For any holidays, you need to prepare in advance. According to statistics, about 30-40% of buyers choose gifts for their relatives and friends on the Internet. For both companies that provide services and owners of online stores, preparation for the holiday season is an important stage. In order not to waste time, we have put together a list of 2023 global eCommerce dates for you so that you can work at maximum efficiency.
The maximum number of pre-New Year purchases falls in the second half of December, although there is a trend towards earlier purchases. But, despite this, competition in online trading is only growing every year, but the same jump in the number of customers is not observed. This means that you need to prepare for the holiday gift season in advance if you do not want it to pass you by.
How should you prepare your business for the holidays?
2023 global eCommerce dates are a very broad concept. In addition to the general ones – New Year, Christmas, Valentine’s Day – there are still a lot of narrowly focused ones, for example, Mother’s Day. Also, do not forget about our favorite holidays – Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.
So that the approach of this or that holiday does not take you by surprise, prepare a calendar of “your” days in advance. If it is difficult to do it at once, because you do not quite understand when your product is more interesting to customers, then analyze sales. Splashes will be evidence that a themed holiday is nearby.
Before the biggest holidays, visitors to online stores often browse through a lot of gift offers. During these periods, online shoppers’ behavior is significantly different from the usual behavior. Primarily because they:
- looking for feedback or gift ideas,
- do not buy for themselves,
- visit brand-new stores.
When the calendar is drawn up (and it is desirable to go through the whole year, and not be limited only to the New Year and Christmas), then you need to prepare the appropriate promotional materials: banners, postcards, texts of letters for mailing, etc. This will allow you to launch advertising campaigns quickly, consider all the nuances – and do everything on time.
Save our 2023 global eCommerce dates – you will get an excellent basis to help you plan your advertising campaigns, and sales and help increase the loyalty of your customers. If necessary, you can supplement this list of global dates with holidays that are important to you. However, with such a calendar, you will greatly facilitate your work.
Simple tips for organizing workflows
The period of holidays and sales is waiting for both buyers and sellers. But each side waits and prepares in its own way. Everyone, from small online stores to large online retailers, is trying to prepare stores for the 2023 Global eCommerce Dates and sales when there is a large influx of customers. Business owners seek to solve two related problems:
- to provide good service for customers during the period when they are especially active in ordering in online stores;
- get maximum profit through high-quality order processing, special offers, and other marketing promotions.
We will detail all the work that needs to be done before the holiday sales and seasonal outbursts of buying activity. At the same time, we remember the 2023 global eCommerce dates in order to take into account all tasks on time.
Check the site for the influx of visitors
A technically unprepared site can fail at the most inopportune moment, so it needs to be checked and eliminated in advance. We talk about it all the time, and it’s probably worth mentioning it again. What you need to pay attention to:
- Allowable load of the server on which the site is running. The influx of visitors before the holidays increases, so you should check if the hosting can handle this task.
- Page loading speed. Make sure your visitors don’t have to wait for an image or information to load. 57% of users go to competitors precisely because they had to wait. For such optimization, it is better to involve a specialist, otherwise, you can make it even worse.
- Adaptation of the site for mobile. More than 30% of users order goods from their phones, so web resource adaptation is a mandatory step.
Remember that the ready-made Shopify themes that we offer have everything you need for effective online sales, and work flawlessly. They provide fast loading of your site and will be great helpers for your online store.
Decide on marketing channels/tools and allocate the budget
The preparatory stage can be considered complete, and now it’s time to proceed directly to implementation. To do this, you need to determine which channels to use. Do not try to cover everything at once – SEO, social networks, contextual advertising, content marketing, and others. They not only differ in impact on the target audience but also vary significantly in cost. To make a choice, you need to consider the following factors:
- Features of your product. Consumer goods, clothes, perfumes, haberdashery, jewelry, and various small things are well-advertised and sold on social networks. But specialized products require a more serious approach – here it is more expedient to use blogs on thematic resources.
- Target audience and consumer portrait. It is worth using those channels where your target audience is present, otherwise, it will be shooting sparrows from a cannon. It is better, for example, to advertise on one social network, but hit the target exactly, than to scatter on a number of channels, spending only more money.
- Results of previous advertising campaigns. If you have previously hosted a placement and it was successful, then you should take into account this experience, and not look for something new.
- Available budget. All marketing channels cost differently, so their choice depends on how much money you have and what result you need to achieve. You can turn to specialists who will help you choose an inexpensive, but quite effective direction for accommodation.
If you choose several channels, it is important to properly allocate the budget in order to achieve maximum results.
Consider a marketing strategy
It is not enough to offer your product to the buyer, especially if it can be bought elsewhere. In order to compete with dignity in the pre-holiday period, you should develop a marketing activity strategy. It may include:
- Various discounts. They can be one-time, cumulative, Happy Hours, etc.
- Loyalty program. In order for the buyer to come to you again, increase sales, and develop a loyalty program.
- Gift certificates. They can be applied to the current or next purchase.
- Incentives for targeted actions. This may include, for example, the first purchase, payment by card, purchase of a kit, etc.
- Free shipping. Yes, this becomes an additional argument in favor of purchasing from you, and not from competitors.
Work on the average bill and repeat orders
In order for the pre-holiday period to be successful, it is important to work not only on increasing the number of checks but also on their average. For this you can:
- offer free shipping when a certain order amount is reached;
- form a set for which to provide a discount;
- ensure the cross-selling – sale of complementary goods;
- offer a promotion like 1+1=3 (works well for inexpensive items).
All this is possible for stores that know how to build customer loyalty. We wrote about it in more detail here.
Be aware that the increase in pre-holiday sales is temporary, but it can be used to work on repeat orders. This will allow you to grow your business, create loyalty to your online store, etc.
Stay up-to-date on international holidays
It’s never too early to start thinking about your marketing strategy for the holiday season.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the Wild West for marketers and eCommerce store owners. You must be ready for them, develop a plan, and arm yourself with data, strategy, and trend forecasts. And do it before the holiday season hits you.
You’ve come to the right place, let’s check which holidays exactly should be on your calendar.
One to two weeks before global holidays, orders can increase up to five times. Prepare for this employee of the online store. If the assortment on the site is large, and there are only two people in the state, hire assistants for this period. Perhaps you should invite another manager to have time to process orders on time, or a courier to quickly send packages.
Be sure to check the schedule of delivery services before the holidays, so as not to promise the buyer to ship the order on the 31st in the morning, and then not live up to his expectation. So let’s remember the 2023 global eCommerce dates:
– New Year’s Day
– Blue Monday
– Australia Day
– Chinese New Year
– Super Bowl Sunday
– Valentine’s Day
– International Women’s Day
– St. Patrick’s Day
– Holi Festival
– Earth Day
– Canada Day
– Independence Day (4th July, the USA)
– Bastille Day (14th July, France)
– Labor Day
– China National Day
– Diwali
– Halloween
– Thanksgiving Day
– Black Friday
– Small Business Saturday
– Cyber Monday
– Free Shipping Day
– Christmas
– New Year’s Eve
Check the stability of your site
During the holidays, the load on the site can increase several times. This also needs to be considered and prepared, especially if you have little experience in eCommerce. Save this list to make sure your site is ready for the influx of visitors.
Stability and site protection
In order for a business to confidently and profitably pass the sales season, the site must be serviceable and fast. We advise you to ensure that there are no critical vulnerabilities on the site.
DDoS attacks: what is it and how to protect yourself?
DDoS attacks are designed to overload a website, critically slow it down, or even shut it down completely. Using an abnormally high number of requests, attackers overload the server until its resources are exceeded and it fails. As a result, all visitors or part of them cannot use the site.
How to protect a website from DDoS attacks? The most reliable way is to hide the IP address or distribute the load on several servers.
Also, to protect the site from hacks and attacks, you need to:
- regularly update CMS and all plugins;
- use a vulnerability scanner;
- scan the site with antivirus.
Make sure you have the right type of hosting
Websites can be stored on shared hosting, VPS servers, or dedicated physical servers. The second and third options are suitable for large projects. Suppose you notice that under the influx of visitors to the site, the consumption of resources on your tariff is close to peak or the site has begun to “slow down”. In that case, you may have to transfer the site to a higher tariff or a more powerful hosting tariff before the start of sales.
Before the start of the sales period, double-check the terms of payment for hosting and domain, and make sure that the terms for the provision of services do not end at the most inopportune moment.
Optimize site loading speed
The site can be slow even if there are no DDoS attacks, a peak influx of users and you have powerful hosting. What is the reason?
Each situation is individual and requires a technical audit. But most often the site loading speed drops for several reasons:
1. images are not optimized (outdated file formats and too large size);
2. CMS and site plugins have not been updated for a long time;
3. the theme of the site was not updated;
4. too many plugins installed on the site, some of which can be removed;
5. many third-party scripts (analytics systems, banner code, etc.);
6. compression of HTML and CSS files is not configured.
SEO site optimization
A site before sales must comply with SEO requirements. It is also important to consider publishing thematic content (texts, visuals, landings, videos).
Done right, not only will you profit from the sale season, but your business will also get a boost to further growth, improve your reputation and gain new satisfied customers.
Update site content
When we talk about content, we mean:
- banners and visuals on the site;
- blog articles related to the holidays;
- video;
- landing pages.
The options depend on your business niche. These can be pages with special offers, gifts for the holiday, etc. For each of the URLs, you can add photos stylized for the holiday, banners, etc.
Work with social media pages
Your business pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube should match the style of the upcoming holidays. On Youtube, replace the channel banner, and release several videos thematically related to the upcoming holiday and sales.
On Facebook and Instagram, schedule your posts ahead of time. There are several Facebook and Instagram scheduling posting tools that allow you not to think about social networks during the hottest moments of sales.
Schedule a special offer mailing list
E-mail marketing remains one of the main channels of communication with the audience. It helps to retain customers, and increase ROI and average check.
Be sure to use this traffic and sales channel during holiday shopping peaks. Usually, message chains are planned in advance, taking into account the holidays. But even if you haven’t done so, you can quickly create letters with special offers and send them out to the subscription base.
Conclusions
2023 global eCommerce dates are a good opportunity to increase sales and attract new customers. But so that they do not pass by, you need to carefully prepare for the pre-holiday fuss. And this should be done as early as possible, without leaving everything for later.
Success is ensured by an integrated approach:
- timely planning;
- preparation of the site to increase traffic, adaptation of the web resource for gadgets;
- development of a marketing strategy (what, where, and when to place, how much it will cost).
Do not forget about contests, discounts, and other “goodies” that buyers love so much. With the right approach and planning, your costs will pay off by bringing in new customers.
