Brace yourself for the most grossing month of the year. As the saying goes, the best is always reserved for last.
Whatever success you’ve had through the year pales in comparison to what awaits you this Christmas season. All true – businesses have a small window of opportunity between now and the start of next year to launch a gushing income stream – a relief to all those whose profits have been trickling in drips.
For reasons that are pretty obvious, most eCommerce businesses pick up during the lazy, frenzy days of the Christmas holiday. Often this comes early through the month as more and more people begin to plan for their holiday shopping.
In the world of eCommerce, holiday marketing begins as early as a month or two before December comes kicking.
No one ever advertises their behind the scenes efforts. But we can all agree that an early preparation in terms of getting your capital, labor force, and other resources all geared up can help you a great deal make the most of the fast approaching yuletide.
Singapore eCommerce stores stand an equal chance as any other eCommerce store elsewhere to cash in on the numerous profiting opportunities associated with the Christmas season. You can re-strategise and get your website ready and all spruced up for the big kill.
There are tactics aplenty. But the most important one should be to make your traffic analytics an integral part of your planning.
How Singapore eCommerce Stores Can Leverage Analytics to boost up Their Sales this Christmas Season
Review Last Year’s Analytics
The plan is to learn from your previous strengths and mistakes, so that you can re-calibrate and be sure with what you’re doing.
Go back to last year’s analytics and review the report starting from the month of October all the way to January. Take your time to go through the data report as you try to find out what worked or failed to work at that time.
The report you check should not be limited to Google analytics. If anything PPC analytics, email analytics, and social media analytics, to name a few, are just as important.
The analytics supplied by Yoast, your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, or any other marketing tool you’ve been using should also come in handy.
The point is to look out for connecting patterns in all these tools. Do they tell a similar story?
What specific days of the months do people go on a shopping spree? And how best can you target them?
Did the sales come from Google searches or from social media?
The information you decode from all this should be able to show you the best possible way forward, including where to pump the most of your marketing effort, and at what time of the month to be specific.
Test Your System
Singapore has a total population of about 5 million people – and they all love to shop.
Can your system handle tens of thousands of shoppers to hundreds of thousands per day?
One thing about the Christmas season is that almost everyone you know is motivated to shop. The intent to shop will be high, leading to too much of impulse buying.
Much of your focus shouldn’t be directed at your product, but brand. If anything, that’s what has been found to capture consumers’ interest to buy. Plus a broken system can take tremendous toil on your brand.
If your marketing campaign is that good, then of course there’ll be stress on your system. Test it beforehand and suss out if the hosting you’re using or the system itself is built to sustain high traffic.
If not, find a way to fix it. MediaOne can come in handy at a time like this. Just give them a call and inquire for the best way forward. They should be able to help.
Find out which Set of Keywords have the Most Conversion
This is particularly important for SEO and PPC strategies. You want to find out which set of keywords drove the most traffic. But even better, which set of keywords lead to the most conversion.
You shouldn’t be interested in traffic more than you’re interested in leads. After all everything done is about generating you more sales, which translate to more money coming in.
Based on the results you get, you can easily come up with a solid digital marketing strategy that places you in the right position to generate more sales.
It’s also important that you try to separate your visitors depending on their value and who’s bringing in more money; with the first priority given to the most high value visitors you’re likely to get.
Re-edit Your Past Content
Your past content can also help you drive organic traffic through SEO. You just need to edit them through and repurpose them for the new season.
This is particularly important for seasonal content. For instance, if an article was specifically written for the year 2017, why NOT go through it and change the year to 2018, editing all the links and everything else to match the new season.
Go through the list of content you created the previous year and cull out a list of the articles you suspect brought in the highest number of online visitors. See what you can do to them to make it work with the new season, as well.
Outdated articles can be reworked. Or you can even create a new version of the articles, if not, a simple rewrite can suffice. This should save you a lot of time and effort, both on coming up with the idea and carrying out the actual writing.
Identity your Most Popular Pages and List Your Best Selling Products
Your site’s analytics should help you identify the most popular pages and posts on your website. This should be where you post your best selling products or services.
By doing this, you’ll be exposing the best of the products you’re offering to an even bigger crowd or market, which can be interpreted to mean more sales for you.
Simple – start by looking at the products and services that sold the most the previous year. It’s also important that you try to make sure that these products were actually bought during the Christmas season and NOT some time before or after.
Keep in mind that customer baiting might work to your disadvantage. If the page or post has nothing to do with the product you wish to post, don’t force it. Instead have someone redesign the website with a link directing your visitors to another page where they can still be able to view it in detail and add to their cart.
What Should You Do Now
It’s never too early to start planning for the Christmas season. For all we know, there are people already shopping for the big day. To avoid disappointment and missing out on this great, one-time opportunity, consider checking out with web development agencies such as MediaOne to find out if you’re on the right track or if your infrastructure is strong enough to handle the heavy traffic associated with the end of year madness.
