November 8, 2013

A large percentage of annual retail revenue is earned during the holiday shopping season, making it important for online retailers to up their game during this pivotal period. The process of getting high sales conversions involves short-term strategies, which can lead to an immediate boost of sales, as well as all-year round efforts that can help maximize conversions and boost revenue. Here’s a look at some efficient steps you can take to make the most of the online discount period.

  • Use real-time dynamic offers to prevent cart abandonment: With users making huge purchases during the discount period, cart abandonment is a highly common occurrence. This happens when a user selects items to add to their cart, but takes longer than usual to complete the purchase. Real-time dynamic offers like free shipping, an additional discount, or product scarcity could serve as the final nudge that they need to seal the deal.
  • Adopt active up-selling methods: Up-selling refers to the process of offering a customer to buy an additional product once they have completed adding items to their cart and are ready to complete the order. There are several ways to do this, such as cross selling, in which you can market related items to the ones purchased by the customer. You can also offer free shipping or a discount upon purchases of a certain value. Another method is volume pricing, which refers to offering a third item free upon the purchase of two similar items, or offering special prices for certain quantities.
  • Encourage visitors to subscribe: Being able to convert visitors into subscribers is half the battle won. Even though the visitor might not want to make a purchase the first time they visit your website, being able to establish a link of communication with them can help to boost revenues during the discount period. A few ways to encourage users to subscribe include offering them a special coupon code, newsletter, free e-book, etc. in exchange for their email address.
  • Test your smart offers: Begin a smart offer campaign well before Cyber Monday, starting off with two offers, say 10 percent off and free shipping, and analyzing user metrics to see which is more popular. Over the following week, pit the more popular of the two, say 10 percent off, against, another offer, like say, a free gift. Following this analysis will help you have a hierarchy of offer results just in time for the online discount period.

For Online Marketing of your store, call us at Centex Technologies – (855) 375-9654