Between beach days and summer BBQs, holiday shopping is likely the last thing on your mind – unless a significant amount of your sales come from ecommerce. This year, ecommerce sales are expected to be stronger than ever, as Emarketer predicts online sales will rise by 11.3% to $206.88 billion and ecommerce will account for a record 18.9% of total holiday season retail sales.

Given the vast opportunity in online sales, prepping your brand for the holiday selling season can, and should, start months in advance, which brings us to four important tips for optimizing your ecommerce strategy for the remainder of the year.

1. Launch your campaign early

In retail, the holiday season starts before you put your flip flips away. Consumers begin shopping for holiday gifts as early as September. Don’t miss the opportunity to cater to these early-bird shoppers and begin adopting promotional strategies well in advance. Growing holiday sales means leaving plenty of lead time for fulfillment. It is important that you have sufficient inventory on hand to meet expected demand. The more advance planning time you allocate, the smoother those hectic online shopping days around Christmas, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday will go, and the happier your customers will be.

2. Create dedicated sales pages

Create dedicated Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages on your website that are optimized for terms like “[Your Brand] Black Friday deals” and “[Your Brand] Black Friday sale.” That way, when people search for these keywords, they are finding you and not a random coupon website. It also gives your Pay Per Click (PPC) ads and newsletter strategy an on-topic landing page when it is time to promote the sales.

Additionally, it is important for these pages to be user-friendly and attractive to the eye of the consumer. First impressions matter; the average user takes 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about a website and decide whether to bounce or not. Creating an enticing, dedicated sales page that consumers will want to browse is the first step towards the “add to cart” click.

For more information on the importance of visual appeal in ecommerce, check out our blog, Three Ways to Capture Interest with Design.

3. Make the check-out experience seamless

Once a consumer has an item in their cart, there are still many opportunities for them to abandon their purchase. Our goal is to make the check-out experience hassle free. One way to do this is to lower the amount of clicks it takes to make a purchase. Offering easy payment options like ApplePay or PayPal where the user does not have to re-enter their card information makes on-the-go shopping convenient. Since the majority of users are now on their mobile devices, this is more important than ever.

Additionally, it is important to offer various check-out options. Users who are shopping with you for the first time may prefer a guest checkout over a checkout that requires an account. Another important check-out option, especially around the holidays, is offering multi-recipients. When shopping for gifts, it is important to allow the user to send specific items to different guests with just one check-out. The more convenient it is for the consumer, the more likely they are to “buy-now.”

4. Incentivize the purchase

Incentivize the consumer to complete a purchase by offering a deal. For example, offering $30 off a purchase of $200 or more could tempt a shopper to turn an original purchase of $150 into $200 in order to save on full priced items.

Also, don’t forget you can still incentivize a purchase well after a customer has left your site! It is possible that your customer will have a full shopping cart, ready to check out, but decide to come back later. In this case, it is smart to utilize cart reminders via email to encourage customers with unpurchased items to complete their purchase. For even better results, consider offering an additional incentive to complete the sale. Free shipping or 15% off could be enough to incentivize the sought-after buy-now click.

At Wilks Communications Group, our team of experts helps clients identify the best personalized ecommerce strategy for their brand. We help businesses grow. Email us at hello@wilksgrp.com to learn more about how we can help drive sales for your business.