Almost half, about 46%, of the overall yearly sale happens in holidays. Total sale for holidays this year, 2018,  is projected to be $1 Trillion. And total holiday online shopping is expected to be $123+ Billion this year.

Source: shopify.com

The sales in eCommerce are expected to grow by 17% and the overall retail industry is expected to grow by 3.8%.

Why Use Digital Marketing to Promote your eCommerce business?

• Digital Marketing or Inbound Marketing is being used because of the beauty of inbound marketing. In inbound marketing, people will come to the business by typing in search engines like Google for their queries and purchase whereas, in outbound marketing (TV or Newspapers), businesses will go after customers.
• Do you know, according to InternetLiveStat, around 3 billion people are using the Internet. That’s a lot of people! and the user base is steadily growing. That’s why it is estimated that digital ad spending will grow to $129.23 billion by 2021.

Why Magento 2 is better for your eCommerce business?

Magento Powers 28% of the Global Websites and there are 2.9 Billion Mobile Online Shoppers being served by Magento. And no. of online shoppers served by magento will double in 2020.

Magento 2 has come with a new feature which is more demanding in the market as compared to other platform and also runs easily without any hassle. There are many eCommerce online store development companies which can help you flow up the data to the newer version.

Top 10 Tips for Improving Sales and Conversions in Magento 2

Given below are 10 tips for improving the sales and conversion rates for your Magento based online shop in holiday season;

1. Revamp your website design with the help of “Season Specific Interface” in Magento on any occasion

Season Specific Interface: There is a great feature in Magento that makes the visuals of your Magento store occasion-specific. This may be set by going to CONTENT > DESIGN > SCHEDULE

Normally, small logo and short thumbnails of the products are not good enough to get the desired results. When you have arranged a full set of products for Halloween and prepared your store for that, then you should make the visuals of whole categories that are available. This will increase the holiday fever and ultimately conversion on your store increases.

For Example –

Using Magento, you can theme your online store for Christmas, not only page content as well as the header and footer.  Or add holiday specific banners to the homepage. Inside the Magento admin area, there is an option of “Design” under “Content”. Using this option, you can change the design for the time of year. 

2. Optimize advertising – Use Social media more instead of PPC Ads

• Around the holiday season, you’ll see PPC prices skyrocketing—there’s a lot of competition for keywords related to buying holiday items. Rather than increasing your ad spend, make sure you’re truly optimizing the ROI of your existing budget. Facebook Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) are a fantastic way to achieve this objective.
• Instagram: content on Instagram is another popular option which will drive more engaged traffic than other visual social content from YouTube or Pinterest.
• If you direct the visitors towards the product page, rather than a category or homepage, the conversion will increase.
• Nosto (World’s leading eCommerce personalization platform) has seen ROAS (Return on Advertising Spent) of up to 50x, with an average of 12x.

3. Personalization in Email Marketing

Source: cloudways.com

52% of shoppers indicate they feel overwhelmed by the number of emails in their inbox on a standard month, so you can imagine their feelings around December.

Only a well-curated email that adds value can cut through that noise. So how do you make sure that your email campaign converts? Personalization.

 Nosto has found that personalized emails have an average click-through rate that’s 10x higher than the industry standard.

Try using your customer’s name in the subject line. Then once that email is opened, there’s more work to be done. By using the email to show them previously viewed items, you can deliver the kind of tailored experience that can easily lead to a sale.

4. Segment and deliver offers based on customer needs.

– Understand what your customer needs are by evaluating content, promotions, and shipping before the holidays e.g. reevaluation of content in meta descriptions to be aligned with the holiday / seasonal relevance. Secondly, the link anchor text should be optimized as well. Google Tag Manager can be used to evaluate the content in a more organized way.

• Segment and personalize campaigns based on past visits, e.g., showing them related products that the customers bought last time OR providing them these products first; E.g. Marketo and Mail Chimp offers an automated system of automation that will help to automate and segment audiences and
• offer buying guides or FAQs to help minimize any buyer concerns

5) Publish updated and fresh content

You may publish some blog posts that are relevant, updated and fresh. Content is the king in SEO and Digital Marketing. Following factors should be considered in content creation and publishing;

• Quality of Content – High-quality content which is in-depth in research and matters related to the website helps increase the dwell time (time on site) which is a ranking factor
• Length of the Content – Google consider an article above 2000+ words to be of in-depth quality. Hence, writing an article above 2000+ words will help you rank higher in the search engine.
• Images and Videos – Related images, videos, and audios will help us rank higher in the search engine.

Learn about our Search Engine Optimization Services →

6) Enable accessibility first.

• Offer multiple channels of support such as click-to-chat, email, and social media. And respond them fast. 

Source: leadporte.com

Response time is very important. You may lose almost all of your leads if you let your customers wait for more than 15 minutes.

• Staff these support media with consistent messaging and ensure consistent training.
• If your customer service team is not sized for holiday traffic, consider a chatbot. Be aware that the technology is still maturing, so test if a chatbot is right for your business.
• Today, digital marketing is all about lowering acquisition costs and getting higher engagement and retention rates.

Source: ecommerce-nation.com

• By using a tool like ChatFuel, any business can automate the responses to the customer inquiries sent to the FaceBook Page. There is an option of handing over to human, if and when needed.

7) Lower your Cart Abandonment Rate

Source: ecommerce-nation.com

• Speed. If a page doesn’t load in less than 1 second, you’re losing business.
• Inform. Show buyers where they are in the checkout process.
• Use autofill. Greet returning customers with pre-populated form fields.
• Design for the screen. Help customers by minimizing data entry and including quick pay options.
• Decline message. This message is a dead end. Find a better solution to redirect your customer. For example, instead of the showing only the message that your card was declined, provide more useful information;

Source: cuponeandote.com

• Thank you messages. Don’t impede the sale with data requests. Ask buyers to create an account on the ‘thank you’ page

8) Improve your URL Structure

URLs are very important. Make sure product page URLs are optimized. Make sure you do not have more than one URL for your product page by using only a top-level URL. Make that URL as simple as possible.

9) Eliminate Duplicate Content

If you have duplicate content, eliminate it. This means text and images. If you have two different products but the same description or use an image more than once, Google and other search engines assume you are duplicating material, and your ratings will suffer for it.

10) Use Titles and Meta Descriptions Wisely

Use headers and titles strategically. Each product should have a unique header and title with strategic keyword placement. If you have a large online store with thousands of products, it may be difficult to optimize every single product title tag. To work around this problem, create product groups. Regardless of the size of your online store, always use H1, H2, H3 header formats.

Checklist – Magento 2 Technical Changes for better Optimization of your e-commerce store

Given below is a checklist of some more technical aspects of marketing that we can do for you at progos;

1. Redesign -your UI

• The festive time of Christmas, the first thing that comes in mind is Santa, who are distributing gifts among people. Therefore, during the time of Christmas celebration, you can use the theme and logo of Santa on your online store and attract more customers.
• Make more visuals your Specific Category: Greater impact and excellent reviews of the product can amplify the sales in an effective manner.

2. Reconsider your database 

 If you are having low response or locking issues then you should consider changes in your database. For example, for improving the performance and speed of the database, one must maintain and clean old Magento Cache and Log records which can greatly improve your Magento Database performance. Most often the size of your Magento database increases because of the large log tables and hence its very good idea that you perform regular maintenance clean up.

3. Revamp your content marketing strategies

To support promotions and season sales, you can consider Content Marketing and SEO services of ProgosTech. We specialize in the creation of content marketing strategies. Our content creation and promotion services can help boost your website’s authority and increase ranks on highly-competitive keywords in search engines like Google. We have helped many e-commerce companies rank at position 1, page 1 of Google on high-volume, high-competition keywords. The clients we ranked in 2016 for these keywords are still there in 2019, hence, they are making a regular stream of income from these keywords. So, if you want the same for your e-commerce shop, then let us know.

4. Revamp your creative assets (Banner ads, promo banners, themed images)

5. Personalized Recommendation of Products 

 By adding a feed of things they’ve already looked at, you can prompt them to make a purchase. Or, you can suggest similar items—things they might not have seen the first time. Nosto data shows that customers who see personalized recommendations convert 65 percent better than someone who sees a generic page.

6. Adding Suggested Items to Checkout Stage  

Suggesting relevant add-on items can often add a few dollars to the order total—do that for every sale, and you’re looking at a very happy holiday. Any parent who has forgotten batteries for that much-anticipated gift will be glad for the reminder.

7. Optimize your store and make is mobile-responsive

As the no. of searches on mobile have crossed the no. of searched on Desktop for Google, so, Google has shifted it’s algorithm to be based on Mobile-First Index, hence, a mobile optimization means win-win situation in rankings on not only SERPs in mobile but also on Desktop.

Source: cloudways.com

8) Utilize new technologies such as marketing automation

Companies can use marketing automation to meet customer demand in real-time, across different channels. For example, We can help you use hyper-personalized content to drive campaign outcomes. The content may be tailored to each sales prospect based on his history of purchase actions, attributes of the customers, touch-points on social media, queries used to search and the content consumption characteristics etc.

Secondly, advanced social media integrations can help as well. For example, B2B marketers may be able to track conversations and social interactions at the account level.

9) Implement PWA – Progressive Web Apps

By implementing the latest software development methodology, Progressive Web Apps (Hybrid of regular Web Pages and Apps), the site and app will be very fast on all networks after the first visit. In order to get more information about how to implement it based on different frameworks, please consult our article “How to increase performance and handle more orders on your Magento 2 shop during the holidays”.