How to Stay Ahead of Your Competition During the Holiday Season

What’s your first thought when someone says: “holiday season?”

Do you think about Christmas trees? Or maybe you imagine the first snow falling softly to the ground. Whatever it is, I’m quite sure you wouldn’t say that the holiday season is about the end of the summer and you wouldn’t say that September is something that comes to your mind.

Meanwhile, for your customers, the holiday season starts very early. If you take a look at Google Trends, you’ll notice first inquiries about gifts start to appear at the beginning of September.

What does that mean for your business?

From the beginning of September you will have to face strong competition and you will have to do your best to leave them behind.

In this post, you’ll learn how to prepare your business to achieve that.

#1. Offer more payment options.

In online retail it’s important to be flexible and make it easy for people from around the world to buy from you. You need to make your website user-friendly, your payment options suitable for their needs and your policies more liberal.

First thing to start with is to add additional payment options. Not all of your customers will have a credit card, so you might think about adding debit card and bank payment options. There are also other, less popular options like Bitcoin or Google Wallet.

If you’ve done your market research well, you already know which payment options your potential customers would like to use, so it should be easy to pick the right ones. But if you’re not sure about that, you can find out what payment options your competitors offer. If you’re missing something, add it!

#2. Make free shipping your advantage.

One of the biggest eCommerce problems is a high rate of cart abandonment. According to a Statista survey, 56% of customers leave the cart when they see unexpected costs. What’s the first unexpected cost you can think of? Of course it’s shipping.

If you want to market your business among competitors, free shipping is a great idea to attract customers who most likely wouldn’t buy anything with additional shipping costs. It’s also a great benefit for the customers you already have.

#3: Fit your policies to the holiday demand

The holiday season is a time of exchanges and returns. It’s natural and will definitely happen, but you don’t have to treat it like a disaster. Treat it as an opportunity to gain loyal customers.

We always remember positive experiences with a business and we’re more likely to buy from a business that made it easy for us to buy, exchange or return a product.

There are a couple of tips that might help you to prepare a customer-friendly return policy:

• Clearly state on your website what the return policy is and what the time frames are,
• Make exceptions. If a return is after the policy’s time frame, accept the return.
• Automate the whole process so your customers can monitor the package, they are aware of when you received it, and when they will be refunded.

According to data, 74% of consumers reported that a hassle-free return policy will make them buy again from that retailer, so you have everything to gain.

#4. Make sure that your website is responsive

Not all of your customers will be shopping from the comfort of their homes. People are busy, and most of them will be shopping during their breaks or on their way to work. This means they’ll be using their smartphones and tablets. In fact, a whooping 30 percent of online customers browse the Internet on their mobile phones. If your website is not able to adapt to their devices, they will leave and go to your competitor’s website.

#5. Think about premium shipping

One of the main holiday grievances is shipping. But this time, it’s not about the cost of it, it’s about the time it takes until it’s delivered. We all know how it feels to wait for a package longer than expected. It could be a tempting option for your customers to choose faster shipping with a guarantee that their order will be delivered on time. Many people will be willing to pay more, to avoid the stress that a gift won’t make it before the holidays.

#6. People love holiday promotions

Most people waste the majority of their time selling to prospects instead of making more profits selling to the people who are already engaged in their brand. Consider applying holiday promotions and special offers earlier. As you probably already have your customers’ email addresses, you can send them a few newsletters presenting special offers, vouchers or discount codes. Just make sure you don’t run out of stock!

#7. Personalize customer experience

Personalizing customer experience is about adding a human touch and showing your customers that behind your brand there are real people. There are plenty of ways you can personalize the shopping experience.

You can start from providing exceptional customer service: call a customer by name, make sure they get everything they need, show them that their opinions matter to you. A very important thing is to show you understand their problems.

Also another great way to personalize the experience are email campaigns. Again, call the customer by name and deliver original, custom content. Always send information that is relevant for this particular customer and never send generic emails from a “noreply” account.

There are also additional things you can do: you can attach hand-written notes, sweets or giveaways (customers appreciate even small ones).

Competing makes your business better.

“I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.” - Walt Disney

Although sometimes it’s hard to compete with others, especially if you deal with strong competition, you still should treat it as an opportunity to grow. Thanks to competition, we’re more creative, it forces us to learn new things and try new strategies. It also help us to find our strengths and weaknesses. A good thing about these holiday tips is that they’re useful during the busy holiday season, but they can also give you an advantage over your competition throughout the whole year. As long as you treat them as your business guide, you’ll be sure that no competitor will be a threat for you.

About Justyna Polaczyk, Content Writer

Justyna Polaczyk is a Content Writer and the author of Business Sidekick podcast. She used to work as a business analyst and a journalist. Now, she writes about business psychology, and eCommerce. Get in touch with her on Linkedin or Twitter!