Christmas shopping can be both joyful and stressful – for consumers, retailers, and brands. The season brings a significant increase in customer demand and as a result, more eCommerce sales and revenue. There is a reason it’s called the Peak Trading season! Adding to the stress, every year, the start of peak trading moves earlier and earlier and stretches longer and longer.
According to a recent study of UK and US consumers, 27% of consumers plan to start their online Holiday shopping in October 2024. So why is the season starting earlier and earlier? Remember the supply chain challenges during the Pandemic? Retailers scrambled to meet customer demands due to insufficient supplies, creating a logistical nightmare. Worried that their holiday orders wouldn’t arrive in time, consumers started shopping earlier in the season.
On top of that, as the cost-of-living crisis in the UK unfolded, consumers started shopping earlier to find the best deals available. Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days launched in 2022 forcing other retailers to also introduce special sales, resulting in steep discounts and holiday shopping before November. Nobody wants to lose out on a great deal!
What’s in store for Peak 2024?
As if being fully prepared for the busiest season of the year wasn’t hard enough, it is also getting harder and more expensive to attract new customers, keep them engaged, and secure sales.
According to the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report from ContentSquare, over half of retail sites globally saw less traffic in 2023, while ad spending increased, pushing cost per visit up by 12%.
However, it is not all gloom and doom. After several years of a cost-of-living crisis severely impacting the retail and eCommerce industry, experts are cautiously optimistic about consumer spending. According to Retail Economics, perceptions about personal finances and spending intentions are improving. Research firm GfK also indicates that there are signs of a more positive attitude from UK households going into the “Golden Quarter.” However, the eCommerce growth rate is slowing down – something that retailers and brands must take into account when planning for peak and business growth. According to the Office for National Statistics, online retail accounts for just over a quarter of all retail sales in the UK. During peak trading in 2023, online accounted for 30.7% of all retail sales. However, the eCommerce growth rate has declined in the past two years, and IMRG forecasts a growth rate of 0% in 2024.
The art of planning for peak
From inventory management, marketing and site optimisation to logistics and customer service, preparing for the eCommerce peak involves many different moving parts and requires participation from the entire organisation.
The pressure to exceed last year’s performance is always on, and it is never too early to start preparing. Here are some key areas that should be addressed in your 2024 peak trading eCommerce strategy:
- Inventory Management: Peaks bring more demand, and ensuring that you have an adequate inventory of popular items is critical. This includes forecasting which products are likely to be in high demand and ordering sufficient quantities in advance.
- Website Performance: Higher traffic volumes during the peak season can impact site speed. Ensuring your site can handle increased traffic without crashing or slowing down is critical for maintaining a positive shopping experience. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, too!
- Marketing: In the most competitive season of the year, retailers and brands will fight to gain a greater share of consumer spending. Planning ahead allows you to create effective and creative marketing strategies and schedule promotions.
- User Experience: Engaging and converting shoppers on the site is becoming increasingly difficult. Effective engagement tools and conversion boosters, like social proof messaging, are needed to optimise the site experience and increase conversions and sales.
- Logistics and Shipping: Easy, timely and cost-effective delivery is critical during this season, not to mention the whole reverse logistics process dealing with the inevitable returns. Efficient planning and coordination with shipping and fulfilment partners allows you to streamline logistics and shipping and be ready to handle increased volume of orders, and returns without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
- Customer Service: Increased demand and sales often mean increased customer service inquiries. Proper planning includes ensuring that your customer service team is staffed to handle traffic spikes and trained to promptly resolve issues, upsell, and maintain an overall high level of customer satisfaction.
Planning for the holiday peak early helps you better meet customer demand, maintain operational efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive higher sales and profitability during this critical season.
Early and thorough planning also allows you to invest in and implement solutions that will help elevate the digital customer experience, increase conversion rates and even reduce eCommerce returns. One of these solutions is Social Proof Messaging. Read on to learn more.
Invest in social proof now to optimise peak sales potential
Retailers and brands like Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, and Nobody’s Child use social proof as their secret weapon to optimise the customer experience across the digital shopping journey. Social proof is especially helpful for shoppers during the holiday season when we’re all struggling to come up with ideas for what to buy. Is it popular? Is it good quality? Will it fit? These are all questions that social proof can help answer, making the process of gift buying much easier.
Here are a few ways social proof can ease gift shopping for your customers and boost peak sales this season.
1. Augment marketing campaigns with social proof
Consumers are inundated with marketing messages and special promotions from retailers and brands, especially during peak. By leveraging real-time social proof messaging in email marketing and display advertising, you can stand out from the crowd and create more creative and effective marketing campaigns that convert. Easily incorporate real-time trends like inventory, sales, add-to-basket volumes and product views in your emails and ads to instil trust and a sense of urgency at the early stages of the purchasing funnel.
2. Guide shoppers to the right gifts
So many choices, so little time—buying the right gifts for friends and family can be a stressful experience. Social proof, which highlights bestsellers or trending items, is perfect for shoppers unsure of what to get. When choosing a popular or best-selling product, you can be fairly certain that it is something that the recipient will love.
Attribute messaging highlighting key product attributes can also help guide shoppers to the right gift choice. For instance, a shirt made of organic cotton will likely appeal to someone who just bought an electric car; by highlighting that key attribute, you’re helping shoppers discover gift options and narrow their selection.
3. Capture shopper attention on the Product Detail Page
Many consumers will start their 2024 Holiday shopping journeys on a search engine this year, sending traffic directly to your product detail page (PDP), making it the new homepage. Social proof messaging on the PDP highlights relevant social proof data that is proven to capture and engage shoppers, reducing high bounce rates. Attribute messaging highlighting specific features and attributes relevant to the original search terms and aggregated review messaging will also reinforce relevancy and lead to higher conversions instead of higher bounce rates.
4. Help them make more confident gift choices with aggregated reviews
Social proof also helps when shoppers may have already decided what to buy but need that extra reassurance that they are making the right choice. Integrating aggregated ratings and reviews with social proof messaging gives shoppers easy insight into what other customers think of the product, including quality, fit, and more. This powerful combination of two proven solutions significantly optimises conversion rates.
5. Provide much-appreciated inventory insights
Demand is naturally higher during peak season, and inventory can fluctuate significantly. It’s never fun to miss out on items on Holiday wish lists due to sold-out status. Social proof messaging helps ensure shoppers don’t miss out by highlighting whether products are selling fast or running low on stock. Shoppers value this insight, and it can also help encourage them to make a purchase decision faster.
6. Get creative with seasonal themes
Seasonal-themed social proof messages that align with your brand are not only fun, but also effective. By theming the icons and copy associated with social proof messages, you can deliver more dynamic experiences that can help your brand stand out. This will provide extra relevance and timeliness to your messaging, further boosting conversions.
7. Reduce high return rates
Nobody likes returns. They are inconvenient for customers and gift recipients, costly for retailers and bad for the environment. Social proof messaging can lead to reduced return rates by helping shoppers select the right product the first time. By showcasing what’s trending and best selling and adding aggregated fit and review messaging, shoppers can easily discover what’s popular, how other customers rate a product or if the sizing information is correct. By increasing the likelihood that customers make the right purchases, you can reduce return rates, lower associated costs, prevent margin erosion and support sustainability ambitions.
Get started with social proof today and make the most of your peak season
Retailers and brands who plan effectively can deliver better customer experiences, offer better deals, provide faster shipping, and ensure a smoother shopping experience, giving them an edge over competitors who may not be as well-prepared.
Social proof messaging can help you deliver a less stressful gift-shopping experience for your customers, who will return the favour with higher conversions, trust and long-term loyalty. Customers will appreciate the help and your bottom line will thank you.
Integrating and implementing Taggstar’s social proof messaging is fast and easy. And the results are fast, too—our retail customers experience significant uplifts in sales and conversion rates almost immediately. We’ve even successfully implemented social proof during peak and code freeze. Are you ready to make the most of the peak season this year? Try our conversion calculator, explore how we’ve helped other retailers and brands across industries accelerate growth and contact us for a quick demo.
