Fueling Festive Profits: 21 eCommerce Best Practices To Increase Holiday Sales In 2023

“Maximize the merry and your profits this holiday season with strategic marketing, irresistible offers, and a seamless shopping experience. Let your eCommerce store shine as a festive shopping destination!”

The eCommerce holiday season is right around the corner and you need to optimize your website to thrive in the festive rush. This is a common quest for retail and eCommerce merchants.

While achieving this isn’t an overnight task, a comprehensive strategy can make all the difference.

Dive into this blog to uncover 21 effective holiday sales tips that will elevate your eCommerce store’s revenue. Let’s get started without delay—after all, with 21 tips to cover, there’s no time to waste.

21 Tips To Increase Holiday Sales In 2023

1. Give Gift-Wrapped Products

Incorporating a free gift wrap service can be a game-changing addition to your holiday sales strategy. These holiday selling tips not only add an extra layer of convenience for your customers but also create a delightful and 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.

You can rely on the gift wrapping WooCommerce plugin to allow customers to pitch in their gift wrap requests during the checkout process. Additionally, you can let them add a custom note for the giftee.

2. Run Cart Abandonment Campaigns

Statista reports that in March 2021, 80% of online shopping orders were abandoned globally. And I remember this number was 88% till 2020.

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

Even when everything’s done right, 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:

Tips for recovery:

• 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.

Incorporating these strategies into your holiday sales tips arsenal can recover sales from abandoned carts, contributing to elevated holiday sales.

3. Leverage Audience 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.

Audience segmentation can benefit you in many ways. When you segment your users, you can deliver the content they’re really 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 Top-selling Product

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:

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 Previous Data to Avoid Mistakes

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 tips:

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

Here’s how you can avoid your previous mistakes:

1. Analyze last year’s data via Google Analytics and Search Console.
2. Decode user behavior using heatmaps and scroll maps.
3. Study user interactions through recorded page visits.
4. 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 for First-time Buyers

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. And nothing works better than offering some exciting rewards to those users.

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 during the Holidays.
• Offer them a referral bonus

7. Don’t Overlook Customer Service

People shop most during the holiday season. And the more they shop, the more issues pop up. Your job is to provide them with customer service that can fix those issues in no time.

If you do that successfully, 93% of the customers would like to shop again from your brand. Keep in mind, that you can’t keep every user happy, but if most of them are, you’re doing great.

Here’s what you can do to improve your customer service:

• Reduce your average response time
• Provide omnichannel customer service
• Add a self-service option to your website
• Use chatbots to fix common and repetitive problems

8. Retarget Your Existing Customers

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. So it’s always fruitful to target existing customers if you want to 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 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 the products relevant to the initial purchase
• Avoid offering a product they’ve already purchased before

10. Include Countdown for 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 the stock
• Notify customers through email, SMS, or social media about products going out of stock, sales ending, etc.

11. Offer Personalizable 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. Plan a Holiday Social Media Giveaway

Executing a holiday social media giveaway is a dynamic strategy that can effectively boost holiday sales while embodying the essence of festive generosity. This approach engages your audience, cultivates excitement, and offers a chance for potential customers to experience your products or services firsthand.

CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 @rxr_realty on opening your NEW state-of-the-art One Clinton Park complex in the heart of downtown New Rochelle. Today kicks off our #NewRoConnects apartment giveaway hashtag contest. Find out how to win a 12-month rent-free studio apt: https://t.co/kVP2Iw1Iqv pic.twitter.com/4EZdvOfdNn

— New Rochelle – Ideally Yours (@IdeallyNRNY) July 18, 2022

Begin by selecting a compelling prize that resonates with your target audience and aligns with your brand. Leverage platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to spread the word about the giveaway. Incorporate the holiday sales tips into your promotion strategy by:

Creating Buzz: Generate anticipation by teasing the giveaway in the lead-up to the holidays.

User Engagement: Encourage participants to engage with your posts, increasing visibility.

Sharing Requirements: Ask participants to share their posts, tag friends, or use a specific hashtag to expand reach.

Showcasing Products: Highlight the giveaway prize, ideally one of your top-selling items, seamlessly integrating your products into the festive spirit.

As participants flock to enter, you gather a valuable audience for potential retargeting. By intertwining the joy of giving with the allure of your products, a holiday social media giveaway proves to be a strategic win-win during the holiday season.

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, 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 via AB 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

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:

1. Targeted Messaging: Tailor your ad content to evoke festive emotions and reflect the season’s essence.

2. Limited-Time Offers: Capitalize on the urgency of the holidays by featuring limited-time promotions.

3. Visual Appeal: Design eye-catching visuals that encapsulate the joy and spirit of the season.

4. 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 and Easy Return

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
• Clearly 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. Incorporating pictures of the reviewer brings up more credibility to the website.

Here’s an amazing example of Backlinko using UGC:

If you visit Backlinko and read these reviews, you won’t think much before subscribing to their newsletter.

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 the trusted ones.

So try to build an audience prior to 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. Plan a Targeting Content Strategy

This is the mistake we’ve made in the past and will be rectified this year. Planning a content strategy for the holiday season at the 11th hour won’t be worth your efforts.

Why?

Because the content doesn’t rank overnight. It takes time, sometimes months, and years to get on top of the SERPs. So plan your content strategy prior to the festive season.

Generate and market your content before the holiday season begins just like established brands. So if you start creating or optimizing your holiday season blog posts at the last minute, the competitors’ content will outrank your articles.

Many brands underestimate the power of content when it comes to sales. But it is a powerful asset to boost your conversions and increase holiday sales.

Here’s how you can create a content strategy prior holiday season:

• Start creating the blogs during the holiday season at least 3 months before it begins
• If you have enough blogs for the festive season, optimize them. You can also de-index the least performing ones
• Create freebies or lead magnets you can offer for free during the holiday season
• Look for the holiday sales trends and create content around them if you don’t have any

20. Encourage Video and GIFs

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

21. Pep-up Your Social Media

According to a report from Wearesocial, every 2nd person in the world uses social media.

Every day millions of posts are shared on different social media platforms. And since it has an impressive power of spreading word of mouth, every brand is squeezing more and more value from it.

You should also do the same to share your holiday deals and offers. All you need to do is be more active on social media platforms and engage and nurture your audience. Trust me, if you leverage this platform, you’ll witness a great hike in your festive sales.

Here’s how you can use social media to increase holiday sales:

• Be on the platforms your audience uses
• Every platform has a unique role. Some drive traffic, and some drive leads, and conversions. Analyze which one is most effective in your case and create your marketing strategy accordingly
• Never be promotional on any platform. Focus on providing value or solving user’s problems through your posts
• Connect with other brands and make them promote your offers

Over to You

Holidays make people crazy. They literally 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.