The Black Friday - Cyber Monday shopping weekend is fast approaching. 2021 was a big year for eCommerce shopping in several ways but there was ONE thing that stood out.

What happened in 2021?

The number of shoppers either online or in-store between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday declined for the second year in a row in 2021, down from 186.4 million in 2020 to 179.8 million.

Why did this happen? Nearly half (49%) of survey respondents said they made some holiday purchases before Thanksgiving in 2021. In 2020, 52% of shoppers took advantage of early deals, often starting in October.

This means consumers are moving their purchases earlier in the holiday season, a trend that isn’t likely to go away. Are you sure you’re ready for the biggest shopping season of the year, starting October?.

In this 3-part series, we’ll cover some integral aspects of prep for the upcoming shopping season. This installment is all about MOBILE, REVIEWS & MERCHANDISING.

1) MOBILE

The growth of mobile has been nothing short of phenomenal, with the share of mobile ecommerce sales in total ecommerce sales increasing a whopping 39.1 percent from 52.4 percent in 2016 to the current 72.9 percent share.

Action items–

• The popularity of mobile apps is on the rise. If you don’t have a mobile app, it’s essential that your mobile web experience is optimized alongside the desktop experience. The experience on your mobile app or mobile website has a direct impact on your store’s conversion rate.
• Make sure your store has enabled the use of mobile wallets for user safety and speed of transacting.
• The customer journey begins on mobile, with 58% of Google searches being done via a mobile device and 65% of search ad clicks happening on mobile devices. So make sure your marketing efforts are optimized for mobile.
  

2) REVIEWS

Online shoppers research a lot before making an online purchase, making reviews a substitute for talking to sales staff. Things that people usually read about include shopping experience from checkout to delivery and product reviews.

Action items –

• Ask for feedback for products sold and show that you publish it. It invites more honest and genuine reviews, the thing that will help boost sales when the shopping season is at hand.
• Make sure you address negative reviews. People with bad experiences are always more vocal than the ones with good experiences but that’s not always a bad thing. How you handle negative reviews can turn them into an opportunity, giving hesitant shoppers confidence in whom they are buying from, the real people behind a business.
  

3) MERCHANDISING

Now’s the time to make sure that you’re automating your merchandising approach.

Manual merchandising can never deliver enough sales to justify the heavy costs involved in driving quality traffic to an online store. What you need is a system powered by AI and machine learning based on customer behavioral data and context.

This presents each shopper with the most relevant selection of products, leading to better conversion rates and higher order values and items per order. Also, make sure you catch eCommerce trends. Trends are spotted in real-time, and smart search and product recommendations help in pushing trending products to the foreground.

Action items –

• Consider investing in a product recommendation cross sell and upsell engine like Argoid.
  

It offers 1:1, hyper personalized upsell, cross sell and email product recommendations through ribbons like Trending, Frequently Bought Together, Related Items, You May Also Like and 18 other personalization use cases.

Argoid has delivered an average impact of 30% Uplift in Search Conversion, 12X ROI and 11% Uplift in Revenue.

By starting out now, you have the option of using the 14-day free trial to see the impact, and then upgrading to a package suitable for your store, keeping you ready for the early October shoppers and the rush of traffic you can expect in the coming months.

In our second installment of this series, we’ll cover PAYMENTS, DELIVERY and EMAILS. And in the final one, we’ll share a report on the personalization fails of BFCM 2021 so you can avoid them in 2022!

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