It seems like the retail world has a laser focus on Black Friday. But the shift to online shopping gives eStores the perfect opportunity to grab their portion of the holiday shopping madness: the once-a-year sale that every savvy shopper awaits.
But is your eStore really ready to dominate on Cyber Monday?
Because it’s not enough to be open on Cyber Monday. The online stores that grab the most profits are the ones who plan ahead. They create a strategy to stand out from the crowd. Here are a few easy tricks to help you increase your Cyber Monday sales and capture your own piece of the holiday action.
Do You Have a Holiday Gift Guide?
Amazon is the master of holiday gift guides. Take a lesson from their playbook, and create a holiday gift guide that will wow your customers and showcase your best products.
Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for any shopper to make a sale. This includes guiding them to the perfect gift. By creating a holiday gift guide, you highlight the best gift for everyone on their list. A gift guide lets them do their shopping fast, and with a lot less stress. Plus, it’s extremely easy to create a guide that steers them to your best products, or the ones that are the most profitable.
You can create your guide based on the:
- price point (prices for every budget)
- activity or area of interest (great for hobbyists)
- by type of gift (based on your inventory)
- or by relationship (think boys between 6-10 or men over 60).
With the right guide, any potential shopper will find exactly what they’re looking for quickly, and your customers will feel confident that they choose a great gift.
Don’t Give Up on Abandoned Cart Shoppers
According to the Baynard Institute:
[clickToTweet tweet=”68.53% of all online shoppers abandon shopping carts. This is a huge number of potential customers!” quote=”68.53% of all online shoppers walk away from their shopping carts. This is a huge number of potential customers! “]
While we can’t understand why every single shopper chose to halt a sale, we can try to convert a portion of those customers. That’s why it’s essential to have an abandoned cart strategy.
Ecommerce platforms (the systems that host your eStore), are now giving their store owners the tools to easily handle shopping cart abandonment. For example, Selz has an Abandoned Cart app that allows sellers to contact recent visitors with gentle reminders. This gives you the potential to gain back any customer who wanted your product but didn’t finish the sale. It’s the smartest move, as these customers are already interested in your product on some level.
Do You Offer Doorbuster Specials?
Most shopper identify doorbuster specials with Black Friday fliers, and doorbusters are one reason for the mad rush at 2 a.m. But just because it’s a brick-and-mortar tradition doesn’t mean that doorbusters won’t entice your shoppers to fill up their carts.
Overstock already has it’s Cyber Monday deals online, plus customers can see this year’s doorbusters if they download the Overstock app. But you don’t have to have a special app or exclusive email list (although that’s not a bad idea). Just create doorbusters that will knock the socks off your customers and give them the sales they’re craving.
Do You Have #cybermonday Pictures Ready?
#CyberMonday is huge during the Thanksgiving holiday, but it’s not enough to just add the hashtag to any tweet or status update. There are 350,000 tweets sent per minute, so your simple #cybermonday hashtag probably won’t be seen by your intended audience.
According to the Social Media Examiner:
[clickToTweet tweet=”87% interaction rate on Facebook posts with pictures ~ 4% interaction rate for posts without pics! ” quote=”There is an 87% interaction rate with Facebook posts with pictures. There’s only a 4% interaction rate for posts without pics!”]
After you choose doorbusters sales for your eStore, use Canva to design your social media pictures. It has the correct picture dimensions for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Canva has a ton of templates and incredibly easy to customize pictures. Vineyard Vines Cyber Monday tweet from 2014 shared the promo code, promotion and picture all in one simple graphic:
Dominate Cyber Monday
One of the greatest things about Cyber Monday is that it’s open to every industry and every type of eStore. It doesn’t matter what kind of store you have – your customers will be looking for a deal. So give the people what they want! Use these tips to create a strategy that will let you grab a piece of the action on the biggest online shopping day of the year.
Latest posts by Liesha Petrovich (see all)
- Cyber Monday Madness – Is Your eStore Ready? - November 11, 2015
Thanks Liesha for the excellent post about cyber monday
My Store is ready for Black Friday not for cyber monday deals. and one of my website is also ranked top 4 in google waiting for the sales Hopefully .
By Arun
Thank for sharing some excellent advice Liesha.
and those shopping cart abandonment figures are simply off the charts! But at least you
providing a pro-active way to counter this all too common occurrence!
And effective, market tested door busters are simply a must! Thanks for sharing several excellent
and extremely practical points!
Mark would love you to read ..So How Do You Successfully Market Your Deli Business When Your Marketing Budget Is Practically Zero?Part Two
Thanks! I’m glad you liked it. I’d love to see more small online businesses get a piece of the holiday shopping action. Hope it helps you get ready for Cyber Monday!
Liesha Petrovich would love you to read ..100+ Risk-Free Side Business Ideas – Start Building Your Dream Today!