7 Ways To Boost Ecommerce Sales This Holiday Season

7 Ways To Boost Ecommerce Sales This Holiday Season

The Black Friday craziness might be over, but the Holiday shopping season is in full swing, which means they are still many chances to end the year strong. Here are the steps to success in optimizing your Shopify store to generate higher conversion rates: make it as mobile friendly as possible, provide an unbeatable customer experience, and improve your presence in search engine results.

Let's dive in.

Prioritize mobile access and optimize website for store speed

Today, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of mobile optimization. Mobile shopping has become the preferred shopping channel for customers. 73% of sales were made on mobile devices during Black Friday Cyber Monday 2022. If you are not optimizing your store for mobile consumers, you are passing up a huge revenue potential.

There are a few things you can do to optimize your mobile experience, starting with optimizing your site performance and page loading speed. Did you know that 53% of users abandon a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? 

#1 Analyze your online store speed

Nothing is more frustrating to customers than a slow website, and even a fraction of a second load time can lose your business sales. In fact 40% of consumers will wait no more than 3-seconds before abandoning a site. Customer conversation rates also are impacted by 7% for a mere one-second delay. 

  • Test your site’s speed. Run a site speed checker to check your site speed with Google Lighthouse.
  • Compress & optimize product images. Optimizing images involves minimizing their file size while maintaining the highest possible image quality. Learn more here.
  • Limit the number of apps your theme is using. Apps can inject code into different sections of your theme and can potentially impact theme performance. Disable apps if you are no longer using those features in your theme.
  • Remove unnecessary plugins & Javascript. Customizations to theme code add another layer to the standard theme and can impact file sizes and as a result, your store speed. Ensure that customizations are applied in an efficient manner so that code is not repeated and that the extra functionality these customizations provide is being used.

#2 Update your Shopify theme version

​​Regularly updating your theme will unlock better features, fix bugs, improve performance, and help with SEO. Follow our guide on how to update your theme without losing customization.

Make your store easier to shop with improved UX

You have 8 seconds to create a first impression that invites visitors to stay and explore your  website. Your online shop is not just there to look beautiful, it should be easy to navigate and enjoyable to shop on to convert visitors into buyers. 

 #3 Optimize your Shopify store

During major sales such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday, make sure your special offers are easily visible and accessible throughout your website. Some best practices for easily injecting promotional content throughout your site include:

  • Rotating announcement bars — highlight promotions and need-to-know updates such as free shipping at the top of your homepage.
  • In-menu promotions — embed promotional images in your navigation menu to draw attention to your promotions from the main menu and/or sub-menus.
mega menu with promotional block
  • Site-wide footer promotions — keep customers browsing by using your footer to highlight your most important promotions at the bottom of every page of your store.
  • Promotional pop-ups — these are perfect for collecting email addresses, offering discount codes or promoting limited-time offers.

#4 Optimize your Homepage

You want your promotions to be the first thing your customer sees when landing on your homepage. When optimizing your store’s homepage, consider using the following:

  • Promotional sections — use countdown timers and promotional banners to build anticipation, create urgency and draw attention to your special offers.
  • Featured collections — draw attention to specific sale items and unique deals you want to promote and make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. Ideas include:
    • “Holiday gift guide” 
    • “Gift under 50$”
    • “Toys: Up to 30% off” sub-collection
    • “Limited time deal” sale collection

​​ #5 Optimize your product page

The product page heavily influences the user's decision to purchase, making it the most important page to optimize, see our tips below.

  • Product description — comprehensive product descriptions can go a long way in boosting customer trust and reducing anxiety. Include details such as fit, sizing, and materials. Without clear product descriptions, retailers can lose up to 20% in sales.

💡Tip: Be upfront about shipping costs as they can make or break a purchase, and users want to know as early as possible to factor it into their decision to purchase. Manage expectations about delivery times and include descriptive options such as “3-day shipping” or “1 business day shipping” rather than calling it “standard” and “express”.

  • Product availability — users should know when items aren’t available before adding them to their cart only to find out the items are back-ordered or sold out. Highlighting when products are running low on inventory to encourage quick checkout before inventory runs out.
  •  Alternative product suggestions — inspire customers to keep browsing by displaying related or recommended products they didn’t even know they needed. Upselling, cross-selling and offering product suggestions not only lead to more conversions but also higher order value.

💡Tip: Archetype Themes include unique sections such as 'More from Vendor', 'More from Collection', and 'Recently Viewed', which are great for accommodating large inventories with multiple vendors, promoting certain collections, and providing customers with quick comparison and easy access to products they have already viewed. You can easily rename these sections like "Trending now", "Handpicked for you" or "More from Holiday sale collection" etc.

  • Customer reviews — these are an effective way to gain customers' trust and influence their purchasing decisions. Up to 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product and are willing to spend 31% more on businesses with excellent reviews. Plus, they help to boost SEO visibility by creating content that Google can use to match search queries.

  • Return Policy — this is important to manage expectations and build trust. About 54% of buyers do not purchase a product if the retailer has an inadequate or confusing return policy; this emphasizes the need for clear, customer-friendly and easily-accessible return policies.

💡Tip: Think about whether you want to extend your return policy through the holiday season in case people are buying gifts during BFCM. Don’t feel like writing your return policy? Use ourShopify refund policy template.

 #6 Optimize the cart page 

To increase the average order value, we recommend cross-selling and providing customers with additional items of interest before they complete their order. This can be done by featuring promotional grids, featured collections, and recently viewed items in their cart summary.

💡Tip: Use Expanse Theme's cart recommendations to cross-sell products by displaying "Goes great with" type of products. This feature is available for both cart notifications (dropdown) and cart templates.

Make your site more visible with SEO 

SEO can give your business a significant boost in organic traffic and customers. Maintaining an SEO strategy throughout the year is important, but modifying it for specific seasons like Black Friday and the Holidays can help draw in more sales.

#7 Use SEO to boost seasonal sales

Incorporating relevant Black Friday keywords into web copy, URLs, image alt texts, page titles, and meta descriptions can be especially effective for optimizing for seasonal search intent. New to SEO, follow this Shopify SEO checklist to learn more.

💡Tip: Target Black Friday-specific keywords like "Black Friday lipstick sale" and "Black Friday makeup deals" to drive store traffic. Find keywords with more of a product-specific research intention behind them. Also include high-volume terms like "holiday gift ideas" and more product/shopper-specific terms like "holiday gifts for women".

Let's wrap things up...

You are now prepared to maximize seasonal sales outside of the typical Black Friday and Cyber Monday period as you know how to optimize your Shopify site. Your Shopify eCommerce theme is something you should definitely consider when picking one, since it has a huge impact on your site's conversion rates, whether you run a tiny online shop or a large e-commerce company. Ready to take your Shopify store to the next level? Explore our Themes Collection.

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