Five Ways to Turn Online Holiday Shoppers Into Loyal Customers
2 Min Read
by Monetate
With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, retailers have a lot to do! After all, it’s when sales spike and new customer acquisition peaks. But, it’s not always eggnog cheers and high fives. Converting holiday shoppers into repeat customers is proving a big challenge.
According to the Monetate Q4 2016 Ecommerce Quarterly Report, only 1% of customers acquired during the Q4 2015 holiday season were present on the same site a year later, in December 2016. While we expect holiday shopping behavior to be different than other times of the year, failing to convert holiday shoppers into brand loyalists is a missed opportunity.
The data in our study shows that new visitors that converted in their first observed session increased their likelihood of returning to the same site in the following calendar year significantly. This means getting that first experience right for each can have a huge revenue impact.
So how do you get that first experience right? Here are 5 tips you can use:
1. Repeat after us: mobile customers are my customers; my customers are mobile customers.
The average time-on-site for mobile users is 5–10% less than the time on site for desktop users. Mobile users multitask, and they move fast. Speed things up by ensuring the site is mobile optimized. CTAs should be clear, with appropriately sized buttons (read: bigger than you think). Pop-ups and interrupters should be kept to a minimum.
2. Be you, only bolder.
The holiday season means you’ll see more first-time shoppers who aren’t familiar with your brand. Make it easy for shoppers to find the best-selling products. You might create a curated collection like a gift guide and promote it on a specific on-site section or landing page. Consider adding a “Gifts” section to the top nav of your website. And, don’t forget to promote gift cards to new customers loud and often!
3. Be festive without being distracting.
A seasonal background can help drive relevance while subtly reminding shoppers it’s time to buy, but avoid putting up barriers that make it difficult for new shoppers to navigate your site.
4. Watch for early exits.
If a new customer exceeds your average time-on-site or page-views, they may be having trouble finding what they’re looking for. Trigger a light-box that asks them if they need assistance via live chat. Or, use a shopper’s mouse movements to predict when they are about to leave your site. From there you can display a tailored message to encourage the shopper to stick with you.
5. Entice new visitors back to your site right away.
Research shows that the first week after an initial purchase is critical to keeping shoppers engaged. While some visitors lag for up to 60 days before coming back, nearly 70% of all returning visitors make their way back within seven days of their initial visit.
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Ready to take action? Visit www.monetate.com to learn how technology can help you scale your holiday shopping ecommerce efforts.
For 20 years our strategists, engineers, and UX designers have been building leading-edge ecommerce sites. From the cloud to the edge, we’ll help you make smart decisions and speed time-to-value, whether you’re building from scratch or moving to a new platform.
Corra, a Publicis Sapient company, is the global commerce leader and SI helping brands and organizations grow by evaluating, building, and optimizing their digital commerce ecosystems. Our vast experience with composable and headless implementations speeds time-to-value and provides technical freedom to our clients. Our TotalCare managed services program provides gold-standard support, enhancements and ongoing commerce strategy. We are strategic thinkers, accomplished engineers, and award-winning experience designers. We believe outstanding customer experiences can’t exist without flawless technology, and that flawless technology is pointless without beautiful, human-centered design. Our clients are an integral part of our team. Together, we remove the obstacles that are limiting growth and discover new opportunities. We don’t rest until our clients achieve their full potential. Our clients’ KPIs are our KPIs. We have 20 years of experience in commerce technology, but we also know that customer expectations are constantly evolving. For this reason, we’ve built future-proof solutions and refined an agile execution process that helps our clients achieve more with less. As a Publicis Sapient company, Corra joins a global network spanning 20,000 people with 53 offices around the world enabling us to accelerate our clients’ businesses through designing and building the experiences and services their customers demand.
