Although it might seem like summer just started, the holidays are right around the corner, and this time of year always brings a little extra hustle and bustle.
In 2023, online holiday sales rose by 4.9% from the previous year. Web sales alone accounted for $221.1 billion in November and December, an increase from $211.7 billion in 2022.
With the unmatched convenience of online shopping, it’s no surprise that more consumers than ever are going online for their holiday shopping needs — according to Fortunly, more than 60% of shoppers in the U.S. prefer to shop for gifts online. Even among those who still prefer to shop brick-and-mortar, 60% will conduct online research before making a purchase.
The rise of online shopping has also intensified competition within the e-commerce landscape. With over 30% of Americans planning to purchase the majority of their holiday gifts from Amazon in 2022, how can smaller D2C e-commerce brands effectively compete? Embracing a robust D2C strategy can be crucial. Nogin is here to help. From refining the essential elements of your site, like product listing pages, to implementing comprehensive direct-to-consumer marketing strategies, we’ll discuss key considerations for your business as you prepare for the holiday season.
Nogin is here to help. From the essential elements of your site, such as product listing pages, to comprehensive marketing strategies and more, we’ll discuss key considerations for your business as you gear up for the holiday season.
7 ways you can prepare for the holidays
Globally, holiday retail is a trillion-dollar business — and we don’t want you to miss out on these major opportunities to grow your slice of the pie. Here are just a few things you can start thinking about to get ahead of the game.
Plan ahead
Around the holidays, physical stores create engaging displays, themed bundles, and sales calendars to excite customers, involving detailed preparation months in advance. Since many consumers shop online, e-commerce stores should plan early to create a similarly engaging holiday atmosphere.
The key is to start planning as soon as possible. If you don’t have one already, create a calendar of all the important upcoming e-commerce events you’d like to capitalize on — i.e. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and even Boxing Day. Once you know the dates of these events, work backwards to create marketing materials like emails and targeted ads that will get your current and future customers excited about what’s to come.
Whether you have a revenue benchmark you’d like to hit or a specific volume of sales that will help your store expand, figure out what it is you’d like to accomplish as a business this holiday season and then lay out steps to achieve those goals. Spend some time clearly outlining key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you can communicate with your sales and marketing teams to ensure everyone is on the same page before Mariah Carey sings her first note.
Spend time defining KPIs so that your sales and marketing teams are aligned and ready before the holiday rush. Here are some important KPIs to start with:
- Average Order Value (AOV): This metric helps you understand the average amount spent per order, providing insights into customer purchasing behavior and the effectiveness of your upselling and cross-selling strategies.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors to your site who complete a purchase. This metric helps assess the overall effectiveness of your website and marketing efforts.
- Cart Abandonment Rate: Monitoring this KPI reveals the percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but do not complete the purchase. High cart abandonment rates can indicate issues with the checkout process or other barriers to purchase.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The cost associated with acquiring a new customer. Understanding this can help optimize your marketing spend and improve profitability.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): The total revenue you can expect from a customer over their lifetime. This helps in identifying the long-term value of your customer base and shaping retention strategies.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This KPI measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. It helps evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and informs budget allocation for future campaigns.
These metrics will help you determine the success of your holiday campaigns and promotions so that you can adjust for an even better season next year. Ensure you have a system to track each KPI and record the data for future reference.
Know your competitors
One reason Amazon wins the holidays every year is that it invests billions of dollars yearly into its business through research and development. R&D helps brands get into the minds of their ideal target customers and guides strategies to entice them to become loyal, repeat shoppers.
When you invest in R&D, you understand your ideal customer better and are better equipped to personalize their e-commerce experience. But what if you don’t have a massive budget (or the time) to devote to research and test campaigns?
It’s time to research the competition through your customers’ eyes.
If you’re not already subscribed to your competitors’ newsletters and mailing lists, it’s time to subscribe and follow their social media. Even if you don’t have direct competitors for your product or service, you can look to similar-size brands and even e-commerce giants like Amazon or Walmart for inspiration.
At the very least, you’ll gain some inspiration for your brand. But you’ll also start to catch on to what resonates with customers and what doesn’t, and you can begin to apply these concepts to your own current and future shoppers.
Prep your site
One key mistake many retailers make is not preparing all aspects of their business for the busiest season of the year. Since your site is your storefront as a D2C e-commerce retailer, you want to ensure that the possibility of glacial load times or going offline due to heavy traffic is as low as possible.
- Hire Seasonal Help: Consider hiring additional IT support to ensure your site and business will run smoothly even with heavy traffic. Extra hands can help manage unexpected issues promptly.
- Double-Check Server Limits: Have your IT team verify your site’s server capacity and scalability. Ensure your hosting plan can handle increased traffic. If necessary, upgrade your server or move to a scalable cloud hosting solution that can adjust resources in real time.
- Run Site Metric Tests: Conduct thorough performance testing using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom. These tools will provide insights into your site’s speed and identify areas that need improvement.
- Optimize Images: High-resolution images can significantly slow down your site. Use image optimization tools to compress images without compromising quality. Ensure all images are in modern formats like WebP and appropriately sized for desktop and mobile versions.
- Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN can distribute your site’s content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing load times by serving content from the nearest server to the user. This can drastically improve load speeds, especially during high-traffic periods.
- Minimize HTTP Requests: Reduce the number of elements on your page to decrease HTTP requests. Combine CSS files, use CSS sprites for images, and consolidate JavaScript files.
- Enable Browser Caching: Browser caching stores some data on the user’s device, reducing the need for repeated server requests. Set up proper caching headers to ensure static resources like images, stylesheets, and scripts are cached by the browser.
- Use Asynchronous Loading for JavaScript: Load JavaScript files asynchronously to prevent them from blocking the rendering of the rest of the page. This can improve your site’s perceived load time.
- Optimize CSS Delivery: Inline critical CSS and defer non-critical CSS to reduce the time it takes for the page to render. Ensure your CSS files are minified to remove unnecessary characters, comments, and spaces.
- Regularly Update Plugins and Themes: Outdated plugins and themes can slow down your site and pose security risks. Regularly update all components of your site to ensure they are running efficiently and securely.
- Monitor Performance Continuously: Use monitoring tools to continuously track your site’s performance. Set up alerts for any downtime or significant slowdowns so you can address issues immediately.
Stock inventory early
Although it’s been years since the height of inventory issues during the pandemic, the words “supply chain” still send a shiver down the spines of many e-commerce workers.
No matter the conditions of the global market, there will always be challenges in order fulfillment, and logistics will always be a vital component of e-commerce. After all, successful logistics can lead to more satisfied customers, improved trust in your brand, and more customer loyalty.
Around the holidays, supply chain issues often rear their heads. With the subsequent significant increase in consumer demand, if your brand doesn’t have a plan for keeping things stocked and shipping out on time, you might find yourself with lost sales and disappointed customers.
Now is a good time to audit your inventory and logistics processes, stocking up on high-demand items ahead of time so that you can keep doing business as usual during the holiday peak. Here’s a checklist for Inventory and Logistics Preparation:
- Conduct a comprehensive inventory audit
- Forecast demand using historical data and market trends.
- Secure and communicate with suppliers early
- Diversify your supply chain to reduce risks
- Increase safety stock for high-demand items
- Optimize warehouse operations with automation technologies
- Collaborate with reliable logistics partners for timely deliveries
- Implement real-time inventory tracking systems
- Maintain transparent communication with customers about product availability
- Plan for an efficient returns and exchanges process
By proactively addressing potential supply chain challenges and ensuring your inventory is well-stocked and managed, you can maintain smooth operations during the holiday season. This preparation will help you meet increased consumer demand, avoid lost sales, and keep your customers satisfied and loyal.
Create gift guides
Publishing a gift guide for customers to use as they shop your site is a great way to capitalize on fun, original content that will engage new and returning customers alike.
Creating this content months before you’ll need it gives you more time to deliver a gift guide that will land with your target audience, and you won’t be scrambling once it’s time to hit publish.
Consider using a catchy, descriptive title like “What to Get the 5 Shoe Fanatics in Your Life” or “Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything.”
You can create guides for every demographic grouping within your target audience, including age groups, genders, activity types, and so on.
Then, share your guides on social media and your site, and make shopping as easy as clicking a button for your customers. Plus, take advantage of opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell as customers purchase gifts.
Merchandise and personalize.
The holidays are the prime time for e-commerce retailers to hone in on how they present their products and who they present them to.
If not already, merchandising and personalization should be in your e-commerce vocabulary.
Quality merchandising aims to present and promote your online store’s products to influence customers’ shopping decisions and enhance their overall experience buying from your site. This is where you pay attention to how your products or services are categorized, displayed, and promoted.
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are part of e-commerce merchandising strategy. For example, you’ll want to have:
- Mobile-friendly design
- Engaging graphics
- An easy-to-use and easy-to-find search bar
- Robust and intuitive product filters
- Compelling visuals to go with each product
- User generated content (UGC) to help build a human connection to your products
When you have a solid merchandising strategy in place, you can address your customers’ interest in the product you offer by providing a solution that meets their needs.
This is also where personalization comes into play. In the era of targeted ads, a personalized shopping experience matters to your customers — according to Salesforce research, 66% of customers expect companies to anticipate their unique needs, and 52% expect every offer they receive to be personalized.
For more on how to leverage customer data to create a personalized experience that will help you grow your business, check out the Top 5 E-commerce Personalization Strategies to Maximize Conversions.
Streamline the customer experience from start to finish.
Whether your customers find you through Twitter, Instagram or a Google ad, you want them to have a positive experience with your brand from start to finish.
A great customer service experience is key here. When you can provide responsive, personable and helpful service to your customers, they’re more likely to leave with a positive impression of your business.
You might consider implementing a customer service automation tool and/or a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your site to help lighten the load on your service team.
You’ll also want to communicate a clear shipping and returns policy to your customers. Consider offering free shipping and returns on big sales days or after customers reach a certain purchase volume.
Logistics might seem like just one piece of the puzzle, but they can really impact customer satisfaction—data shows that 92% of consumers are more likely to shop with a retailer again if the returns process is easy.
Amid the heavy competition that e-commerce retailers like you face during the holiday season, creating a positive customer experience will win you major brownie points and positively impact your holiday KPIs.
Nogin can help you win at e-commerce this holiday season
You can capitalize on the holiday season by letting Nogin do all the heavy lifting. When you work with us, you’ll gain access to:
- A Team of Fractional Experts: Nogin solves staffing and infrastructure challenges, providing on-demand access to seasoned specialists in key areas like fulfillment, customer service, performance marketing, photography, IT, and finance.
- AI-Powered Customer Segmentation: Build and optimize customer segments by leveraging over ten years of anonymized data mined from Nogin’s CaaS technology.
- Algorithmic Merchandising: Automatically extend native merchandising capabilities with sophisticated features predicting both shopper behavior and inventory constraints.
- Smart Promotion Optimization: Maximize campaign potential with channel-sensitive, self-optimizing A/B testing and campaign optimization features and automatically create coupons and other infrastructure required for testing.
- Enhanced Shopify Theme: Our storefront is fast-loading, endlessly customizable and comes pre-linked with many of the top apps—including Klayiyo, Yotpo, Postscript, and Nosto—making integration a breeze and eliminating the need to pay for a development agency.
- Enterprise-level tools: Intelligent Commerce supercharges Shopify with over 40 market-leading features that improve conversions, reduce customer acquisition costs, and lower shipping and returns costs.
With Nogin, you’ll gain the advanced tech, team and infrastructure you need to compete with Amazon and big retail, de-risk your P&L and drive superior growth. Best of all, we’ll free your team to focus on your brand while we handle the complex e-commerce stuff — all with no upfront cost to you.
Schedule a consultation with one of our Nogin experts today and discover how our Intelligent Commerce solutions can revolutionize your D2C e-commerce business.
