highly effective methodologies of CRO and loyalty marketing.
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