Making the most of Digital Christmas trends – part 2

This is part two of our Christmas Trends series. If you missed the first one, click here to read it.

Optimise user experience

In terms of design, the user experience is just as important as your brand identity. It seriously does not matter how good your website or app looks if people do not know how to use it. As soon as someone has trouble navigating your website or viewing it on a mobile device, they will move on to the next website – taking their business elsewhere. Optimising your website should be a priority, regardless of the season. But if you don’t already have some sort of strategy in place, now is the time to get one.

Areas you should focus on during the holiday season include.

Mobile friendly designs

• 58% of smartphone users feel more favourable toward companies whose mobile sites or apps remember who they are and their past behaviour. (Think with Google, 2019)
• 59% of shoppers surveyed say that being able to shop on mobile is important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. (Think with Google, 2019)
• 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results (e.g. “click to call” option). (Think with Google, 2019)
• Mobile web traffic has consistently accounted for about half of all global web traffic since the beginning of 2017. (Statista, 2020)
• 74% of Aussies rely on their phones when buying online.

Having a mobile-friendly website is no longer a choice, it’s a necessity. It becomes particularly important if you have an e-commerce shop.

Speed

Speed is not only a factor for keeping visitors, but it also helps you to rank higher in search results.

The first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time. (Portent, 2019). Meaning, users have no patience for websites with poor load speeds and inadequate performance.

A couple of tips to increase your speed: minimise HTTP requests, remove unused scripts and files, enable browser caching and compress your images. The only thing worse than a slow-loading website is images that don’t fully load.

Make sure your forms are easy to fill out.
 This includes the checkout forms.

If you have a lengthy checkout process, you will likely lose clients at this stage. Find ways to optimise the checkout process so customers must fill out as little as possible.

Make sure the content you want people to see first, loads first.

Prune your vocabulary. Use layman’s terms when describing products or services, so that people without the knowledge will understand.

If you sell technology, include a section that will be easy to understand for the older generation, without them having to “Google” or ask their grandchildren. 

Christmas spirit

Add some Christmas-themed graphics or sliders to your website. If you do end up doing a Christmas subsection of your site, have promotions on your landing page.

On a side note, a landing page can be ANY page your customers use to enter your website. This means the landing page will not always be your homepage. If you are running Google Adwords, you will need to make customised landing pages. They will not only increase your click-through rate, but it will also reduce your bounce rate and, in turn, improve your ranking.

Christmas Marketing

Make sure your site looks the part

We live in a visual world. A customer will walk into a brick-and-mortar store because they like what they see from the outside. Similarly, when customers land on your store page, their attention gravitates to your images first. Then, if they like what they see, they keep on browsing and, hopefully, make a purchase.

That is why product photography is essential to the success of any e-commerce operation. This doesn’t mean you have to pay for an expensive photographer or even buy new equipment. The latest mobile phones take more than adequate photos. Simply style the image to suit your branding, have good lighting and snap away.

Some tips for taking the perfect prod

uct photo:

• Make the product the hero of the image i.e no ‘fussy’ backdrops or huge props;
• Angling the photo at 45 degrees can show depth and give consumers a better idea of who large the product is;
• Try using the Rule of Thirds or a differential focus to make your images more interesting;

Adding Christmas themed props or backdrops is an easy and effective way of carrying the spirit of the season through your photos.

Utilise the power of social media

Cross promoting your business via social media is a fantastic way to create brand awareness. And, by using seasonal hashtags on your social posts, i.e. #christmas2020, #tistheseason, etc., you stand a chance to gain further exposure from people clicking through these hashtags.

Focus on client service  

If you want people to come back to your site continually, then they must have a pleasant experience the first time round. That’s to say, make your customers feel special. This may mean that during the festive season you offer gift-wrapping or free delivery, or throw in a surprise freebie with every $50 purchase.

You can also incentivise people to spend with you, signup for your newsletter or to share your brand. This will give you more people to market to, throughout the next year and can turn new or potential customers into regulars. The easiest way to do this is by running a competition. But, just be sure to check the latest Facebook rules for this.

Remarketing

If you notice a significant percentage of your customers leave after adding items to the cart, you can always implement remarketing.

This means that you can advertise to people who have visited your shop but not completed a purchase. You can also offer discounts through remarketing to people who don’t finish the checkout process to encourage them to come back.

Lastly, make sure you add deadlines to ensure that they purchase with enough time to have the time delivered BEFORE Christmas. Effective ways of doing this include social media countdowns and email newsletter marketing.

Final Thoughts

We know that this is a lot of information to take in, and it can seem a little overwhelming. But, not all of this needs to be done straight away. We recommend starting with one focus area and build your way to the full list.

Of course, another strategy is to remove the stress of it all by having Snippets Development take over your Christmas marketing. By utilising our free website evaluation, we can help you pinpoint exactly which of the above strategies needs the most focus.

So, take the stress of Christmas marketing out of the equation and contact Snippets Development to get started.