The holiday season is nearly upon us! Spruce up your store with these 5 quick tips to gives your sales a boost.
 

1.  Set Up Abandoned Basket Emails

Did you know that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 67.44%? Scary huh?

The bad news is that this rate is getting higher, and all online merchants are affected to some extent.

The good news is that you can take action to reduce this and substantially boost your sales.

The easiest way is to set up an email that is sent whenever a prospective customer leaves your store without paying for the goods in their basket.

If you have an Ashop store you can easily create an Abandoned Basket email.

If you can afford to, it’s worthwhile adding an extra incentive, such a discount, coupon or free shipping to entice customers to complete their transaction.

This only takes a few minutes to set up and is something every online store should have.

Pro tip: Make sure you top up on Newsletter Credits – you don’t want to run out during the Christmas rush!
 

2. Offer Free shipping

68% of consumers have recommended a retailer based on a free shipping offer, according to the 2013 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study.

Many consumers expect free shipping, especially during the holiday season, and will leave your store in favour of a competitor if you do not offer it.

Be upfront about your free shipping policy so that customers are aware if what they need to do to qualify.
 

3. Buy Some Paid Advertising

No matter the size of your advertising budget, it’s worth spending some money on paid advertising to give your online store a short-term injection of traffic over the holiday season.

This is the busiest time of year for online retailers, and you don’t want to miss out on the chance to attract new customers.

Paid Search:

• - Google Adwords
• - Yahoo Bing Network

Comparison Shopping Engines:

• - Google Shopping
• - Amazon Product Ads
• - Nextag
• - Shopping.com
• - ShopZilla

 

4. Build Trust

If you’ve done the previous steps correctly, there’s a good chance you’ll be seeing a stream of first-time customers coming to your store.

These customers need to feel safe when they‘re on your website, especially when they are checking out.

They need to know that their credit card information is safe at all times and that they can trust you.

Here are a few ways you can build trust:

• - Testimonials from happy customers. Using photos or video in conjunction with text is more effective than text alone.
• - Offer a guarantee. 100% Money-back, free returns (Zappos-style) etc all reassure customers that they can get their money back if they are not happy with the purchase.
   

5. Make Sure Your Returns Policy Is Clear

Many online retailers hide their returns policy or worse, don’t even have one at all.

Customers want to understand how shipping and returns work if they decide to purchase from you.

f they can’t find this information easily, they will leave and go to a competitor’s site (which does have an easy-to-find-and-understand returns policy.)

Having a page called ‘Returns Policy; or similar is a good start.

Use plain English as much as possible; you might feel smart if you use complex words or Legalese, but your customers won’t bother to read it.

The Iconic does a good job – they have a link to ‘Returns’ from the footer of their homepage. They also have a simple diagram explaining their return policy and some FAQs underneath.

 
 

Is your store all set for the holidays? Have you got any ideas or suggestions for other ecommerce site owners? Let us know in the comments below.

(Image Source: Flickr)