Maximize Holiday Sales Conversion Rates

‘Tis the season of cheer… but also of tinsel-draped special offers, special sales, and massive revenue boosts. The data is in, and the holidays are undoubtedly the most profitable season for all kinds of businesses, especially online. Last season, consumers spent a whopping $211 billion online, and retail sales went up some 7-10% year on year. If you want this to be ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ for your brand, make sure you’re ready for what’s coming. How? Maximize holiday conversions. 

You’ve probably heard a bunch of advice all year about doing this, but it’s never been more important than it is right now. And if you want an unfair advantage, you must think about things differently. So here are our top festive tips for boosting conversions right now, complete with live examples from across the web.

Don’t Let the Noise of the Promo Drown out the Reason to Buy Your Brand

Yes, you’re having a sale, and your customers can get your product at a juicy discount. But the sale is an incentive, not the center of your brand. Shoppers will see a thousand ads with X% off. When it’s time to decide, though, staying true to your brand is what sets you apart in the shopper’s mind and amps your conversion rates.

Here is a great example from Fjällräven:

Personalize Your Shopper’s Experience to Maximize Holiday Conversions

Gift guides and other widgets are great ways to offer a personalized experience and add value this season. But if you really want to maximize conversions, you need more than surface-level changes. For example, this is what Yeti’s doing with a gift guide widget…

But when you go from here to the actual product page, the descriptions haven’t changed. There’s nothing to show they know the shopper is coming via the gift guide. There’s no personalization that confirms to the shopper that this is actually a great gift buy, not just an awesome product. Here’s all you get:

This is great any other time of year, but there’s a missed opportunity here.

I know what you’re thinking.

A: This is too much work.

Actually, it’s not. Thanks to Ziff’s law, it’s likely that your top 10 holiday items drive the majority of your holiday sales. So, just personalize the copy for those 10 heavily gifted items.

B: And if even that’s too much, personalize the opening sentence of the description.

Use this: 

When holiday gifting, there’s no room for error. You’re safe with this [XYZ] not only because it’s one of our most popular gift items, it’s also one of our most popular items, period.

Prepare for Non-gifters to Maximize Conversions

Some of your shoppers will come, not to buy for others, but for themselves. With the pressure of gift-giving this season, they might be feeling a twinge of guilt for doing something for themselves. How can you convert this group of people? 

• Update the descriptions of your popular items and center “you’ve earned it; it’s time to indulge a little in yourself” type messaging to get them over the guilt. 
• At the bottom of the description, add a paragraph to give them the confidence to act now. This is the biggest mistake we make. We give a juicy promo, but without a catalyst that incentivizes the shopper to take action now (pull the trigger), there will be no sale. 

Here’s the emotional line we use: 

It’s true, this isn’t our only sale. But it is our most important. We may have another sale in the next 3 months, but we can’t be certain because it depends on many factors. What we can tell you is that every time our Holiday sales end, we receive a few angry emails.

Prepare for Skeptics to Maximize Holiday Conversions

Two types of shoppers see your holiday promo offer. Those who accept it and those who may think it’s a gimmick. And when shoppers think something is a gimmick they don’t buy. There’s a simple solution for this. Here is an example from Openroad.

They show this on their product page:

Notice the year’s lowest price message on the bottom right.

To satisfy the skeptics, I’d make this clickable and, on click, explain how it truly is our lowest price of the year.

Tiny changes like this are what we’re all about. In fact, skeptics are our specialty, and making small, subtle additions to your product page is how we can boost conversions.

How We Maximize Holiday Conversions

Our method, over a decade in the making, is deceptively simple.

Our target: 

People leaning in with interest—the curious shoppers taking in your product page fully, looking for the info they need to take them over the edge and hit buy. They’re the ones looking at your giant sale banner and thinking: Is this really true?

We’re laser-focused on them and set out to convert them with a three-step process.

Step 1: Map out High-Visibility Locations

We place subtle CTAs in strategic locations on your site where we know your target audience will spot them. We’ve attached red arrows in this example so it’s easy to spot where we’d place the CTAs.

Step 2: Build the Sales Pitch

When they click one of our CTAs, the rest of them disappear. Then, they see a sales pitch that’s been custom-built to convert.

We have a solid formula for building our pitches based on the 9 Truths About Online Shoppers.

Step 3: Find the Winning Pitch

Our 9 truths formula allows us to build many sales pitches. But we don’t know which is the best, so…

To see the 3 steps in action and proof this works, check out this article.

So, Where’s the Proof?

This strategy mentioned above isn’t a theoretical framework. It’s the base formula for all our conversion work for clients. This marketing framework can be used to boost sales for sports products. To sell skincare products. Pet products. Consumer electronics. Athletic gear. Back pain solutions. Food items. High-end cooking tools.

Does the sales pitch always need to be shown as a popup? Nope.

It can also convert cold Facebook ad traffic, improve mobile conversion rates, generate calls, optimize your most important landing page, etc.

It can even be used to improve your overall conversion rates.

Want to try it out for yourself? Drop me a comment, and I’ll show you how.