‘Tis the season to perfect your holiday shipping! For the majority of eCommerce businesses, preparing for the holiday shopping season begins in the summer. But it doesn’t end there — e-tailers will stay busy ordering, organizing, and perfecting throughout the season.
So far, online shoppers have spent $438 billion with online retailers. What’s more, consumers are grappling with the idea that shortages will impact their holiday shopping. With more consumers planning to shop earlier than normal, your holiday shipping needs to be ready now.
There’s still time to get your holiday shipping and sales strategies in order. You’ll be glad you took the extra time to make sure everything is running swimmingly.
Here’s a handy checklist to make sure you’re doing everything you can to boost sales, ship smartly, and win loyal customers for life.
Holiday Website Checklist
You can’t ship what you don’t sell. That’s why every holiday shipping strategy actually begins with some website housekeeping. Now is a good time to get organized on both the front and back ends. Make it easy for your customers to shop so you can capitalize on more sales! Here’s what we recommend:
- Simplify the checkout process, the fewer steps the better. Checkout optimization can increase conversations by more than 35%.
- Increase your website’s bandwidth. Otherwise, your website might crash under the weight of increased traffic. On average, retailers can expect 63% more website visitors during the holiday season. Analyze last year’s performance to see how much bandwidth you might need.
- Optimize your website page load speed. If a user has to wait for your page to load, it’s likely they will bounce. Ensure you have a fast website, especially for mobile. Then you are likely to capture more sales and learn more about your customers. Thus, setting you up for more long term success.
- Check your website for mobile responsiveness. Mobile sales are on the rise and will play a huge part in holiday shopping this year.
- Optimize your product pages and descriptions. Freshen up your keyword research to make sure you’re using current, relevant search terms to help people find your products.
- Test coupon or discount codes. Learn from J Crew’s mistake on Black Friday 2018 to see why this is important.
- Install a Live Chat feature. Live chat tools can help customers make better buying decisions. Plus, they build confidence that you’re a legitimate company!
Holiday Inventory Checklist
As you’re getting your website ready for holiday shoppers, you should also spend some time organizing your inventory. You’re getting new products coming in every day. You’re adding these products to your website and removing products you no longer have. This happens throughout the year, but you’re handling a much larger volume during the holidays. Staying on top of inventory is key in ensuring you can fulfill orders quickly and accurately.
Here are some things you should do now to prepare your inventory for Black Friday and beyond:
- Update your item counts. Knowing how much of each item you have to sell is critical to your business. Overlooking just one or two quantities per item can mean losing sales and customers.
- Prepare product recommendations. Mastering the art of the upsell can help you increase the average ticket size and generate more revenue with less work.
- Create email marketing campaigns based on current inventory. Promote your largest quantities or items with the highest margins in your email campaigns. Create these campaigns now and schedule them to send throughout the season. This allows you to focus more of your time on holiday shipping and sales instead of marketing.
- Build product bundles with your hard-to-sell items. Struggling to get rid of certain items? Add them to a bundle deal as a way to provide more value to your buyers. Or, consider using those items as free gifts with purchase.
Holiday Shipping Checklist
Experts are predicting holiday shipping delays unlike what we’ve seen in the past. This prospect will certainly encourage more consumers to start their shopping early and get ahead of the shipping curve. You can help your shoppers get their packages as soon as possible. This can help even if they don’t shop early. Just follow these tips:
- Automate your sales and inventory processes. With automation, you don’t have to rely on physical counts. When items become out of stock, customers won’t be able to order those items.
- Know your holiday shipping deadlines. In many cases, you will be able to delight your customers with their packages if they order just a few days before Christmas. But this largely depends on the method of shipping and where the package is going to. Know your holiday shipping deadlines so you can set the right expectations for your customers.
- Outsource order fulfillment. Outsourcing an entire step of your holiday sales process can free up your time to focus on marketing and the customer experience. Worry less about having enough packing materials on hand or pulling inventory and spend more time on revenue-generating activities.
Make the Most of Your Holiday Shipping with GEODIS eLogistics!
If ever there was a time to turn to outsourced order fulfillment, it’s now. GEODIS eLogistics specializes in this process to help online retailers scale their operations and devote more time for business growth.
With the increased interest in online shopping, this holiday season brings many opportunities to acquire new customers and retain them in the coming months and years. But earning loyalty takes work (and lots of marketing), and your time can be put to better use to grow your business when someone else is handling the busy work.
At GEODIS eLogistics, we’re supporting more small online retailers this year with outsourced holiday shipping. We handle all aspects of order fulfillment, from storing and updating your inventory to finding the best shipping solutions for you and your customers. Take advantage of bulk shipping discounts to keep your costs low, and trust your orders to reach your customers as quickly as possible.
