Holiday season is the best time of the year to exponentially boost sales. Sellers are geared up for selling and buyers are geared up for buying. With so much excitement in the air, it is important to fulfill the customer's needs and expectations. Nobody wants to get disappointed around this time. The trend of shopping has shifted from the physical arena to a virtual one, for obvious reasons. So, equip your e-commerce store with the best strategies and make everyone happy, including yourself!

Here are 7 effective ways to arm your online store and scale-up, this holiday season.

1. Issue Promotional Newsletters

Reach as many customers as possible before the holiday season begins and let them know that you are gearing up for it. Issuing newsletters is a great way to do this! Advertise products before launching them and address how your holiday offers are as good as they can ever get! It is important to give the customers a heads-up as they will keep you in mind when they decide to do shopping. They might even start saving-up money just to buy one or two products when the time comes. You never know!

2. Modify Website For The Occasion

You need to give your website a different feel – the festive feel! Make appropriate modifications in the graphic design and display content which immediately connect with customers. Revamp your e-store for the holiday season and add relevant products which the customers will want to buy especially during this time. Update gallery - add product images which are holiday-season-oriented to catch more eyes for the e-store. Don’t forget to upload images of high resolution. You don’t want a sloppy outlook for your website, ever!

3. Optimize For Maximum Speed

You’re not done with the modifications yet! Will all the new changes made for the festive season, your website might have considerably slowed down and you can’t let that be the case! Perform further modifications and tweaks to optimize the loading speed and enhance the user experience of the e-commerce website. It’s crucial to reduce the load time as it is proven to lead to higher conversion rates. Don’t give any opportunity for customers to choose your competitors over you! Play hard and win big!

4. Prepare To Deal With Traffic Like Never Before

It is wise to expect a huge wave of traffic and take appropriate actions to prevent any kind of disaster from occurring to your e-store. You have to be ready for anything because this is the biggest chances to sky-rocket your sales! Website hosts will have a good idea of how well websites can cope –up with the holiday traffic. Get in touch with them and ask them how they can help you manage your website better and ensure that it doesn’t slow down any time or experience any crash.

5. Get All Stocked-Up And Be Ready To Re-Stock

The number of sales you will make in the holiday season can't be exactly estimated. So, don’t take any chance by keeping only a limited supply of products. It’s time to up-scale and has as many products stocked-up as possible, ready for sale! Keep re-stocking whatever is selling fast. Never go empty! This will have a negative impact on your customers and may even affect your relationship with them post-holiday-season. Find the best dealers and reserve a decent amount of stock for you. This is a groundwork you can’t afford to skip!

6. Promote Best-Selling Items And Suggest Gifts

Sometimes, all a customer needs is a good prompt to make a purchase. Keeping that in mind, make sure you advertise the items which are selling like hot cakes and drastically improve your conversion rates! Also, with some analysis of customer activity on your e-commerce website, you can suggest appropriate gifts such that their requirements are met. You can employ cross-selling strategies too! So, be on the lookout for effective ways to prompt your customers and gently nudge them to buy your products!

7. Increase Your Staff To Serve Effectively

Always remember, the way you handle customers this season, speaks volumes about how reliable and professional your e-store is! Employ more people to conveniently manage the holiday traffic. Doing this, you can focus more on sales than on lack of customer support. You wouldn't want to stay on the lower side of the see-saw, would you? Staffing is so important around this time. So, make sure every single customer is attended on time and leave no room for bad customer care.

Additional Tip - Don’t forget to remind your customers that your offers are limited and they’ll need to hurry before they expire!

Following all these strategies, you could possibly win the lottery this holiday season! Capitalize on every opportunity you get to attract customers and leave no stone unturned! However, if you don’t have an e-commerce website, get in touch with Openwave. You deserve the best – hire top-notch e-commerce website developers and have your e-store up and rolling in no time!