As a business, you must take every opportunity that the shopping trends offer you, and January is undoubtedly the month you’ve been waiting for. But after the stress of Christmas, how can your business stand out from the crowd in those mass-spread sales? Well here are our five top tips when it comes to controlling the chaos of January e-commerce.
1. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!
When it comes to e-commerce preparation is key, how much your website and online advertising lines up with the needs of the potential customer is what makes the difference. Your preparation should always align; meaning your essential adverts and the offers that are front-and-centre on your website should be mirror images of each other. Customers don’t want to be led to water to be told it’s a milkshake, although that does sound pretty great! Make sure you have your bases covered, and your offers do exactly what’s advertised.
2. Let’s touch on stress-relieving
We all know the chaos of the festive period all too well, alcohol hangovers for some and food hangovers for the majority. Endless Christmas parties and family festivities have drained the pockets of your potential customers. So how are you going to help?
Well, your business is going to offer that much-needed Winter massage to all of those bargain-hunting online shoppers. Price-point becomes absolutely everything in January, and bargains are the norm, so don’t miss out, we can achieve this by selling our products for the best prices.
If you’re in the food and drink sector, we would suggest having your 50% vouchers already piled high because this is pretty much an industry norm throughout January. If you’re able to make money while enticing those new potentials through the door, you may be looking for a bigger venue come 2021.
The retail therapy massage doesn’t stop in the culinary sector as January is a massive month in the travel industry. Although it seems bizarre that we would spend such large amounts having just survived Christmas, is there anything more stress-relieving than booking a holiday? No, there’s not!
3. Bundle your offers and sell the ‘new’!
Let’s be honest, no one wants to buy something old, or something they feel will have a limited shelf life. So here’s our e-commerce advice, if you can group those hard-to-shift ‘FW 19’ products with a discount applied on a ‘SS 20’ product, do it! Offering a discount code on a newer collection might be the answer you’re after. Doing this also gets your new products into the public eye, which brings us on to our next point…
4. Make a wish …list!
Lists around the festive period are just something we love to do. From those we sprawled to Santa on the back of a colouring book, to everyday lists ensuring we don’t forget the necessities. Social media has added a whole new value to the creation of lists, and for businesses across the world, featuring in more lists means more time in the public eye and presumably more sales.
So, why are they so important?
Well, not every online shopper knows what they are looking for, and with e-commerce being such an instinctive sector, you need to help your potential customers along the way. Therefore, creating a best-seller list or a winter gift wishlist gives added weight to the perceived value of your product.
Here’s the thing, the easiest way is to implement a list into your website. For example, ‘best sellers’, ‘gifts for her’ and ‘secret Santa’. However, to really take it to the next level, why not allow your potential customers, and indeed the whole online world to create a list of the products they want the most from your store? ‘Wishlists’ can be shared by your customers on to their social media platforms, meaning once again, your business is back in the eye-line of those desperate online shoppers.
5. Remain on-trend
Our final piece of advice for mastering e-commerce this January would be to remain on-trend. Your potential customers want to buy things that will still have value, do they want to buy a pair of floral summer shorts? Well maybe, but most of the time a winter coat will sell on a much larger scale than a product which is traditionally off-trend.
When it comes to e-commerce, there will never be any ‘secrets’ to success. Within every business, it is very much trial and error when it comes to attracting potential online customers and actually selling to them. However, if you follow this guide, you’ll be starting in the right place.
