Holiday shopping seasons are the most wonderful time of the year for consumers looking for great deals on gifts and for retailers who know how to capitalize on the incoming traffic to their stores. The winter holiday season gets the most consumer attention — rightfully so, as eCommerce sales are expected to be as high as $149 billion during the holiday period of November through January according to a Deloitte estimate. But there’s more to seasonal shopping spikes than just the end of the year gift-giving bonanzas.

Any time of year is the right time to prime your eCommerce website for increased order capacity. Prepare for successful seasonal sales with consumer-focused strategies. Manage the higher influx of orders with streamlined processes that effectively manage fraud. And don’t forget to utilize all the business intelligence that comes from your optimized campaigns.

Kensium teamed up with Signifyd to create this quick guide on how retailers can maximize conversions during any holiday or seasonal shopping rush. These seven get-rights can help you craft better campaigns, focused on key aspects of the customer journey like user experience, optimized messaging and fast service.

HELP SHOPPERS MAKE DECISIONS QUICKLY AND EASILY

Shoppers are inundated with emails, text messages and advertisements from your direct eCommerce competitors. It’s hard to cut through the noise, so every word counts when you’re trying to reach new customers.

It’s likely been a long road for them to find your eCommerce website, so make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for when they land on your homepage. Clear shopping roadmaps can guide customers through the optimal site experience. Make product categories very clear and easy to find from the homepage. Create an intuitive shopping experience that allows the customer to locate what they want — and leaves room for them to venture down a different path with related products. A well-designed, clean, functional eCommerce site should always encourage the buyer to keep shopping.

Here are some examples of product positioning that will help shoppers make decisions during the holidays:

• Create collections such as Mom’s gifts’, ‘Teenager gifts’, 'Wife/husband gifts'.
• Group gifts by price range like ‘Gifts under $50’.
• Combine both previous points and create collections with price ranges like ‘Gifts for Mom under $50’.
• Make sure to include user reviews and ratings. Ratings and reviews grab attention and are especially helpful as filters.

DON’T LOSE CUSTOMERS AT THE CHECKOUT

Take a walk in the customer’s shoes when they enter your website. They finally found the item they’ve been looking for. It’s the right price. It even includes bonuses like free two-day shipping. If you think the sale is a sure shot just because the customer has made it this far into the buying process, think again. Obstacles like required account creation at checkout or a lack of payment options are two of the most frequent reasons why customers abandon their carts — even with the sales finish line in sight.

Ecommerce software leaders like Magento and BigCommere provide a streamlined checkout experience with a guest checkout feature for customers who aren’t ready to create an account. Guest and express checkouts can feature a minimalist design, with all required fields displayed on the same page. Others can be bare bones, just asking for an email address to confirm the order. However, you decide to streamline your guest checkout experience, keep ease of use in mind.

A streamlined checkout process can include expedited checkout screen with a one-step payment option, like clicking to pay with PayPal. Pare down the required fields to the essentials of an email address (to deliver order confirmations, receipts, and other essential information to the customer) and payment method, and watch your cart abandonment rates go down.

Userzoom has a list of suggestions for minimalist yet effective guest checkout user experience and user interface setup that can benefit mobile users, with examples from some of the biggest retail brands in the world like Lego, Lowe’s and Walmart.

WELCOME INCREASED SALES WHILE KEEPING FRAUD TOP OF MIND

It’s a good thing when more people come to your website. More traffic can mean more sales. But the influx of site activity can carry a higher risk of fraud. If your instinct is to get tough on fraud by declining more orders, think instead of working with a fraud solution that shifts liability, like Signifyd. Retailers can accept additional orders with liability shift solutions such as guaranteed fraud protection.

Solutions that offer automated order review do all the work for you: a machine-learning powered engine reviews each order to find ways an order can be approved. This often means a higher-order approval rate, plus the best part: a 100% financial guarantee on any approved orders that turn out to be fraudulent.

Kensium works with providers like Signifyd, who offers all of the above: automated order approval, liability shift for fraudulent purchases and more. Focus on serving more customers with great products and user experience, and let automation handle the rest.

PLAN YOUR STRATEGY FAR IN ADVANCE OF THE SEASON

Everyone working in retail knows that the prep season starts months ahead of selling in the holiday season. Pre-planning, starting as early as possible is a major success factor for any holiday selling strategy. Here are a few things to add to your pre-season planning to-do list:

• Optimize your website far ahead of the target season by leaning on system integrators. You can’t do everything, so lean on experts who have the knowledge, time and resources to make every piece of your website perform at its peak.
• Perfect your seasonal value proposition. Any holiday can drive sales for your website with the right messaging and targeting. Discounts, sales, and offers are not unique to Black Friday. Keep customers coming back to your site with dynamic promotions.
• Utilize your online reviews. Your customers are your leading influencers. Empower them to leave reviews for products on your website. Those reviews can influence shoppers to buy things they normally wouldn’t — a huge help when trying to boost holiday sales.
• Build your contact list. A larger list means more potential revenue. It’s simple math: you can sell more to a wider audience. List building is a year-round effort. Kensium has a variety of effective strategies to grow customer lists and segment them for targeted marketing no matter the season.

TEST YOUR WEBSITE PERFORMANCE

Your improved holiday strategy should be built on the data you already have: namely, the times when sales went well versus the times when things could have been better. Holiday and seasonal sales events are great for continuous website testing — customers are likely expecting dynamic content during the fast-paced holiday shopping season.

Start with a basic A/B testing plan to find key metrics like an effective conversion rate. Here are a few pointers to do testing right:

• Utilize bandit tests – With a bandit test, the traffic allocation — or how many people see which variation — is dynamically changed based on the performance of a specific variation. If the B result seems to be converting more, the bandit algorithm shows variation B to more users.
• Run A/B tests again – Results during December won’t be the same as later in March. Test again before you apply the results blindly to your regular traffic.
• Test only what matters – Don’t focus on micro-conversions or minor growth. Identify the variables you want to know about most, like seasonal value proposition, return policies or shipping guarantees, and refine them through repeated testing.
• Conduct quality assurance – Many sites experience downtime issues because they didn’t plan for the incoming traffic spike. Maintain your website with proactive quality checks.
• Experiment with promotions and seasonal offers to address specific questions — Your data should help you answer key questions like How did your visitors respond to each promotion? Were they more interested in a $20 coupon or 10% off? What were the best places to advertise these promotions on your site?

CAPTURE DATA TO BUILD A BETTER SITE

When the seasonal rush ends, the work isn’t over. You probably made your sales quota and boosted revenue above your yearly goals. Definitely celebrate your wins, but don’t lose sight of what’s next up - taking everything you learned from your successful holiday campaign and applying it to your overall eCommerce strategy.

Everything that came in from the holiday campaign — from reviews to new customer data to business intelligence from A/B testing — can optimize your upcoming campaigns and initiatives. Your primary goal was to move products and boost revenue. As dollars came in, so did a brand new batch of free, actionable insights. Your customers tell you what they want to see on your site every day. Each time they make a purchase, leave a review or even click on a page, customers leave an impression that dictates the new direction you should take for your site.

After the holiday shopping season wraps up, plan an internal meeting or a series of meetings with your marketing, product, and technical teams to identify the key take-aways. Turn these data-supported insights into actionable efforts that you can apply to the next holiday season and overall conversion improvements.

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

Put customers first this holiday season — and year-round — by providing excellent customer experience and service from the second they enter your site to the minute their orders arrive at their doorstep. You don’t have to do it alone. Lean on partners like Kensium who can help optimize your website and Signifyd who can provide automated order approval and protection against fraud and chargebacks. Remove fear and reduce friction for shoppers. They’ll remember your business and want to keep coming back long after the holiday shopping frenzy ends.

Contact Signifyd for more information about how Guaranteed Fraud Protection can reduce revenue loss and increase customer satisfaction.

Kensium’s clients can depend on our thought leadership, expertise and eCommerce solutions to deliver improved conversions year-round. Contact a Kensium representative to find out what we can do for your business.