The holiday season means Holiday cheer and a Happy New Year, right? Well, yes, but it might not be that cheery for your small business if you’re experiencing a drop in traffic to your website.
This post focuses on the steps that we use to help ensure our clients build more traffic and maintain that increase long after the holiday season. Then things will be as cheery online as they are out in the “real” world.
Top Tips for Driving Traffic This Holiday Season
Use Remarketing To Close More Sales
Traffic over the holidays is mostly driven by folks that are more than ready (and able) to make a purchase. However, if you find that you don’t close a deal before a visitor leaves your site, remarketing might be the trick you need. Remarketing uses ads to follow up on those people who left without buying, generating return traffic that has a higher probability for conversions.
Consider Eliminating the Promo Code Box on Your Shopping Cart
While many companies think that including a promo code box in their shopping cart raises conversions, that’s not always the case. Data shows that coupon codes can both work for and against you. If customers come from emails or affiliate links where active codes were provided, you will likely see an increase in conversions. However, if a buyer is on the shopping cart page, sees a promo code box and doesn’t have a code, you risk losing them as they leave your site to hunt for one.
You don’t want to lose them as they were about to click the order button.
So, if you are offering a discount code make it obvious. Put it on the shopping cart in the header or in a pop-up to make sure visitors get it. Otherwise, it’s better to eliminate the field from your shopping cart altogether for anyone who doesn’t have an active code.
Make Use of an Aggressive Auto Responder Sequence
More traffic during the holiday season gives you access to so an increase in potential email list subscribers. Make sure you’re sending out frequent emails which engage your readers and sell them on your gift solutions for the holidays. You should also take advantage of incentives such as discounted shipping or special promotions to boost your conversion rate.
Optimize Sales Funnels for Conversions
Under normal circumstances, your sales funnel is designed to gently convert visitors into clients who will purchase your product, but during the holiday season, you don’t have all the time in the world. Customers also don’t necessarily need all that time and TLC because they’re ready to buy. It’s time to kick it into high gear. Actions like sending out frequent promotional offers, specials, and deals can help you win the upper hand over the competition. Don’t worry about strict segmentation as buying behaviors aren’t normal.
Utilize Live Chat
Questions and concerns from potential customers can easily break down the conversion process for you during the holiday season, so why not consider providing 24/7 support when your customers need it most? Live chat on your website can help eliminate the risk of visitors going to a competitor site to make a purchase just because they were unsure about something.
Use Paid Social Media Marketing
Consumers love social media posts relating to specials and promotional deals during the festive season, and it’s a great way for you to up your marketing antics while still keeping the costs relatively low. Paying for social media ads is a great way to expose your brand to a wider audience and drive traffic to your site, and although we all love the idea of organic traffic, sometimes we need to pay to see more action online. There’s no better time than the holidays to do so.
That’s it! We’ve shown you seven relatively easy and effective ways that you can increase traffic during this holiday season. These are the same tips and techniques we utilize for our clients to ensure that they enjoy a great e-commerce season.
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