Christmas seems to start earlier every year and when you’re in the business of e-commerce, you couldn’t be more right. It’s so important to be ready for such a busy shopping experience and this year, with a nationwide lockdown in place, online shopping is expected to grow 30% to $940bn.
We wanted to share our top tips on how to prepare for the e-commerce rush this Christmas. Whether you’ve been selling on Amazon for years, or this is your first holiday season after moving your business online, these tips can help you make the most of the season whilst keeping your stress levels down!
Take a look at our handy infographic and save it to your desktop to refer back to, or scroll down to the bottom to read further into our festive hacks! Just remember that you’ll need to act fast as Amazon has warned that it could take up to 15-20 days to get a new SKU successfully launched. There’s no time to lose!
Amazon has advised both shoppers and businesses to prepare early this year, admitting that they’ll be stretched this holiday season. They are expecting to surpass $100bn in sales this fourth quarter, which would be the first time in Amazon’s history, so making sure your listings are online and performing well has never been so important.
We’ve gathered the most important tips from our Operations and Content teams to help you AMPlify every part of your Christmas campaigns.
Tips from our #AMPed Ops team!
1. search terms
Around the holidays people search in different ways. A lot of people don’t know what presents to buy for their loved ones, which leads them to search using keywords such as: ‘Christmas gifts for men’, ‘Christmas gifts for girlfriends’, ‘gifts for grandparents’, etc. Make sure your Christmas-related search terms are in the back-end and are appropriate for your product to ensure you index against high search volume gift-related searches.
2. Sponsored Brands and Ads
If you’re new to Amazon, sponsored brands are a great way to accelerate sales. They are CPC ads that include your brand logo, a headline and features multiple products. Over the holidays, it’s a great idea to try out festive copy and test some gifting-related phrases. Ensure your highly giftable products are the ones being targeted.
Before the holidays hit, distribute ads for greater exposure and performance. Think about increasing your daily budget for all your ads to guarantee your campaigns don’t run out of stock during periods of heightened traffic. Brands tend to spend big over the Christmas period, knowing that they’ll be in for big rewards. You need to make sure you can compete with other brands!
3. Seasonal Stock Levels
Over the Christmas period, people predominantly purchase by a delivery window. To ensure you don’t miss out, make sure you have sufficient FBA stock. As we get closer to the 25th, the last-minute buyers will need their presents to arrive on time!
4. Vacation Mode
Christmas is the busiest shopping season of the year, and Christmas Day itself is no different. Many warehouses shut down for the holidays and there’s no reason you can’t enjoy yours whilst keeping your Amazon listings live. Create the perfect balance with Amazon’s Vacation Mode. You’ll have to make sure all pending orders and customer issues are dealt with, and that your products are packaged ready with Amazon, then they’ll do the rest. Don’t miss out on sales while you take a well-deserved Christmas vacation.
Tips from our #AMPed Content team!
1. Showcase festive packaging
A lot of brands update their packaging over the Christmas period to include some festive cheer! If your products have nice giftable packaging, make it clearly visible to the shoppers. Add images that feature your Christmas packaging to your image deck, especially your main image. You can do this by creating new packshot photography or if you want to launch your listings before the packaging is ready, think about using CGI.
2. Seasonal content changes
Christmas is a very visual and colourful event. Right now I bet you can imagine a tree covered in lights surrounded by presents wrapped in festive packaging with kids laughing and playing in the snow while the parents sit back and drink before noon! Try and encapsulate this kind of imagery into your image deck and A+ content. Create lifestyle photography that captures the joy as someone unwraps your product or shows it being used in a Christmassy setting. Make it clear that your product will make the perfect gift!
3. Build a festive storefront
Utilise your storefront to help cross-sell to other giftable products. Create a Christmas store of dreams for the viewer so they can easily find the perfect present. Give prominent placement to the most giftable items on the homepage and add landing pages to highlight certain gift ideas.
Christmas can be a stressful time of year for shoppers, let alone for brands! Guarantee you are ready for the heightened traffic and to battle with the extra competition. These tips should help but there’s a lot to do! If you’d like more information or help AMPlifying your Amazon listings, get in contact with the team today!
For more Amazon updates and tips, follow us on LinkedIn or tweet us!
