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Four E-Commerce Mistakes You Need To Avoid This Holiday Season

YEC
POST WRITTEN BY
John Tabis

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for retailers everywhere: holiday shopping season. As the weather gets colder and festive decorations grace storefronts, we’ll begin to see an influx of shoppers both online and on the streets.

In fact, consumers are expected to spend more than ever before on friends and family during the holidays this year, according to the Holiday Consumer Spending Survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF). Consumers celebrating will shell out an average of $805 -- the highest amount in the survey’s 14-year history.

And, fortunately for e-commerce retailers, much of that holiday spending will be done online. The NRF survey revealed that nearly half (46 percent) of all holiday shopping, consisting of browsing and buying, will be done online.  To turn those browsers into buyers this holiday season, avoid making these four costly e-commerce mistakes:

Mistake #1: Under-utilizing email.

If there’s one time of year to kick your email campaign up a notch, it’s over the holidays. Email marketing is a tried-and-true way to advertise upcoming promotions, gift guides, reminders -- you name it -- to deal-hunting consumers.

Sending personalized reminders and tailored suggestions based on previous purchases is a great way to bring customers back to your site. Often, it’s these very reminders that encourage fence-sitters to revisit their shopping cart.  

An example of an easy-to-execute personalization could be around style or color. Take a look at your database and identify segments that have purchased a certain style or color of your product. While this kind of segmentation can get extremely complicated, you can keep it simple. Look at just the last purchase, pick your variable and see what percent of your audience ordered each. For the three or four largest, build custom emails that feature more of that category, and be sure to track results for future evaluation.  

Mistake #2: Lack of curation.

The holiday season presents a great opportunity for online retailers to create curated shopping lists. Yet, some websites offer the same suggestions and deals year-round. What’s more, shopping online can feel lonely -- but it doesn’t have to.

Busy shoppers need a little guidance, especially when it comes to buying gifts online for someone other than themselves. So, act as consumers’ "shopping buddy" and give them your two cents on what makes the perfect holiday gift. Curating various gift guides, ideas, and “staff picks” is essential to holiday e-commerce success.  

At The Bouqs Company, we’re constantly curating our collection. While choice is a good thing, too many choices can lead to "decision paralysis" and make it harder for shoppers to settle on one purchase. For these reasons, we keep our catalog to fewer than 100 items, and we do our best to dynamically sort and present options that are most relevant for a given buyer. During the holidays, we make our holiday-themed bouquets super easy to find and purchase so folks can cross "being nice" off their list as quickly as possible.  

Mistake #3: Inefficient (or inconvenient) shipping.

Nothing leads to more abandoned shopping carts than finding out your shipment won’t arrive until well after the holidays have ended. To encourage consumers to visit your site for all of their gift-giving needs, have a clear shipping and return policy -- and stick to it.

Set a delivery cutoff date that ensures arrival before the holidays. Remind users of that cutoff via marketing emails and on your site. At The Bouqs Company, for instance, we include an “earliest delivery” date in each product description to ensure shoppers are well aware of the expected delivery date -- before going through the checkout process.  

To make customers feel even more secure with their purchases, give them an extended period of time to make returns or exchanges during the holidays.      

Mistake #4: Underestimating traffic.

If there’s one mistake you don’t want to make this holiday season, it’s underestimating the number of consumers who may visit your site. After all, nothing turns online shoppers away like a site that won’t load. If your website can’t handle the inevitable traffic jam, you can kiss those holiday shoppers goodbye.

Considering two-thirds of global consumers leave websites at least 25 percent of the time without buying anything because they’re tired of waiting for the website to load (according to Dyn’s 2015 Global Consumer Online Shopping Expectations report), it’s crucial that you perform a "stress test" well before the start of the holiday season. A good rule of thumb is to hope for the best but expect (and prepare for) the worst.

The Bouqs Company encountered this challenge over Mother’s Day 2014 when we were featured on the ABC television show "Shark Tank," and we prepared for 100 times our average daily traffic. We had a few slower periods, and we pushed those upper limits, but ultimately the site remained up, allowing us to capitalize on our busiest day ever.  

‘Tis the season to go shopping, so make it an enjoyable experience for all by avoiding these costly e-commerce mistakes and making your site as holiday-friendly as possible.