The holiday shopping season is the most important time of the year for many online retailers. But the weeks and even months after the holidays can be a slow period for retail ecommerce businesses. It is therefore important that Internet storeowners and marketers have a post-holiday plan to generate sales or otherwise retool the business for a new and better year.
There are many ways your business can plan for post-holiday conversions. What follows are a few suggestions.
Decide on Discounts
Any post-Christmas sales strategy should start with a goal. What is it that your online retail business wants to accomplish in the period immediately following the peak holiday selling season?
If your goal is to reduce inventory — closing out products you did not sell through during the holiday — you may need to lower prices. Similarly, if cash flow is the aim, you may be willing to sell products at a discount.
But lowering prices is not the only strategy for after-Christmas marketing. In fact, if your post-holiday goal is to maintain margins and earn a good profit, slashing prices is probably the last thing you want to do.
Offer More Than Low Prices
Even if it makes sense for your online retail business to discount products after Christmas, do your best not to compete on price alone.
In fact, for most ecommerce retailers, it is generally a good idea to offer services or content beyond just selling items at a price. Your ecommerce business might offer unique or hard-to-find products to do not require discounting. Or you could bundle products and services together. Or you could focus on offering strong guarantees or support after the sale.
Focus on Accessories and Complementary Products
Electronic toys need batteries. New skis require boots. A game console could use more games. In other words, online retailers may be able to generate after-Christmas profits with accessories and complementary products.
For example, an online store could segment its holiday customers, identifying those who purchased products (perhaps as a gift) that has accessories or consumables. Once those shoppers have been identified, that retail store could could focus on promoting those accessories and consumables via email or other personalized marketing.
Solve Customer Problems
Helping customers is always good for online retailers.
Make returns simple for shoppers, and give them a choice. For example, offer a free, dollar-for-dollar return or, alternatively, offer 10 percent more in store credit. So if a shopper wants to return a $50 item, that shopper can receive $50 on her payment card. But that same customer could, instead, get $55 in store credit for a purchase made in January.
Depending on your store’s margins and the products you sell, this sort of offer can be used to generate a significant amount of post-holiday revenue.
Courtey of PracticalEcommerce
