Black Friday and Cyber Monday are one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, with retailers offering a range of promotions and discounts to tempt the wallets of shoppers looking for the best possible prices for the perfect gifts for themselves and their loved ones. However, these high expectations and peak traffic levels can create an enormous pressure to perform.

This guide will help you uncover areas to focus on to improve your eCommerce store’s performance this gift buying season.

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Best practices

> Using the power of product recommendations

The easiest way to tempt a shopper to buy something from your eCommerce store is to put something in front of them that they hadn't realized that they wanted. Personalization ensures returning visitors get the most relevant product recommendations based on their interests, while new visitors see a diverse range of products that captures their attention. Plus, make it easy for visitors to complete their purchase by showing them the most relevant combinations of items.

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> Optimize for mobile

How many of your customers browse your eCommerce store on a laptop? And how many reach straight for their mobile device? With the trend towards increasing mobile numbers of mobile visitors, it’s vital that your website can be viewed easily on the go.

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> Personalized communication

Your customers want to communicate with you - that’s why they created an account and signed up for email updates. This means that your personalization needs to cover more than just your eCommerce store. Instead of sending out a generic email newsletter that will have a low response rate, personalize your communication based on each individual’s preferences and interests to tell them about discounts they might be interested in and relevant products that could entice them back to your store.

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> Make gift finding easy

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a popular time for purchasing gifts, so make it a fun and easy experience even if the visitor doesn’t have a specific item in mind or has limited information about the recipient. For example, by implementing an interactive gift finder or sharing “Top Gifts for X” lists of best-selling items to help the decision-making process.

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> Tracking stock levels

Visitors get frustrated when they notice something they want to purchase is now out of stock. The easiest way to avoid this is to ensure your eCommerce store and recommendations automatically track your inventory levels so they don’t show unavailable items. Instead of a time-consuming and error-prone manual process, we recommend automating your personalization - just remember to first ensure that the automation is properly synced with the back-end to ensure the most up-to-date information on inventory and price levels.

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> Sorting products into relevant categories 

The category pages are a valuable tool for capturing the intent of users in their current session. However, category pages can also be a very daunting place for visitors. Having to sort through hundreds or thousands of items, they often resort to filtering based on price or alphabetically. This type of basic filtering functionality can leave visitors feeling overwhelmed with the choice of products, often leading them to end their session. That’s why sorting by relevance or including personalized recommendations for each individual user at the top of the list can be a powerful tool for conversion - as demonstrated by all of the big eCommerce shopping giants.

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> Provide return and shipping information

This time of year has the highest rates of online returns, so make it simple for your user and present the return and shipping information clearly on your website so they have all the information they need to make a solid buying decision.

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> Harness the power of pop-ups

Pop-ups are an effective way to entice visitors to sign-up for a newsletter, take advantage of a promotion, or add a recommended product to their basket. When done successfully, pop-ups can increase your subscriber base which you can then retarget with enticing and relevant promotions. They can also lead to quick upsells by using the power of impulse buys and displaying complementary products to the item recently added to the basket.

Personalize your eCommerce store today

Are you interested in knowing more about eCommerce personalization? Contact Froomle to discover how to get the most out of your seasonal personalization strategy.

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