With the hot sales season coming, we’re sure you’ve already checked tons of tips about preparing your store for them. Luckily, in X-Cart, you’ve got ready apps to implement the ideas quickly and cost efficiently. So dive in and polish your site to ensure smooth customer experience with this checklist accompanied by ready solutions for X-Cart.
Make sure your discount tools are in place, enable and test them
To avoid fuss on the day of the sale, check if you have everything on hand to meet your sale tactics in advance: putting all products on sale, arranging special offers for some groups of your customers, making discounts on particular products, offering free shipping, etc. Enable corresponding addons and test them to make sure everything works properly. Do not underestimate cart abandonment reminders. An average cart abandonment rate is 70%, and it increases on holidays as customers browse products in several stores at a time and just forget to complete their order. That said, you might need the following sales tools. Some of them are already part of your X-Cart edition.
Prepare banners, catchy promo texts, timers and anything that will attract your buyers’ attention
When visitors land in your store, you’ve got less than 10 seconds to capture their attention. Leverage visual attention tools to inform them about the sale and create a certain mood! Use banners, popups, and countdowns to attract their attention, add a sense of urgency and lead them to the deal. Bring joy and festive atmosphere to your store with decorative elements or new design. The following tools for promotion and design will help you implement your visual trick.
Plan on several sales channels to reach more buyers
You’ll be out of competition unless you use all possible sales channels. There are different places to promote and list your deals: your blog, a friend’s site, a partner’s gift guide. We don’t even have to mention the power of big eCommerce marketplaces like eBay and Amazon and social networks like Facebook. Last but not least, you can always count on good old email newsletters to reach more buyers with your offer. The multi-channel retailing strategy may double your holiday revenue. X-Cart has got quite some useful features to help you with it, both free and paid.
Ensure prompt assistance and implement other perks that make buyers enjoy shopping in your store
With all else being equal, they will buy in the store where they get the best customer experience, be it a great loyalty program, relevant and quick product search, attentive customer support, quick access to product reviews, easy shopping on any device, shopping for gifts for their nearest and dearest, etc. Check if you have enough inventory and update your catalog accordingly. Also, it’s a good practice to let your clients preorder products which are out of stock at the moment and send them ‘back in stock’ or ‘price drop’ product notifications. We’ve picked the popular addons to help you gain more loyal customers. Some of them are already a part of your software edition, and others can be purchased from the marketplace.
Check if your SEO is in a good state and your buyers can find you in search engines
Many customers start their shopping route typing in their request in search engine, and if you’re not in the top search results on the first page, almost certainly, they won’t even bother finding you. So take care of your SEO. The tool monitoring your site SEO issues for X-Cart 5 is available in the marketplace. Besides, you can order X-Cart SEO consulting service.
Check your site speed, security and capacity, do backups to avoid downtime
Holiday season means increased traffic. Which is great but can your store handle it and ensure 100% uptime during these busy days? Site speed is especially important, as the shopping season is a rush time for customers, and they won’t wait. Optimize your site performance and security. Don’t forget to do a backup, make sure you can restore your site right away in case anything goes wrong during the sale.
Configure fraud protection tools to avoid endless manual orders review during the rush time
Fraudsters activate on holidays turning the orders review into a nightmare, so don’t forget about the tools to fight fraud and protect your customers’ sensitive data. Most of the fraud protection services integrate with your store via X-Payments.
Enable tracking and analytics tools to explore your tactics and methods efficiency
Your experience is the best teacher. Analyze the results of each of your sale campaigns, explore your customers’ behavior, see what coupons worked best and what products sold best to make your next sale campaign even more profitable.
Mark shipping deadlines in your calendar to ensure timely orders delivery
Delayed delivery results in refunds, loss of customer trust and extra expenses. Check the holiday season shipping cutoff dates with your service provider to deliver on time.
The deadlines infographic by our partners from Shipstation should help if you use FedEx, UPS, or USPS. In your X-Cart, you’ve got many tools to manage shipping efficiently. Most integrations with the services are available for free as part of your edition.
Need anything special for your sale period?
Anastasia Zhavoronkova
Lead Marketing Coordinator at Seller Labs and X-Cart
Anastasia has over 8 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. Having been a Customer Care agent in the past, she knows exactly what eCommerce merchants' needs are, and uses her knowledge in Marketing to bring value to the community by sharing her thoughts on relevant topics.
