Valentine’s Day is a huge calendar event for retailers – year upon year smaller holidays hold a bigger presence in our lives, with greeting cards and reminders everywhere you turn. As the markets grow so do consumer’s expectations, who find themselves pushing to source the perfect gift for their significant others. Your Valentine’s Day e-commerce is a vital opportunity to increase revenue and acquire new customers.
Here’s some handy tips for optimising your B2C online store in the run up to Valentine’s Day.
Start advertising now
It’s never too early to propose your Valentine’s campaign! However, choosing when to market ahead of a holiday is a tricky decision – too early and you risk losing audience’s attention, too late and you risk losing conversions. It’s a safe bet to start rolling out your marketing campaigns a few weeks in advance to attract new customers. Past customers are (hopefully!) likelier to place an order, so work this to your advantage and reel them back in.
Plan a build up to the event, set hearts aflutter and wow with some forward thinking magic!
Carefully planned campaigns will make your site (and therefore your product) appear to have less risk and more value. Tackle your social media campaigns, introduce Valentine’s banners to your website homepage and consider some email marketing to celebrate the day of love.
Check your site
When was the last time you completed the buyer journey on your own website?
It’s good practice to take time to regularly go through the process of creating your own order. Browse, create & check out. There may be issues within the buyer’s journey that you’re not aware of, which could be seriously harming your revenue. Read through your reviews to spot any problems, as what’s said here will impact 93% [s] of your audience. Test across all devices, as your web traffic isn’t limited to desktop.
Take the opportunity now to check your storefront for any bugs which may cause an issue for Valentine’s spenders – the sooner you do this, the more time you have to fix any issues. Placing an order yourself is also a great opportunity to prove your couriers are in tip top shape.
It is important to rectify any issues that your customers may be facing, and to provide them with the solutions before they know there’s a problem. Here’s an example of how this logic has been applied to personalised photo book creation.
Create compelling assets
Your words are important when it comes to selling, and so are your digital assets. Romance your customers with fresh graphics and imagery – extra points if you woo them with a promotional video. Videos which show your Valentine’s products are a useful addition to your website and are easily used across your social media too. Your content should be engaging and consistently branded.
Ensure that your images and videos are all consistent in their theme and easily associated with your brand. If you’re using photographs or graphics found online, check that you have the rights to use these for your business and that the quality of the image itself is great. It’s much better if you produce your digital assets yourself instead of trying to juggle rights and styles. Your visual output should be a key component of your marketing strategy, no matter the size of your business. If you don’t have a marketer or designer, perhaps consider working with an agency who can help.
Do something special
Love is in the air, but that doesn’t mean your prices should be sky-high too!
Try to squeeze a little more out of your storefront and have a limited time offer to help push those sales. Offers such as free delivery will help to seal the deal for those abandoned carts. Alternatively, you could stock up on chocolates and gift them for sales over a chosen amount to incite higher value orders. Check your books and logistics to see what is possible.
Advertise your offer code across your website and send an email to your mailing list. Sending an email to your previous customers will give them a nudge to revisit you. Actively notifying your web visitors of your discount is a proactive approach which often sees a great return. As an added bonus, you could use the code as a tool to help spot any sales patterns. Show your customers a little love and you’re sure to feel the benefit.
Realise the power of personal
There’s no gift-giving occasion quite as personal as Valentine’s Day, so it’s only natural that lovers search high and low for the best personalised gifts.
There’s an expected growth within the personalised gift market of $11.19 billion during 2021-2025 [s], so it makes sense to meet the demand with your online offerings. Not only is there an ongoing increase in order quantity within the market, there’s also an increase in order value too; here in the UK, shoppers are more likely to spend an additional 7% if it means that they can give gifts which feature a level of personalisation [s].
Sentimentality is valuable globally, and it makes sense to capitalise on this for a global holiday. Arm yourself with the power to impress your shoppers with an item unique to them. Gone are the days of limited personalisation – valuable gifts can be fully customised with text and photos to represent the interests and relationship of the giver and receiver. We’re sure there’s a gift to make everyone fall in love.
We’d love for you to join our cohort of businesses making the most of the personalised print market. Have a go of our demo to see how Taopix software can benefit your e-commerce revenue.
If you’re looking to break out into the personalised gift market, or you’re already in and looking for more, feel free to get in touch. Our team are full to the brim with knowledge, both technical and social, on how to enhance your gift-giving business.