People are already scouring the internet looking for the best deals on gifts to give their loved ones this Christmas. With so many retailers moving to the online world this year thanks to the pandemic, you’re going to have a lot more competition to deal with than you would have had in previous years.

Plus, the average eCommerce conversion rate is about 2.58% which means over 97% of your visitors leave without buying anything. 

So, what can you do to help increase your sales over the holiday season? Here are 4 proven ways you can increase your sales online.

4 ways to increase your online sales this Christmas

1. Increase traffic to your website

One of the most obvious ways to get more sales is to increase the amount of traffic coming onto your website. 

Improving your SEO is an assured way to bring more traffic to your website but SEO is about the long-term benefits and doesn’t really give your instant traffic. 

SEO techniques are great but if you’re implementing SEO now you’re not going to see much of an increase in traffic by this Christmas and will more than likely see the results for Christmas 2021. 

You’ll have to rely on tactics with short term and instant results for this year’s festive season like: 

• Advertise online 
• Post on social media
• Create holiday-themed adverts
• Offer Christmas discounts
• Use FOMO (fear of missing out) to make your audience buy now instead of later

2. Get repeat sales

If you’re looking to improve your sales, a great way to do it is to invest in retargeted ads and get your website’s visitors to come back for more. 

You can also target previous customers you haven’t seen in a while with an email marketing campaign, highlight new products in stock, and recommend items related to the ones they previously bought. 

This is an excellent way to improve your sales as it’s a lot easier to retain a current customer than it is to get a new one. It’s also much cheaper too!

3. Improve your conversion rate

To improve your conversion rates you’ll need to encourage people to buy now. So what will help make your potential customers buy your products right away?

Think about what their intent is and what they’re concerned about at this very moment. 

Well, it’s Christmas time, so they’re probably worried about not being able to get a gift in time for the big day, so they’re going to be concentrating on stock availability and delivery. 

You can encourage your audience to make a purchase with you by highlighting USPs like:

• You’re a local, Irish business
• Quick delivery, in time for Christmas 
• You’re a family-run business
• Easy returns 
• You use Irish suppliers/stock Irish designers 
• You donate to charity
• You offer free Irish delivery

All these USPs are vital for improving your sales and getting people to buy your products now. 

Here are a few other ways you can improve your conversion rates. 

Create a gift or Christmas section on your website

People are specifically looking for great gifts to give their loved ones so create a section specifically for gifts and drive any paid traffic to these pages to significantly increase your conversions. 

You can break up your gift section into different categories like:

• Gifts for her
• Gifts for him
• Gifts for kids
• Gifts for pets
• Irish gifts
• Corporate gifts

For example, a lot of shoe retailers sell things like handbags, hats, scarves, and socks which make perfect gift options. These retailers can create dedicated gift pages and advertise these products as ideal Christmas gifts. 

Think about the products you sell. Are any of them the perfect gift material?

With gift pages, make sure you list all the popular gifts near the top of the page. You can also create gift hampers or gift packs to encourage customers to buy more. 

Create FOMO

FOMO, fear of missing out, creates a sense of urgency with your audience and encourages them to buy now, rather than think about it and buy later. 

If you show your audience that your stock is running low, or tell them there’s only one item left in stock, they’re going to buy it as soon as they can for fear they’ll lose out on the greatest Christmas present of the year. 

A great example of this is the new PlayStation 5. There hasn’t been a new PlayStation in over five years so when the PS5 was released everybody was hyped up about it. However, Sony is clever and didn’t supply a wide stock of the console. With the knowledge that the console was low in supply, the public went crazy, and they sold out for pre-orders in record time because gamers just couldn’t afford to wait and risk losing out. 

This can work for smaller companies too. Simply let your audience know how many are left in stock by putting a little counter next to it. They’ll be more inclined to buy because they don’t want to miss out on the product.

Exit-intent pop-ups

Now, usually, we’d be against flooding the user with pop-ups but this last-ditch attempt at snagging a sale works incredibly well. 

The way exit-intent pop-ups work is: when the user is going to leave the site you hit them with a lovely pop-up. Maybe theme it around Christmas, highlight a deal, or show them your USPs to help convince them to make a purchase. An exit-intent pop-up can actually save 10-15% of lost visitors. 

Social proof pop-up

These pop-ups are a great way to encourage people to buy from your online store. They work by showing the user pop-ups of what other people just bought. This creates a sense of urgency as it shows that your store is busy. A social proof tool can even improve your conversions by 15%.

If you pair this with low stock indicators your visitors are going to want to buy immediately for fear somebody else will grab it before they can.

Include a cut-off date for Christmas orders

To help stimulate urgency you can put a cut-off in place for orders from your shop for Christmas. For example, any orders purchased before the 18th of December are guaranteed to arrive before Christmas. 

Nobody wants to miss out on the opportunity to get their presents delivered on time for Christmas. So, they’ll be more likely to buy your products right away than wait another day if you have a time limit on orders.

4. Increase your average order value

Increasing your average order value is a great way to help improve your sales (without having to attract new customers) and get more money flowing into your business. 

You might have a low conversion rate, but if you get these customers to buy more of your products, you’re still making more money. 

There are a few ways you can do this. 

Offer free shipping on a minimum spend 

People love free shipping. It’s one of those incentives that just pushes people into buying more products because why spend money on shipping when you can save and get more items instead?

Even 9 out of 10 consumers say that getting free shipping is one of the top incentives to shop at a particular online store. 

If your free shipping comes into effect when a customer purchases €25 or more on your website considering increasing it to €35 or even €50. This will encourage them to spend more money on your website because they desperately want that free shipping. 

Offer a free gift 

Another great way to encourage people to buy more from your store is to offer them a gift if they pay over a certain amount. Everybody loves to get free stuff, so they’ll jump at the chance to snag a free gift with their purchase by adding a little more to their cart. 

Suggest items at checkout

By suggesting similar items or advertising what other people bought, you can encourage them to buy more. 

They might not have seen these items at first and now with them advertised just before they check out they might just click ‘add to basket’. 

Keep advertising on your Thank You page

After they’ve purchased their items, customers will be sent to your Thank You page. 

Now, a lot of Thank You pages are a simple message on a nice background thanking your customer. 

What you can do here to improve your sales is to show them other items they could add to their order. 

You can offer a unique discount here too, so if they add one of the items to their order now they get 15% off that item or something along those lines.

Are you ready to get more traffic to your website, improve your conversions, and increase your sales?

Get in contact with our eCommerce experts, and we’ll help you figure out exactly what you can do to increase your online sales. 
Check out our 91 point eCommerce conversion optimisation checklist and learn how you can unlock the hidden revenue already in your eCommerce website by implementing the improvements professionals make on clients’ websites to increase sales.