Since the time e-commerce stores starting outselling their brick and mortar competitors, the holiday season has been like a retail war that each company tries to win every year around. The competition is no longer between physical retail stores and e-commerce stores. Will a plethora of online stores emerging in every single category, the battle is on between all the giants of the e-commerce industry along with the new players in the market.
So, in this highly competitive situation, what would be the trends that e-commerce companies would and should follow to maintain that competitive edge? Well, that is exactly what we are diving deep into below.
Major Trends to Follow this Holiday season
Targetted Marketing Approach
At the beginning of the so-called e-commerce revolution, marketers would bombard all potential customers will advertisement wherever possible to gain as much traffic to their site and do as much branding as possible. As time went on, e-commerce marketers became more aware of the benefits of a targetted approach.
They realized that not every potential customer was worth going after. Through A/B testing and various other methods, they were able to narrow down the customers that would bring them the most revenue and the least cost. This targetted method of marketing would continue to expand e-commerce store owners’ sales and profits this holiday season as well without any exception.
Integrating Video Marketing
One of the most important trends in online marketing in the past five years has been video marketing. Brands are using videos as a powerful marketing tool on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to generate new customers and keep the existing ones engaged. The opportunities are so vast in video marketing that any e-commerce company that is not implementing this strategy stands to lose not just money but their foothold in the industry.
No matter what you sell, if you want a presence on the internet, you need to be creating fresh content regularly. This holiday season, e-commerce companies will spend a sizeable chunk of their marketing budget on video and those who have not implemented it in the past will begin to remain in the competition.
Brands Will Improve Customer Service
Your customer service plays a big role in deciding whether a customer returns to your brand or not. Even if your product is great, there is no guarantee someone will come back to purchase more merchandise from you if your customer service is not up to the mark. The cost of acquiring new customers is always higher than the cost of retaining old ones. So, from a purely financial point of view, providing good customer service is crucial.
This holiday season, many e-commerce sites are expected to use AI on their platforms to provide their customers with many self-help options. Chatbots would be implemented by more sites to help customers with some basic queries like their product’s delivery time, return policy, shipping information, etc. In customer service, small changes like these can make a huge difference.
Connecting Online with Offline
For retailers that both have a brick and mortar store and sell online, there are ways to track the conversions moving from online marketing to offline sales. For example, a customer sees your social media post or ad and then visits your physical store to buy the product you advertised. This is what we mean by connecting your online and offline retail efforts. Years ago tracking these types of sales was not possible however, there are advanced analytical tools that can do that today.
This holiday season, brands are going to capitalize on this conversion tracking and implement it in their marketing strategies. This will give them a clearer picture of the success of their marketing efforts and track the ROI of their ads from both online and offline channels.
Customer Reviews Will Remain Critical
Online shopping depends a great deal on customer reviews. Every one of us has at one time or another read the review of a product online before placing the order. If the review was negative, we would remove that item from our cart. The reason is simple. We trust customer reviews. That mentality impacts the bottom lines of e-commerce companies more that you would think.
This holiday season is going to be no different. Customer reviews will impact online sales a lot. Brands would try their best to ensure that their customers have positive experiences and leave their comments accordingly on their site and other online review platforms. As for negative reviews, it is an art how to handle them tactfully and even get those customers to change their ratings and reviews from negative to positive.
Create a Truly Personalized Shopping Experience
E-commerce stores will continue to work on making the online shopping experience of their customers truly personalized. Using marketing methods such a retargeting, customers can be shown related products or products they showed interest in previously on any page they visit. Every click, every purchase, every product view of the customers is recorded and used to cater to each customer in a personalized manner.
This growing trend of personalization will ensure no two online shoppers have the same experience or see the same products on a site. This personalization not only improves customer experience but also improves the site’s conversion rates but understanding how customers behave on the site and what attracts them more.
Conclusion:
E-commerce sites earn a majority of their revenue in the US during the holiday season. These last 3 months of the year play a vital role in the profitability of an online retailer and can shape their strategies and growth going forward. The trends given above would most likely be followed by e-commerce businesses this season to grow their market share and have a truly blessed holiday season and pave the way for other online retailers going forward.