20 eCommerce Best Practices To Increase Holiday Sales In 2024

The holiday season has started with a splash, but some marketers are still preparing for the surge, and are yet to face it during the peak festivities. eCommerce best practices can be used as armor to protect you against the online shopaholics of this period. With these strategies, irresistible offers, and a seamless shopping experience. Transform your online store into a festive shopping destination!

Discover 20 powerful holiday sales tactics to boost your store’s revenue. With so many tips to cover, let’s dive in without delay!

What Is Holiday Marketing?

Holiday marketing refers to eCommerce strategies and campaigns, used to attract customers during specific holiday seasons. This approach leverages festive themes, limited-time offers, and seasonally tailored promotions to capture the excitement and purchasing intent of consumers, during popular shopping events, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Valentine’s Day, and others.

eCommerce best practices often include personalized email campaigns, festive social media content, holiday special discounts, and exclusive product bundles. By tapping into the holiday spirit, businesses can increase visibility, engage customers, and boost sales.

Is Holiday Marketing Essential For Making Profits?

Consumer interest in online shopping grows tremendously during the holiday season. From buying gifts online to checking out the upcoming and running offers, you can blame it on any one of the reasons. But are there any more reasons? Let’s check…

1. Increased Sales Opportunities: Holidays are peak times for shopping, with customers more inclined to spend on gifts, decorations, and celebrations. Effective holiday marketing can significantly boost revenue.
2. Enhanced Brand Visibility: During holidays, people are actively looking for deals and gift ideas. The eCommerce best practices help your brand stand out, attracting both new customers and re-engaging existing ones.
3. Strengthened Customer Relationships: Personalized, festive-themed campaigns show customers that your brand understands and celebrates what matters to them. This builds loyalty and can lead to repeat business.
4. Competitive Edge: During the holiday season, most businesses ramp up their marketing efforts. Holiday marketing ensures your brand stays competitive and doesn’t miss out on consumer attention.
5. Opportunity For Product Bundling  & Upsells: Many consumers look for bundled deals and holiday-specific products, making it a prime time to introduce package deals, upsells, or limited-edition products that drive larger purchases.

In short, holiday marketing taps into the seasonal surge in demand, amplifying brand presence and boosting sales during critical revenue-generating periods. We will now talk about the eCommerce best practices that will help you increase your holiday sales…

20 eCommerce Best Practices To Increase Holiday Sales!

The holiday season is a prime opportunity to elevate your eCommerce store’s success, with customers eager to find the best deals, gifts, and experiences.

To help you stand out and maximize profits, we’ve compiled 20 proven eCommerce best practices tailored for holiday sales. From optimizing your website to enhancing customer engagement and loyalty, these strategies will ensure your store is ready to capture festive shoppers and turn seasonal traffic into long-term growth. Dive in and get your eCommerce store holiday-ready!

1. Give Gift-Wrapped Products

Setting up a gift wrap is a great wrap service and can be a game-changing addition to your holiday sales strategy. These eCommerce best practices enhance convenience for your customers and create a delightful, memorable shopping experience.

Offering complimentary gift wrapping takes the stress out of the busy holiday season for your shoppers. It’s a value-added service that can set your store apart from the competition, attracting customers who appreciate the attention to detail.

This gesture also resonates well with the spirit of giving during the holidays.

By integrating this holiday sales tip, you not only enhance customer satisfaction but also potentially increase holiday sales by making your store a preferred destination for holiday shopping.

2. Start Abandoned Cart Recovery

The latest shopping cart abandonment rates show that in April 2024, 73.27% of all online shopping carts failed to make it to the checkout stage. ~ Oberlo

Cart abandonment poses a challenge for businesses, impacting holiday sales. To boost your holiday selling and combat this, identify the reasons behind abandonment.

Even with eCommerce best practices in place, abandoned carts are inevitable. Counter this by persuading customers to complete orders through recovering abandonment cart campaigns. Here are the top reasons for cart abandonment:

[Source: Moosesend]

• Email Automation: Craft holiday-specific cart abandonment email campaigns using automation tools.
• Timely Reminders: Send periodic reminders urging users to finalize their purchases.
• Push Notifications: Utilize push notifications for gentle nudges.
• FOMO Indicators: Employ indicators like Countdown Timers and out-of-stock messages to evoke a fear of missing out.
• Retargeting Ads: Deploy retargeting ads to re-engage and recapture potential buyers.

Using these strategies in your holiday sales ideas arsenal can help you in Abandoned Cart recovery, contributing to elevated holiday sales.

3. Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is a process where you divide your users into different groups as per their characteristics. These characteristics can be anything like their Location, Gender, or something else.

This aligns with eCommerce best practices, allowing you to deliver content that truly interests your audience and increasing the chances of better conversions or sales.

Customer Segmentation benefits you in many ways. When you segment your users, you can deliver the content they’re interested in. And doing that has more chances of better conversions or sales.

For example, if you segment bodybuilders as per their previous purchases, i.e., protein bars, you can retarget them in the future with more relevant products like energy drinks and supplements.

This will give them a personalized customer experience and restrict you from using a scattered targeting approach.

Here’s how you can leverage customer segmentation:

• Use tools to segment your audience
• Generate content as per the customer stage to move them down in your sales pipeline
• Create email marketing campaigns as per the characteristics of the customers

4. Show Your Best Products

During the festive season, some of your top-selling products become favorites, selling like hotcakes. Featuring them prominently can boost holiday sales. These products, trusted year-round, capture attention and drive conversions. To maximize exposure, following these eCommerce best practices can enhance your strategy

Your best sellers have already proved their mettle. Showing them often will attract more customers towards it and boost holiday sales, conversions, etc.

Here’s how you can expose your top-selling products:

• Display your best-selling products in your website’s footer, landing pages, etc.
• Make them easily accessible for every visitor.
• If possible, create a dedicated landing page for top-selling products.
• Pitch your top-selling products through emails.
• Create content around these products to amplify holiday sale advertisements.

Seize the holiday sale ideas by spotlighting your proven winners and making the most of the holiday season sale for increased online holiday sales.

5. Review Your Last Year’s Performance

Enhance holiday sales by learning from past mistakes. Just as personal growth stems from avoiding errors, eCommerce thrives by this principle. Evade repeating previous missteps and benefit from the following holiday sales ideas

Addressing prior bottlenecks ensures seamless user journeys, and boosting conversions and sales.

Here’s how you can avoid your previous mistakes:

• Analyze last year’s data via Google Analytics and Search Console.
• Decode user behavior using heatmaps and scroll maps.
• Study user interactions through recorded page visits.
• Correct past issues—failed marketing, non-converting ads, and more.

Apply these insights to not only dodge pitfalls but also increase holiday sales. Harness this knowledge to boost holiday sales, elevating your eCommerce success.

6. Exciting Offers To First Joiners

Converting new customers costs more than converting the existing ones.

But that doesn’t mean you can neglect your new buyers. If you can retain your first-time customer for long, they will also be profitable for you in the future.

Implementing eCommerce best practices, such as offering exciting rewards to new users, is an effective strategy for customer retention and future growth.

Here’s an example from Amazon,

Here’s what you can do to retain first-time buyers with exciting rewards:

• Offer discounts, free shipping, cashback, etc. on the first purchase of the users.
• Create offers that are dedicated only to first-time buyers.
• Provide them early access to your upcoming sale. This will be a great idea to increase sales for small businesses during the Holidays.
• Offer them a referral bonus.

7. Curate Loyalty Programs

Festive loyalty programs are a smart way to boost sales and engagement during the holidays by rewarding customers and encouraging repeat business. Key strategies include offering double points, exclusive rewards, referral bonuses, VIP tiers, and early sale access to loyalty members. This holiday season, enhance your customer loyalty with the Points and Rewards for WooCommerce plugin. It empowers you to offer exclusive festive perks, such as double points, unique holiday rewards, and referral bonuses, all designed to boost engagement and sales. 

Engaging customers with festive challenges or milestones also adds fun and increases brand interaction.

During the holidays, loyalty programs do more than drive immediate sales—they create a connection with customers that extends beyond the season. Customers who feel rewarded and appreciated are more likely to return, which drives long-term brand loyalty. A well-designed festive loyalty program can help your brand thrive through the season and keep customers coming back year-round.

8. Customer Retargetting

Targeting existing users is much more beneficial than targeting new ones. The existing customers are already interested in your brand and have interacted with you before. Hence they are more likely to listen to you and your offers when you approach them.

According to Invespcro, investing in new customers is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining the existing ones.

Also, the existing customers purchase more products than fresh ones. Implementing eCommerce best practices by focusing on your current customer base can significantly boost holiday sales.

Here’s how you can retarget your existing customers:

• Segment your existing customers for better targeting.
• Show them personalized ads through remarketing.
• Offer them products relevant to their current and previous purchases via cross-selling and upselling.

9. Boost Impulse Buys with Upselling and Cross-selling

Has it ever happened to you that you planned to buy something but returned with many other unplanned products? Personally, it happens to me a lot.

We call this impulse buying. When a customer is purchasing something and buys another product with it she/he hasn’t planned to. Increasing impulse buys also increase the revenue of your store since the customers purchase more products.

In the online business, we propose impulse purchases through upselling and cross-selling.

Upselling is about offering an upgrade or a better version of the product the user is purchasing. Whereas, cross-selling refers to offering complementary products to the initial purchase that will add more value to the parent product if bought.

Here’s how you can increase impulse buys at your store:

• Use a smart upselling or cross-selling plugin.
• Offer post-purchase upsells, i.e., after checkout.
• Offer them cross-selling products right before they add a product to the cart.
• Show them products relevant to the initial purchase.
• Avoid offering a product they’ve already purchased before.

10. Limited Time Offers

Another effective strategy is creating a sense of urgency, a proven technique to boost holiday sales. By employing limited-time offers and showcasing expiring discounts, you trigger a fear of missing out (FOMO) among your audience.

This urgency-driven approach nudges potential customers to act swiftly, thus converting their intentions into actual purchases.

Don’t miss out on integrating these tips for increasing sales into your holiday sales strategy—they hold the potential to make a remarkable impact on your bottom line.

Here’s how you can use a sense of urgency:

• Add countdown timers for your sales, discounts, or products going out of stock.
• Offer reward points to customers if they buy the product under the deadline.
• Display the number of products left in stock.
• Notify customers through email, SMS, or social media about products going out of stock, sales ending, etc.

11. Customizable Gift Cards

Enhance your holiday sales with personalized gift cards, an excellent strategy holiday sales tip that works every season.

These cards resonate during the festive season, offering thoughtful customization options like background images, messages, and delivery dates.

In the landscape of holiday selling eCommerce tips, personalized gift cards emerge as a standout approach to making more sales. They capture the essence of the season and empower recipients to tailor their gifts. Let customers unleash their creativity into the shopping experience and brand loyalty.

You can utilize the Gift Cards for WooCommerce Pro Plugin to allow customers to craft gift cards with custom elements that accurately reflect their sentiments. This fusion not only resonates with the spirit of the holidays but also contributes to a boosted holiday sales outcome.

12. Pep-up Your Social Media

Every day, millions of posts are shared on social media platforms, and with its impressive ability to spread word of mouth, social media has become a powerful tool for brands. Brands can also utilize a holiday sales calendar to plan and strategize better –

To make the most of this, you should leverage eCommerce best practices by actively sharing your holiday deals and offers on social media.

Here are some effective ways to use social media to increase holiday sales:

1. Analyze which platforms are most effective for your business and tailor your strategy accordingly.
2. Focus on solving users’ problems or providing value through your posts.
3. Partner with complementary brands to cross-promote each other’s holiday offers.
4. Running a holiday giveaway is a dynamic way to increase holiday sales while embodying the spirit of giving.

13. Nurture Users With Email Marketing

Email marketing is not an all-gone fashion. Many digital marketers still use emails to pitch their sales to potential customers. And why do they use it? Because it gives amazing results.

It is seen when you use email marketing to offer coupon codes, 7 out of 10 people use them. Not only this, emails bring great traffic to your website and can also convert users.

But remember, sending random emails is like taking shots in the dark. So you need to create an infallible strategy that can help you increase your holiday season sales.

Here’s how you can create an effective email marketing strategy:

• Choose the perfect email platform that best suits your needs. There are many like HubSpot, MailChimp, and Optinmonster.
• Avoid email marketing mistakes like not sending welcome emails, using a bunch of stock images, etc.
• Send segmented and personalized emails to your audience.
• Always test your emails, and marketing strategies via WooCommerce A/B testing
• Optimize and make your emails mobile-friendly.
• Don’t be promotional in your emails. Try to provide them with value.
• Monitor your email deliverability. If that’s not good, you may ruin your reputation.

14. Give Your Website A Festive Look

Have you seen how brick-and-mortar stores are decorated for festivals? They decorate their shops according to the festival so that people can relate.

In the eCommerce business, your website is your store. You need to give it a festive look and feel so that customers know you’re prepared for the festivals and they can get some good deals and offers there.

Along with giving your site a festive look, make the website navigation and checkout process easy for the users.

Remember, many users shop from mobile devices, and according to a report, if your mobile website has complex navigation, 61% of users won’t return to it. And 40% will visit the competitor’s site instead.

Here’s how you can give your website a festive look:

• You can use festive images on your website home and other pages.
• Use graphics and themes that represent the festival or the ongoing season.
• Change the fonts to give your website a festive look.

15. Run Festive Ads Campaigns To Increase Holiday Sales

Infuse your holiday sales strategy with an impactful move: launching festive ad campaigns. Amid the season’s hustle and bustle, a well-executed ad campaign can be the catalyst to boost holiday sales. For example, Google Search Ads (PPC), Social Media Ads, Video Ads, and more.

Craft holiday-spirited ads, resonating with emotions and aspirations of the season. Use social media and search engines for optimal reach.

Use ads in your holiday selling tips to draw conversions relying on these methods:

• Targeted Messaging: Tailor your ad content to evoke festive emotions and reflect the season’s essence.
• Limited-Time Offers: Capitalize on the urgency of the holidays by featuring limited-time promotions.
• Visual Appeal: Design eye-catching visuals that encapsulate the joy and spirit of the season.
• Call to Action: Include clear calls to action that drive potential customers to make a purchase.

Furthermore, consider employing platforms like Google Ads and social media platforms to launch your campaigns. These platforms allow for precise targeting, ensuring your ads reach those most likely to engage.

Your efforts combined with the right timing and resonant messaging, contribute to a boosted holiday sales outcome, elevating your brand’s holiday success.

16. Offer Free Shipping & Easy Returns

Just a couple of weeks back, I was searching for some trousers for myself. One of them was so mind-blowing I added it to the cart instantly. But as I saw the shipping charges were mind-blowing too, I abandoned my cart.

This is what you should care about. Don’t charge too much for shipping. You can also offer free shipping during the holiday season.

Also, focus on smoothening the return process along with shipping. If a customer is somehow not satisfied with the product and wants to return it, make this process easy for them. And in the holiday season, the number of returns skyrockets. So make it better if it’s not.

Here’s how you can use free shipping and return:

• Set a specific price limit for free shipping
• Promote your free shipping event
• Include shipping cost in the product price
• Make returns easy for customers
• List the return deadline on every product page

17. Leverage User-Generated Content

Nothing’s better than user-generated content(UGC) to gain the user’s trust. This is the reason almost every brand uses it on their websites. According to a report from Brightlocal, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

However, every eCommerce business can’t display user-generated content on their homepage. But if you can show them somewhere, you have a chance of attracting loyal customers who can grow your holiday season sales.

Here’s how you can use user-generated content on your website:

• Add testimonials on your home page
• You can also create a dedicated page for testimonials and case studies
• Don’t limit your testimonials only to your website. Share them on social media
• Use them in your content to gain readers’ trust

18. Build A Customer Base Before Sale Season

Building an audience after the holiday season begins will get difficult for you. This is because people don’t trust new brands so quickly over trusted ones.

So try to build an audience before the holiday season. You can use several mediums for this. For example, you can collect email subscribers, social media followers, or members for your social media groups or spaces.

The idea is to grab an audience who, whenever you run a new festive sale, gets to know about it instantly through your posts, emails, etc. If they get notified, they’ll visit your website, shop there, and increase holiday sales at your store.

Here’s how you can build an audience before the holiday season sale begins:

• Find your target audience in social media groups
• Offer free WooCommerce subscriptions to some users
• Look what kind of audience your competitors are targeting
• Analyze your products and think about what kind of audience’s problem it will fix
• Create WooCommerce memberships and offer them for free at the beginning

19. Encourage Video and GIFs To Increase Holiday Sales

If you have demo videos of your products or have an explainer video and walk-through videos, then you are through with this. Videos and GIFs have become the centerpiece for conversion.

During the holiday season, one tends to increase revenue, thus amplifying the checkout process through something innovative and out of the box. And using videos and GIFs is the best choice to do so.

Not only this, but it will also grab the attention of your customers. However, using such marketing strategies will surely increase the click-through rate.

Here’s how you can use videos and GIFs effectively:

• Use videos to explain the functioning of your products
• GIFs are trending these days. You can use them in your social posts and promotions
• You can also use product teaser videos to generate curiosity among the customers

20. Offer Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL)

Over 50% of online retailers now offer BNPL options, with a spike in usage of 39% during festive periods. Customers seek comfort in knowing that eCommerce and WooCommerce store owners are ready to facilitate to there budgets. By providing “buy now, pay later” options as a marketer, you can make your customers trust you with their loyalty. But first let us understand the concept of BNPL.

The “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) option is a powerful tool during the festive season, allowing customers to shop more freely and spend easily. By offering payment flexibility, BNPL encourages customers to make larger purchases, enhancing their shopping experience without financial strain.

For marketers, BNPL boosts average order value, reduces cart abandonment, and attracts new, budget-conscious customers. This added convenience not only drives holiday sales but also builds customer loyalty, setting your brand up for long-term success during the season and beyond.

Over To You!

Holidays make people crazy. They buy things without even thinking too much. You just need to increase this opportunity to make more profit and boost holiday sales.

And the tips I’ve told you above can surely help you out and increase holiday sales at your store if you use them properly.
So go ahead and try them. If you have some doubts or queries, the comments section is always on.