The holidays are a make-or-break time for many small business owners. To ensure your business ends the year on a high note, you need to take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These two days are some of the biggest shopping days of the year, so if you can get your products in front of holiday shoppers, you’re likely to see a significant boost in sales.
But what if you only have a little time left to put into marketing? Here are five last-minute ways to boost sales this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Find out how to:
- Get customers’ attention to your holiday offers
- Increase the average order value during holiday sales
- Create a sense of urgency for your offers
- Prepare for holiday shipping
- Win back shoppers who left without a purchase
Attract and retain more customers
Sell online with Lightspeed eCom and promote your products with powerful built-in marketing tools.
Before you start
Don’t forget about the basics when getting ready for holiday season sales. Ensure your online store runs smoothly and your products are well-stocked. Imagine you’re shopping in your online store as a customer and place a test order. Does the website load fast? Can you quickly find the product you’re looking for? Are the payment and shipping options convenient?
After you ensure your online store works fine, it’s time to start thinking about marketing. Here are five steps to help you get the most out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
1. Get customers’ attention to your holiday offers
You’re likely offering discounts this holiday season. After all, that’s what holiday shoppers are looking for.
With so many online businesses competing for shoppers’ attention, you must ensure your offers are put front and center in your online store. There are a few things you can do.
Show how much customers save
Everyone loves a good deal. Show shoppers how much they save on storefront and product pages. Compare the old price and the new price to make the benefit of buying a sale item more obvious.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can set up “Compare to” prices to highlight sale items. They will also get the “On Sale” label.
Make sale items stand out
You can label sale products in your store so that they stand out from other items. Make your holiday offers impossible to miss by using bright colors like red and green.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can add product ribbons such as “Sale”, “50% Off”, “Hot deal” or any other label to your sale items.
Add a promo bar to your website
A promo bar is a strip at the top of your online store that contains a message about your current promotional offer. This is an effective way to get customers’ attention and remind them of your holiday deals every time they visit your website.
You can display a promo bar with a discount coupon or a free shipping announcement. Or, add a link to your sale category so customers can go directly to holiday offers.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can add various promo bars to your online store.
2. Increase the average order value during holiday sales
The average order value is the average amount customers spend per order. You can increase your business’s average order value by offering customers additional products that complement what they’re buying or by giving them a discount if they spend a certain amount of money.
Leverage cross-selling
Cross-selling is when you offer customers additional products that complement what they’re buying. For example, if someone buys a pair of shoes online, you can suggest they buy a matching belt or handbag.
To show customers products they might want to buy in addition to a product they chose, display “Frequently bought together” product bundles on product pages.
Business owners who use Lightspeed eCom to sell online can take their cross-selling game to the next level by offering a discount for product bundles, for example, “Frequently bought together” sets.
Another way to leverage cross-selling is by adding a “You may also like” section at checkout. This way, customers can buy complementary products without having to leave the checkout page.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can easily set up related products to display specific or random items on product pages and checkout. You can name that section as you like, for example, “Customers also bought,” “You may also like” or any other phrase that fits your business.
Encourage customers to spend more with a discount threshold
Give shoppers an incentive to spend more by offering them a discount when they reach a certain amount. For example, you can offer 40% off if customers spend $100 or more.
This method works not only with discounts but with shipping too. For example, you can set up a threshold in your online store, so shoppers get free shipping on all orders over $80. This is a great way to attract more customers with free shipping while avoiding spending too much on shipping costs.
You can set up flexible discounts if you sell online with Lightspeed eCom. Not only can you offer customers a discount or free shipping when they reach a specific order total, but you can also offer discounts on certain products, new or repeat customers, and more.
Offer gift cards
Gift cards are a popular holiday gift, so make them available in your online store. Electronic gift cards are especially helpful for last-minute shoppers because they immediately get the card in their email and don’t have to wait for a product or physical gift card to be delivered.
Set up different amounts for gift cards in your online store to give more variety to your customers. For example, you can offer $25, $50, $75, and $100 gift cards.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, don’t forget to enable gift cards in your online store—it takes just a couple of clicks.
3. Create a sense of urgency for your offers
Urgency is a powerful marketing technique that you can use to encourage customers to buy now. By creating a sense of urgency, you can increase the chances that customers will buy from you rather than wait or go to another store.
Displaying a countdown timer bar on your website is one of the best ways to create urgency in your online store. It lets customers know that they only have a limited time to buy a product before it goes back to its regular price or runs out of stock.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can use a countdown timer app and show it on product or category pages.
4. Prepare for holiday shipping
Holiday sales are a busy period both for online sellers and shipping carriers. Here is what you can do to ensure your online store is prepared for the holiday shipping rush.
Decide on your free shipping strategy
Many shoppers are willing to pay more for an item if they don’t have to worry about shipping costs, so offering free shipping can be a great way to increase sales.
However, given that you’ll ship more orders during the busy sale season, you’ll lose some profits as you’ll have to pay more for shipping. Avoid spending too much on shipping costs by limiting your free shipping offer. For example, offer free shipping only for specific regions, order amount or when shipped with a particular carrier.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can automatically limit free shipping availability in your online store. This way, you won’t have to worry about manually checking if an order is eligible for free shipping—it’ll all be done for you.
Be aware of shipping deadlines
If you sell physical products, make sure you know all the major holiday shipping deadlines (like December 25th for Christmas). You can find the end-year shipping deadlines right on carriers’ websites.
Most customers will appreciate it if you can get their orders delivered by these dates, so plan accordingly and build some extra time into your shipping schedule if possible.
Also, let your customers know about shipping deadlines in advance. A short email or a post on your social media pages will do. For example, “If you’d like your gift to arrive before Christmas, please place your order this week.”
Display estimated delivery time
During the holiday season, online shoppers are especially concerned about shipping times. Set realistic expectations by letting customers know when they can expect their orders to arrive. To do that, show the estimated delivery time in your online store. This way, customers will know when to expect their orders, and you will have to deal with fewer customer service inquiries.
If you use Lightspeed eCom, you can show the estimated delivery time for each product right on the product page and checkout.
Save time by printing shipping labels at home
To save yourself time, buy and print shipping labels at home. This way, you won’t spend time in lines at the post office. You can just print the labels yourself, put them on parcels and drop them at the nearest post office. Or, schedule a pickup so that the postal service comes to your house and picks up the package for you.
If you sell online with Lightspeed eCom, you can save money on labels, too. You can buy discounted shipping labels right from your store’s admin. What’s best, the shipping details are inserted automatically, so you spend less time filling in the customers’ information.
5. Win back shoppers who left without a purchase
No matter how attractive your holiday deals are, some customers will leave your online store without buying anything. Luckily, there are ways to get in touch with these customers and try to win them back.
Set up abandoned cart emails
An abandoned cart email is an email that’s sent to online store visitors who’ve added items to their online shopping cart but then left without completing the purchase. These emails usually include a list of products left in the cart and a special offer or discount to encourage shoppers to come back and finish their purchase.
If you use Lightspeed eCom to sell online, you can send abandoned cart emails automatically to save yourself some time during the busy holiday season.
Set up retargeting ads
Even if a customer didn’t add a product to the cart, you could still try to win them back with a retargeting (remarketing) ad. These ads are shown to customers who’ve visited your online store but didn’t make a purchase.
Retargeting ads usually feature the products the customer has viewed in your store and can be very effective in getting people to return to your store and complete their purchases.
Lightspeed eCom sellers can easily set up retargeting ads on Facebook and Google even if they are unfamiliar with an ad setup.
Wrap up
If you want your online business to end the year strong, take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You still have time to do that and get the most out of the two biggest shopping days of the year, so follow the steps listed above to give yourself a big boost this holiday season.
Check out more Lightspeed eCom marketing tools to scale your business this holiday season and beyond.
News you care about. Tips you can use.
Everything your business needs to grow, delivered straight to your inbox.
