It’s here! Unit36’s eCommerce Christmas Album 2016! Listen to our top-ten Christmas smash hits of all time – the soundtrack to your Christmas web design and holiday preparations. All the biggest stars, all the biggest hits, right here in one place! Listen to your favourite songs and favourite artists all Christmas long! Also includes a free complimentary guide on how to prepare your ecommerce site for the festive season. Read on to find out more…
Album Prelude
Christmas provides a gigantic, unmissable opportunity for digital stores and eCommerce sites to make a tidy profit. More people are shopping online now than ever before. Last year, almost a half of all UK Christmas shopping was completed online. Between the years 2014-2015 the UK spent over £30bn on eCommerce sites (during the 8 weeks leading up to Christmas) and a further £800m or so was spent on each Black Friday (Source: IMRG e-Retail Sales Index).
This represents a hugely busy time for most businesses in the country, especially those operating in the retail industry. A great deal of importance is therefore placed on your Christmas campaign and your overall annual eCommerce strategy. You are bound to face increased levels of competition from other brands too, so staying ahead of the game is vital to capitalising the market.
So without further ado, let’s jump into our top ten Christmas songs and see how they relate to your eCommerce preparation plans.
Merry Christmas Everybody (Slade)
Make Sure Everybody Can Access Your Site
Absolutely everyone knows this song! It is one of the most famous and recognisable cringle tunes ever to be made. You can purchase this song and listen to it on CD, mp3 and via music video. To ensure your eCommerce site is successful this year, you too must ensure your content is accessible on a variety of devices. Everybody knows this song but is everybody familiar with your brand and website? Are you excluding mobile customers by not having a responsive web design? Around 40% of all transactions now take place on a mobile device and therefore you really should not discard this demographic. Having a mobile strategy is essential for user experience and therefore bigger sales. By not having it, you are pushing customers away to your competitors.
Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Jackson 5)
Seasonal Design Changes
Santa Claus is almost here but your website hasn’t left a carrot or a mince pie for him. What’s old St Nick to do? Well, he will just leave of course. If you haven’t decorated your site in seasonal bells and whistles, how do you expect your customers to feel the Christmas vibe and purchase something from your site? Your users and potential customers will expect to see festive decorations online and in high-street stores too. Again, you do not want to fall behind your competitors so make sure you get your design organised and implemented early! Don’t be a bah-humbug! Be mindful with it though, if you change your site design too much it may become completely unrecognisable to your followers.
Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Band Aid)
Content Changes
After you have made your design changes it is also important that your content follows suit. Are your customers aware that it is Christmas on your site? Do you need to feed the world with more information on what you are offering this festive period? Ideally, you should have your Christmas content prepared and ready to launch months in advance of the holiday season. You may want to change some banner text, your headings or your homepage slider content. Whatever you end up changing, just let them know it’s Christmas time!
I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday (Wizzard)
Discounts and Promotions
Christmas is all about discounts – and plenty of them! Everyone is looking for a bargain around this time of year as we all try to find the best deals. Yes, of course, religion and good will to all men is the real sentiment behind this time of year. But in reality, we are all looking to spend money and get as much value as possible! So make sure your offers are so good that your customers wish it was Christmas every single day!
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee)
Category Selections
Perhaps one of the simplest methods of directing your users on site and improving their experience is to create product category pages. This will enable you to place seasonal offerings under the right description and ensure you don’t just jumble them all together. This allows you to split your users even further – for example you can split products into male and female categories. Making the user journey easier will ensure a high conversion rate, more sales and plenty of presents rockin’ around the Christmas tree!
What Christmas Means to Me (Stevie Wonder)
Product Pages
What does Christmas mean to you? Forget that. What does Christmas mean to your customers? This is important. What products will they be looking for? What will they expect to see on your product pages? As important as your categories are, it is just as important that you set out your product pages properly too. Not sure which way to go? Employ some simple A/B testing or another multivariate testing method to find out which of your ideas works best. Time is of the essence at Christmas, so ensure your product search and acquisition is quick and simple.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Dean Martin)
FAQ Section
An FAQ section is often considered a very lazy way of assisting your customers, especially if your competitors offer live customer service channels. However, during the festive season this is very different as many businesses become far too busy to deal with every enquiry they receive. Don’t just leave your users out in the cold though! Create a simple FAQ page that answers some of their most common queries – such as your returns policy – saving you and your users a lot of time.
White Christmas (Bing Crosby)
Bring Christmas Best-Sellers to the Forefront
This absolute legend of a song has sold over 50 million copies worldwide – making it officially the best selling Christmas song of all time. If you are a seller of Christmas songs, this one should be in your shop window! Why? Because you should always place your best-sellers at the forefront of your store during Christmas time. It’s logical really – show the people you have what they want. Have an item out of stock? Why not 301 redirect the user to one of your best-selling products instead? There is always a chance you may intrigue them!
Last Christmas (Wham!)
Delve into the Past
You can always learn something from past campaigns, no matter the time of year or occasion. Take out the key information from years gone by to ensure you boost your sales this time around. This is also a good time to reengage sleeping customers who haven’t made a purchase for a while. Dig up their contact details and send them a ‘we haven’t forgotten you’ type post to reinvigorate their interest. This is a good way of targeting customers who have had a positive experience with your brand but may have not purchased since.
Driving Home for Christmas (Chris Rea)
The Checkout Process
Last but not least is the checkout process of your site. Convincing a customer to buy from you is only half the battle – you now need to ensure the checkout process is a seamless one. So far, you have driven your user through the sales process and now it’s time to really drive it home! A complicated checkout process will put your users off and may cause them to leave your site completely. Make the purchase part easy and your sales will soar!
We hope you have enjoyed the album this year! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us here at Unit36!
