Google, Pinterest, And Kliken Share Their BFCM Tips With Ecwid Merchants

Republished By Plato

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Getting your store ready for holiday shoppers? Save this article to bookmarks! We asked our partners from Google, Pinterest, and Kliken for some expert advice on how to make this shopping season fun and successful as the intensity ramps up.

Google: Speed Up Your Store and Go Mobile

Your website traffic has been growing slowly as the holidays draw near. But did you know that traffic can easily double on the Black-Friday itself? This can dramatically affect the load speed of your site. And if your site won’t load for an over-eager customer, they might click away, losing sales for your store. You have 3 to 5 seconds (depending on the device) to engage potential customers with your products; otherwise, they may leave and never come back.

As consumers spend more time online, they have higher expectations for the behavior of websites on all devices. For retailers, improving your site load time by just 0.1 seconds can boost conversion rates by 8%.

Embracing your mobile web experience can also make a difference. Last year, 61% of online holiday purchases in the US were made on a smartphone.

Before increasing traffic to your site, be sure to confirm that your landing pages load quickly, both on desktop and mobile, and that they include relevant product information, tailored to your user’s needs. To find areas for improvement, Grow My Store provides a free, personalized report on your ecommerce website’s performance. Erin Sagin, Product Marketing Manager, Google

Being a SaaS (software as a service) solution, Ecwid takes care of your site’s load speed on the server side. We also work hard to maintain the highest availability possible. However, there are ways you can participate in user experience optimization. For example, consider optimizing your images (you still have time!) to make them load faster.

Pinterest: Inspire, Convert, Repeat

Pinterest is booming! Holiday searches started on Pinterest in April 2020 and were 77% higher this year than in April 2019. Shoppers have been ready to start spreading holiday cheer since Spring! In 2020, savvy merchants started their holiday marketing strategy two months early, hoping to capitalize on this uptick in the festivity.

Pinterest is one of the best places to keep customers engaged with your content throughout the year, in hopes that they eventually return to fill their carts with the products they’ve been pining after. Why Pinterest? Because one of its prime features is allowing users to create boards of products they like, so they can return to them later.

But if you’re not familiar with Pinterest’s many ways to boost interest and sales, what should you do to get started? Luckily, we’ve reached out to Pinterest for their top tips for a successful holiday activation plan:

Holiday Activation in 3 phases:
Phase 1: Inspire. Tell your Holiday story! Increase brand awareness and build an emotional connection with your customers by showcasing engaging creatives with a Holiday mood. Leave Pinners no chance to miss your pins.
Phase 2: Convert. Turn Pinners into Shoppers! Remind them about your brand and your special Holiday offers to get them to your storefront. We recommend installing the Pinterest Tag on your site and uploading your feed to Pinterest.
Phase 3: Rinse & Repeat. Don’t stop now! Launch New Year campaigns by 12/25 from Phase 1 and keep going till mid-January. Enoch Lam, Partnerships Manager, Programs: Shopping

Showcase the delightful look and feel of your products to engage users, motivate potential buyers with appealing offers, and run ads to convert pinners into customers and keep the mood up through the end of the year. Find out more about Pinterest opportunities from the Pinterest Holiday Hub.

With Ecwid, you can also add a Pinterest Tag to see how many customers added products to their cart, started the checkout process, or placed an order after viewing your ads. This will help to optimize your campaigns and target them at the people already showing interest in your products.

Kliken: Make Sure the Checkout Process Is Smooth

You have a fast and mobile-friendly website, broad advertising network, and beautiful and engaging creative products. Isn’t that everything you need to win the holiday season this year? We thought so, until we asked Kliken, our partner who helps merchants with automating their sales and optimizing conversion. Their experts have added two top tricks you might have overlooked — smooth checkout and staff scheduling.

A huge amount of traffic coming to your online store is meaningless if the checkout process is less than smooth. After all, people are unlikely to return to your shop if they aren’t able to make the purchase they wanted, or don’t get their items until 2021.

Some expert tips:

1. Make sure your online store and checkout are running smoothly. Customers want a smooth shopping experience and if there are glitches, odds are they will go to another merchant for the same or similar product. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure your website has responsive design for your customers shopping on tablets and smartphones.
2. Schedule your staff appropriately. With more orders coming in, you may want to consider hiring some part-time or seasonal staff so your full-time employees are not completely burnt out by the end of the season. Christina Frey, Marketing Associate, Kliken

While Ecwid can’t help you hire personnel (not yet, anyways), we can provide a quick and secure checkout. You can then customize it to align with your workflow and create a unique user experience. For example, you can request specific information: ZIP/postal codes, company names, tax information; or you can specify a minimum or maximum order subtotal. You can also collect tips from grateful customers, or as a donation to a worthy cause.

Closing

The experts at Google, Pinterest, and Kliken (and the entire Internet) really believe that this year’s shopping season is going to set new records for online sales.

It’s a matter of days — if not hours — until this harmonious holiday shopping exchange between merchants and shoppers begins. So get ready, with a recap of our last-minute tips: