Capitalizing on Small Biz Saturday and Cyber Monday

In the last few years, retail holidays like Cyber Monday and Small Biz Saturday have gone from being discount secrets to important parts of the holiday shopping scene. Competition among retailers can be pretty fierce, so it's important to take steps to be prepared for these important money-making events.

Let's look at some ways you might be able to up your game:

• People are already doing research for their holiday shopping. There's no way for you to compete if your website and social media presence are not updated and functioning properly.
• Send emails and mailers with discount deals, and send them repeatedly to bring customers to your website or store. (Hint: automation is your savior here)
• Share your discounts on social media, particularly in the evenings.
• Focus on your mobile presence. More people are doing their shopping via mobile phone than ever before. If you don’t know if your website is ‘responsive’, ask your website developer. That’s a ‘must’ for all the websites we develop for our clients.
• Shoppers consider other things beyond cost. Do you have adequate photos and descriptions of your products? Are there product and company reviews available? Do you know what your target market puts value on?
• The reason most consumers abandon shopping carts is due to shipping costs. Offering free shipping could show a huge increase in your sales.
• Are you prepared if things go wrong? Can you contact your website developer if there's an issue? If holiday sales are important for your business, you need to make sure you are prepared for any problems.
• Keep tabs on your competitors. You always want to know what they're selling and how they're selling it. There are great ideas to be had out there.
• Offer value to your customers with gift guides or product bundles.
• Create urgency! Give people some encouragement to buy now—add shopping day countdowns to your website, have special offers with deadlines attached, etc.
• We can't put enough emphasis on emails! There's more tolerance during the holiday season, because everyone is looking for gift ideas and discounts. The click-through rates are much higher during this time of year, so sending multiple emails is a good idea. Don't forget those abandoned cart emails, too.
• Live chat is a great option to offer. You don't want to have customers leaving your site simply because they didn't receive an answer to a question promptly. We saw an immediate spike in our app sales when we added PureChat to our websites.
• More emails! Retarget those old customers! Offer exclusive discounts to people on your mailing list!
• Team up with other local businesses to cross-promote each other’s products and share advertising costs.
• Consider bringing it some extra help to make your customer’s shopping experience go more smoothly.
• For your brick and mortar store, visibility is crucial. Plan some eye-catching displays out front to bring them in the door!

As always, continue to provide an amazing shopping experience to your customers! Here's to a successful retail season!