Report by Business Wire shows a $30 billion decrease in customer spending for the Holiday season in 2022 based on the U.S. demand survey.
Therefore, Shopify Merchants must improve their product selections, promotions, and customer experiences to win this literal sales winter.
Here are the details on how.
Shopify Holiday 2022 Trends & The Insights You Must Know
The holiday sales have started sooner and will last longer
Customers begin their holiday shopping earlier in 2022 to get ahead of limited budgets and spread the financial load over more paychecks.
The holiday shopping season has already started since many shops are reducing prices to get rid of stuff due to record-high inventories and wary customers.
Major retailers are also promoting early sales to go along with that. With early fall holiday savings, retailers like Target and Walmart followed Amazon’s lead and announced a second Prime Day.
To avoid overwhelming customers throughout the extended holiday season, brands must be sympathetic and understanding. This entails providing customers with individualized service and experiences to make their life easier, whether they shop in late December or October.
Prediction on spending is disappointing, yet BFCM results give us hope
People will be spending less because of the current economic climate. Holiday gift spending in the United States is anticipated to decline by $30 billion as 58% of people limit their non-food purchases.
25% of consumers are predicted to spend less on apparel and footwear, which might result in the highest drops.
Despite these less-than-optimistic forecasts, many shops remain confident that customers will return and be prepared to spend this holiday season.
As we bite our tongues waiting for the BFCM results, the numbers are in. And they’re promising. In fact, Shopify Merchants broke records this year with 3.3B USD generated in sales.Â
Hence, brands must be adaptable to modify their strategy to meet client needs. This year, the emphasis is less on expensive, showy products and more on offering excellent experiences with the necessities and making everyday items spectacular.
In the burgeoning experience economy, creating an experience surrounding the product is more important than the actual thing.
Instead of just selling products, companies like Nike, which delivers an immersive, technology-driven shopping experience, and Foxtrot, which curates food and drink for pickup or 30-minute delivery, create an entire experience.
Social commerce is on the rise and ripped for the Holiday season
Brands have a tremendous growth opportunity if they use social media for a Christmas online shopping campaign. It is predicted that social commerce sales will be worth $958 billion in 2022.
In 2022, 49% of the brands polled by Shopify want to increase their investment in social commerce.
Social media is becoming an increasingly popular source of inspiration for online consumers who still need to make a specific purchase.
According to Hubspot’s State of Consumer Trends research, 28% of Gen Z, millennials, and Gen Xers have made an in-app purchase. Social media platforms give businesses a way to reinvent the holiday shopping experience.
The 2022 holiday rush is the ideal moment to offer buyers who interact with your brand on social media sites a superior in-app customer support experience.
Price sensitivity is real and customers expect huge discounts on their holiday purchase
Prices, product quality, and customer reviews significantly impact customers regardless of generation. Consumer spending is increasing by 1.8% after accounting for inflation, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is close to its historical average.
Consumer payments are growing at double-digit rates, according to a report by the Bank of America Institute, a think tank, indicating that American consumers “are still spending.”
A knee-jerk response here is to lower the price as your customers will appreciate the discounts more than ever. However, there are other contributors that you can add to your product offer that make the deal more enticing yet maintain a profitable price tag.
We will talk about that later in this post.
How To Prepare For The Sales Holiday Knowing These Conditions?
There are two components to creating a pleasurable shopping experience during retail holidays:
- Get customers to your doors
- Bring on your best deals and support to help customers finalize their purchases.
The first section emphasizes the significance of Christmas marketing, including pop-up shops, sponsored advertisements, gift suggestions, giveaways, and social media activity.
That’s the spirit, and here’s the breakdown.
Get your plan ready
It’s advisable to start simply over the holidays and mark the important dates.
Choosing which important holiday you want to focus your marketing efforts is the first thing you need to accomplish. In November and December, there are a ton of religious holidays, official holidays, and unofficial holidays.Â
It might not be feasible for your brand and team to participate in every one of them, depending on the scale of your business operations. You may, however, hold extended sales during certain significant occasions.
The retail holiday calendar allows you to plan your marketing months. By doing so, you’ll be able to plan and produce visual content, collaborate with other businesses or influencers, write emails, and set up your website in advance for the most significant impact.
Transform your store in the holiday spirit
Customers are immediately put in an undeniably joyful mood when they see those string lights lining up the town center and beautiful angels with Christmas themes in stores. You should design your Shopify business to reflect the festive spirit in 2022, just as traditional brick-and-mortar stores do.
Create a few holiday-themed elements or use festive colors to update your pages to give customers a festive experience without redesigning the entire website. To create a sense of urgency for the quickly approaching date, you can even set up a countdown timer to mark the approach of Christmas and New Year.
Plan your product selections
Upsell and cross-sell are crucial
This Christmas season, store owners can sell festive and seasonal goods. Along with individual goods, specific holiday bundles are frequently used. In this instance, let’s begin by considering goods that can naturally pair up following three popular methods:
- Customer Also Bought: Items that actual customers have previously purchased together or that are typically used together (e.g., makeup remover and cotton packs )
- Top Of The Shelve: Items that buyers of more expensive items are most likely to require (e.g., a case for a tablet or a smartphone)
- Bundle Product: Sets of items that may be required (e.g., sets of clothes)
Next, consider how you’ll showcase unique seasonal products/bundles on your website. To simplify shopping, grouping them all together in a holiday-specific category on your site navigation is a fantastic idea.Â
Generating personalized product recommendations is needed
The best time of year to increase sales potential is over the holidays. If you don’t take severe measures to push the proper products to clients and arouse their potential wants, it’s such a waste.
The ability of personalized product recommendations to influence people to purchase more than they initially need has been demonstrated.
You can suggest relevant products to shoppers to inspire them and persuade them to make a purchase by analyzing customer behaviors, data (location, demographic, etc.), and contextual data, along with business-related data like margin and inventory.
Another piece of information that can be used to gain insightful information is past browsing history.
Updating your product description with extra flairs
Creating gift packages, introducing brand-new variations to existing products, or simply adding new things that you believe will do well over the Christmas season is the way to go.
Your objective throughout the holidays should be to help consumers select the ideal present so that you can boost your sales.
It’s critical to develop at least one product category line with the holiday season as its focal point.
This can help customers locate holiday-specific goods while maintaining the festive atmosphere across your website. Here are some examples of categories you might choose from:
Develop and promote your sales campaign
Here are some examples of special seasonal offers you can make:
- Draw attention to your top products and offer a special deal.
- Issue unique gift cards with a seasonal theme.
- Provide gift packaging with a seasonal theme.
- Offer individualized notes written by hand.
- Make holiday gift bundles or sets.
Then, your next task is to ensure these attractive offers get in front of your potential customers.
The objective is to increase sales during the holidays. To accomplish this, you’ll also need to develop holiday-themed promos, posts, and advertisements to draw visitors to your online store.Â
Consequently, at the very least, you should be active on social media during the run-up to and during the holiday buying season.
Share and post those hot bargains and deals now while it’s still possible to attract and engage your audience over the upcoming Christmas season.
You can plan posts in advance for better time management, but don’t forget to interact with followers by responding to their comments and direct messages. This will indicate that your brand is lively, engaging, and approachable.
We must emphasize social commerce again since this is a popping trend for the e-store worldwide.
To assist marketers in generating sales, almost all social media platforms have included social commerce features into their platforms, such as live shopping, virtual product try-on, and in-app payment.Â
Retailers are keener than ever to experiment with these new online methods of interacting with customers over the holiday season.
You can learn how to include social commerce into your online holiday sales strategy this year by visiting these seven social media platforms.
Step up with customer support game
You must provide excellent customer service during the hectic holiday shopping season since you anticipate increased internet traffic.Â
With the use of live chat, your consumers can immediately get the answers to their questions without having to navigate away from your website, assisting them in gathering the knowledge they need to make a purchasing decision.
Additionally, you can use chatbots and automate your messages. Consider including package tracking software on your website so customers can track their orders without needing to check on them every few days.
Final thoughts
Creating successive exceptional occasions is the best way to boost e-commerce sales in 2020. Success, however, only comes to those who have done their homework and are ready. And now you know what to do.
Keeping things straightforward and close to your fundamental values is the secret to success. Prepare your store for the incoming traffic and get your best offers visible to the most significant potential customer audience possible.
We wish you a successful holiday shopping season and a well-rounded plan that will enable you to breeze through the upcoming weeks!
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