Plan for the 2021 Holiday Shopping Season: 10 Ways to Prepare for Shipping Demands
Table of contents:
- Prepare for incoming traffic.
- Create a hassle-free customer experience.
- Test Your Site Speed
- Create strategic holiday marketing and promotions.
- Ramp up customer service and support.
- Ensure you can meet important deadlines and plan for delivery delays
- Communicate your shipping and delivery options and prices
- Prepare your return policy
- Pay attention to the unboxing experience
- Set up order tracking
- Anticipate customer question
Ecommerce has shown massive growth since the pandemic started. Every small and big business is grooming online and to guide them you need to have proper knowledge, by these ways and tips and tricks you can achieve the goals so that you will not stop by creating your own online presence.
Prepare For Incoming Traffic: Increased traffic to your online store over the holidays, especially on peak buying days like Cyber 5. Nothing is more frustrating than a site outage during one of these critical moments.
Create A Hassle-Free Customer Experience: The modern holiday shopper expects to be able to receive what they need promptly and with the least amount of friction possible. That means your website must provide answers tailored to their specific needs, as well as a simple checkout process.
Test Your Site Speed: You must ensure that your site is not just reliable but also speedy. According to one survey, 70% of respondents claimed that page speed influences their decision to shop online. Now is the moment to have your team test page load times for all of your site’s elements.
execute a strong customer experience strategy. Increase the number of sales channels you have, Your online shop isn’t the only area where you can share holiday cheer. Other sales avenues to consider include furthermore, connecting these channels to provide a single experience. Your customer can buy across different devices and channels, as well as across multiple markets. Rather than having different systems manage each connection, unified commerce ensures that your clients’ entire payment flow across many channels is consolidated into one system.
Create strategic holiday marketing and promotions: Whether it’s new technologies or promotional methods, merchants have had to alter their stores this year to meet a slew of unforeseen changes in order to sell their items as efficiently as possible. That’s why, before large holiday shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you should make sure your store is completely optimized and ready with its marketing and advertising plans.
Ramp up customer service and support: The holiday season is soon approaching, and in order to be successful, both your company and your clientele will require suitable support. Make sure your ecommerce platform is up and running when you need it. A website going down during Cyber Week is a Christmas nightmare. After months of toil, your hard work has paid off.
Customers are unhappy and unable to obtain things. Business support is often overlooked, but it can make or break your success. Now is the time to make sure your ecommerce platform has industry-leading uptime, global support, and advanced security measures. This holiday season, the most crucial piece of advice we can provide shops is to stock up on inventory. A solid backup solution allows you to experiment and change items as needed during the holidays, safe in the knowledge that you can always go back in time if something goes wrong. With an automatic backup, you’ll be ready for any situation.
Ensure you can meet important deadlines and plan for delivery delays: Each Christmas season, carriers post shipping deadlines to ensure delivery before the holidays. Carriers are steadily publishing schedules this year, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health situation, pandemic-related supply chain challenges, and rising ecommerce on a global scale, delivery timeframes may be delayed.
As we approach another busy online Christmas shopping season, keep an eye on your carrier’s shipment deadlines and factor them into your delivery times. You may find the most up-to-date shipping carrier statuses in our Help Center, or browse to your carrier’s website.
Add weights to your products: If you add an accurate weight to each of your products, customers can see actual shipping prices during checkout. It’s great for them, but it’s also great for you: you won’t have to change the weight in the middle of fulfillment, allowing you to quickly print accurate shipping labels for each order.
Communicate your shipping and delivery options and prices: Indicate whether or not free shipping is offered. If there are additional fees, be sure they are reasonable and competitive. In this digital age, where Amazon is arranging for anticipatory shipping, it is recommended that customers receive free shipping during the Christmas sale.
We understand that unexpected shipping charges might reduce conversion rates, but “How much will it cost?” isn’t the only concern your clients have regarding shipping during the hectic holiday season. “Will my order arrive on time?” is also crucial. When answering both questions, don’t be afraid to go overboard because the answers are crucial to anyone contemplating buying from you. Informing your customers about shipping times at checkout enhances cart conversion, gives clarity and transparency and boosts confidence.
Prepare your return policy: Another aspect of shipping to keep in mind during a busy season is returns. According to studies, 67% of e-commerce buyers look at your return policy before completing a purchase. When it comes to planning, remember to factor in return shipping costs.
While the standard return rate is roughly 20%, it can exceed 30% around the holidays. A well-thought-out plan for accounting for and handling returns, as well as one that is communicated to your customers, will help you create a smooth process for everyone involved.
Pay attention to the unboxing experience: You want your customers to have a great experience when they finally open their delivery after all of the efforts it takes to properly ship and fulfill orders. You can create a memorable unpacking experience that leads to measurable business benefits with a little forethought. If you want to increase your social media shares, increase social sharing, consider bespoke packaging and box inserts, a little gift, or call-to-action encouraging customers to share their experience on social media. Giving them a little business card with your social media accounts, a hashtag, and a (kind!) request that they share your things on social media if they enjoy them is an easy way to do this.
Set up order tracking: After all of the effort it takes to correctly ship and fulfill orders, you want your consumers to have a pleasant experience when they finally open their delivery. With a little planning, you can create a memorable unpacking experience that leads to demonstrable business benefits. If you want to boost the number of people who share your content on social media, Consider unique packaging and box inserts, a little gift, or a call-to-action urging customers to share their experience on social media to promote social sharing. Giving them a business card with your social media accounts, a hashtag, and a (kind!) request that they share your stuff on social media if they like it is a simple way to achieve this.
Anticipate customer questions: Customers will contact you regardless of how much preparation work you put in for the holiday surge. Because your team will most likely be overworked, it’s a good idea to provide guidelines and pre-written responses to common client concerns and complaints. This will make your employees feel more empowered and provide a consistent customer experience.
It’s critical to have empathy for your clients’ current predicament, regardless of the issue. The tone and phrasing of your repetitions should be influenced by their mood. Money may have recently changed hands, and the consumer is inquiring about whether they’ll get what they paid for in an acceptable amount of time.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.
