5 Features To Add in Your Ecommerce Store This Festive Season

• By Anup Mehrotra
• 12-11-2021
• E-commerce

The eCommerce industry grew by all leaps and bounds in the year 2020 during the pandemic. However, now the question is, will this boom continue in the year 2021? Especially when the holiday season is around the corner, what should retailers expect?

Well, the online shopping trend is here to stay. But, what matters is how retailers attract traffic towards their web pages. While online traffic might not be as high in 2021 as it was in 2020 because of shoppers heading back to brick-and-mortar stores, the eCommerce industry will still expand and grow far more than what it was before social distancing and lockdown.

However, retailers will have to implement some out-of-the-box techniques, strategies, and features to attract a great number of visitors to their online stores in 2021. In this article, we will talk about five such features or techniques that can help them grab some eyeballs. So, let's get started.

A Streamlined Shopping Experience

Modern shoppers are time savvy and they want to accomplish tasks as soon as possible without any delay or hassles. It means in order to increase conversions, your website should cater to their specific needs and provide a seamless checkout path.

According to reports, investing in building a great CX can double your revenue within 2-3 years. A good CX means your customers will spend more because 86% of online shoppers spend more on a website that offers a seamless customer experience. Let's now see what constitutes a great CX:

Website's Speed: Even big brands like Amazon, Sephora, and others suffer from slow website speed when traffic spikes. According to reports, 73% of shoppers move to a competitor if they find slow-loading pages on a website. Thus, retailers need to optimize website speed to provide a seamless experience to their users and increase sales.

Simple Navigation: In order to not frustrate visitors, your website should be easy to use. Try not to overwhelm your website visitors with unnecessary data. Keep it moderate and simple to access. Also, focus on providing a great mobile experience as most holiday shoppers use mobile devices to browse gift items.

Fast Checkouts: The checkout process should be the most optimized feature of your eCommerce website to generate maximum sales. Without fast checkouts, no matter how much effort you put to bring in customers to your website. If they face problems in making a purchase, there is no benefit of streamlining the rest of the shopping experience. So, make your checkout processes quick and short.

Discounts and Offers

During the holiday season, grabbing customers’ attention is one of the most tedious tasks. Almost all retailers want to get visitors and try hard to convert them into loyal customers. Providing discounts is one of the most effective ways to get this much-desired attention.

Retailers should offer exclusive deals or present a deal in such a way that looks alluring to the customers. It is your responsibility to give out deals that create the fear of losing out among your customers. You can use catchy taglines or promote your offers on social media to get traction.

These discounts can be like 10-20% off on certain products or the “buy one get one” kind of offers to entice shoppers. You can also plan to implement some upsell and cross-sell strategies. This will help you increase your average order value and will also contribute to your efforts of providing a great CX by educating your customers about the best deals.

Personalization

Personalize the experience for your website visitors by utilizing AI to decipher their purchasing behavior as signs of what in particular they're interested in. Add customized content, product recommendation engine, and gift items for customers to buy or add to their wish lists.

Holiday shopping continues even after the festivals so make sure to provide an “Add-to-wishlist” feature so that customers can save the products they like to buy later.

Several brands are harnessing the power of AI to personalize experiences across different touchpoints and to provide a consistent experience. Also, personalization should not be limited to product recommendation engines during the festive seasons. You can take the experience of your website one step ahead by:

Using AI-powered chatbots to provide excellent customer service
Integrating AI-powered live search functionality to deliver better search results
Designing a personalized email marketing campaign for your target audience

There are several ways to personalize the experience of your online customers. If done rightly, it can increase your sales by many folds in the festive season 2021.

A Festive Look and Feel

If you want to take advantage of the holiday season sales, you need to invest in designing your website using festive themes and templates. Don't panic! You don't need to redesign the entire website. Just add a few elements and your online store will deliver the festive vibes.

For example, create some pop-ups, upload a video, or add elements like snowflakes to your web pages to exhibit a festive feel. All these things will help you connect better with your customers, which in turn will improve sales.

Add BOPIS

BOPIS is a great feature to add to your eCommerce website. It is a way using which you can increase traffic on your online as well as offline store. It lets customers browse products online and also gives them a chance to visit your offline store. After all, who doesn’t want to roam around the streets during the holiday season?

This feature helps customers who want to browse, analyze, and compare products from the safety of their homes but also want to visit markets during the festive season. They place orders and collect the same from stores at whatever time suits them the best. On the other hand, it helps merchants eliminate the process of shipping, tight packaging, and also avoid delays in delivery.

Another benefit is that it increases foot traffic to stores, which is another opportunity for retailers to make more sales. For example, if a customer has an item in a cart or on the wishlist, retailers can give customers a chance to try those products in-store or offer some discount on the same by sending a push notification when customers visit the physical store.

The Crux

The holiday season is the best time of the year to drive traffic towards your eCommerce store and generate millions in sales. But, since the competition is also going to be high in the eCommerce industry, retailers need to make some efforts in order to boost conversions.

While the needs of every business are different, the strategies and features mentioned above can help almost all types of businesses do the needful.