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How to Optimize Your E-Commerce Site This Holiday Season

According to a survey conducted by the NRF (National Retail Federation), 55% of shoppers plan to make their holiday purchases online. In order to stay relevant during the holiday season, it’s imperative for brands to embrace online holiday shopping. Here are a few tips to get a head of the holiday season:

1. Start Early

According to the NRF, 42% of shoppers will start their holiday shopping by November 1st. Don’t wait until December to start running your holiday ads! You should have holiday content ready by late October in order go live within marketing channels by November.

 
 

2. Generate Relevant Seasonal Holiday Content 

Ensure your marketing creative stays relevant with the seasons by leveraging winter and holiday themed content. If you’re still using away with your evergreen creative when the holidays roll around, you’re not optimizing your marketing strategies to your full potential. When our brands used Cohley to generate holiday themed content, the holiday visuals performed significantly better in ads than evergreen content without holiday visuals. 

 
 

3. Engage With Existing Customers

Seventy-three percent of North American shoppers buy from brands with which they’re familiar. Engaging with your loyal customer is immensely important to maintain market share and gain repeat holiday purchases. See below for the top five channels for targeting existing customers. Segmented or general email blasts highlighting your Cyber Monday deals that showcase relatable holiday User Generated Content is one way to appeal to your existing customers. 

 
 

4. Engage With New Customers

To try to get a slice of the holiday shopper pie, Shopify’s top performing brands turn to increasing ad spend. The cost of ads around the holiday time tends to increase while AOV (average order value) remains the same, this is when making data driven decisions towards your content is utmost important. Your ads along with many others will be competing for the attention of this season’s holiday shoppers. Here are the top five channels for targeting new customers.

 
 

5. Pay Attention to Internal and External Trends

Internally, A/B test what content performs best in front of your audience and run with it! Test different coupon/offer types, content types, and copy to find which combination drives the optimal ROI. At the same time, don’t forget to stay on top of external trends as well. For example, according to a Facebook IQ study, 49% of shoppers in 2018 made holiday purchases on a mobile device. Ensure your ad content is easily digestible on a mobile screen and leads them right to where they can make a purchase from their device.