Cyber Monday Strategies, Trends & Sales Tips
Meaghan has provided content and guidance for indie retailers as the editor for a number of retail publications and a speaker at trade shows. She is Fit Small Business’s authority on retail and ecommerce.
This article is part of a larger series on Retail Management.
This year, online holiday sales are expected to reach a record $1.2 trillion globally. And as the pandemic shifts preferences toward online shopping, Cyber Monday is set to be bigger than Black Friday. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store and website or sell exclusively online, adopting Cyber Monday strategies is crucial for driving sales during the holiday season.
What is Cyber Monday? First promoted in 2005, Cyber Monday is the shopping holiday on the Monday after Thanksgiving, with shoppers buying exclusively online. It has grown into one of the busiest shopping days of the year, where online retailers lure shoppers with attractive price cuts and enticing deals.
Ecommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart might receive the most media coverage around Cyber Monday, but with a little planning, small retailers can implement Cyber Monday strategies for a profitable shopping holiday, too.
Here are seven top Cyber Monday strategies for improving the shopping experience and making the most of the annual shopping event:
1. Make a Great Offer for Cyber Monday
First, you need to determine which products to offer and which promotions to run. According to Deloitte’s 2020 Pre-Thanksgiving Pulse Survey, better deals and lower prices are the most compelling reasons to shop. Next, free or fast shipping along with good return options are what shoppers want.
For Cyber Monday, your best promotional strategy is offering a percentage discount or specific markdowns on particular items. Also, prioritize making life easier for shoppers—be generous in your shipping and return policies.
Shoppers are willing to search around for the best prices, with 62% saying better prices influence them to try a new store or product. In other words, small retailers can compete with larger stores by offering competitive prices.
When it comes to what products to put on sale, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Gift cards are a top holiday gift across the board, so it’s a good idea to start with a buy one, get one (BOGO) gift card offer.
Clothing is the second-most popular holiday gift item. On Cyber Monday, shoppers tend to buy holiday gifts for friends and family, but they’ll also shop for themselves. To appeal to all shoppers, offer a percentage-off deal on clothing and apparel items. If your store doesn’t normally sell apparel, stick to BOGO gift card deals and percentage discounts on your most popular product categories.
There are several different strategies for promotions and offers that any retailer can use. Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce have built-in features that make it easy to offer one or more of these promotions on your site and push them out across other online sales channels like Amazon and Facebook.
Bundle Deals
Offering bundle deals is one way of increasing your average sales total while also giving shoppers extra value. Try offering themed bundles with related items—these can also function as a mini gift guide. You could also use bundles as a way of pairing popular items with slower-moving inventory to help clear out excess and seasonal products.
Pink Moon offers a bundle deal on skincare items.
Buy-One-Get-One
BOGO or half-off deals are effective because customers can clearly understand the value they’re getting. As previously mentioned, price discounts are the most effective and popular type of sale. Like bundles, BOGO deals are an opportunity to move dated, out of season, or dead stock. Customers will be more inclined to purchase these items when they are on sale, even if they weren’t selling well at full price.
Color Camp offers a fourth manicure set for free when customers purchase three.
Free Gift with Purchase
This strategy is one way to add value without sacrificing your margins. Offer a free item either with a specific purchase amount—somewhere at or just above your average order value—or with the purchase of a specific product. The gift can be a mystery or set item or chosen from several options. The gifts need to be appealing, but it’s another way to boost sales and clear out overstock or slow-selling merchandise.
Ulta Beauty offers a free 20-piece beauty bag with $80 purchase in an email campaign.
Free Shipping
According to the 2020 Deloitte Holiday Report, 60% of shoppers say free shipping is one of the most attractive promotions. Offer free shipping on certain items or at a certain order price point, such as $25 or $35 orders. Make the threshold to qualify for free shipping at or just above your average sale. Providing free shipping at a certain order amount will help bump up potentially small orders and help make your customers happy.
Learn how to offer free shipping on your orders without sacrificing profit margins.
Spritz Society offers free shipping for orders over $60
Get the Timing Right
You could have the perfect deal lined up for your eager shoppers, but if the timing is off, they may not even see your deal in the first place. You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. This is usually when shoppers are just starting to think about festive gift buying.
Despite predictions of earlier shopping, timing remains largely unchanged, according to Deloitte. Nearly 40% expected to start 2020 shopping on Thanksgiving or later, making Cyber Monday a key shopping date.
More importantly, 60% said they prefer to shop online rather than at a physical store during the holiday season. Of shoppers planning to make purchases during major shopping events, 29% planned to shop during Cyber Monday.
Taking advantage of key shopping dates like Cyber Monday will help you get in front of more potential buyers since they’re already hunting for deals.
Create Gift Guides
We all have trouble choosing the perfect gift from time to time. Giving customers some much-needed gift inspiration can help encourage them to buy your products and make the overall purchase process a lot more hassle-free.
There are a few ways to approach gift guides. You could partner up with other local businesses and feature their products on your site in a gift guide in exchange for a feature on their site. Just make sure you’re not in direct competition and competing for an ultra-specific target audience!
You could also try and get on third-party publication gift guides. Pitch your products to them to be included in their gift guide roundups. To reach a variety of shoppers, try pitching to both local and national publications. That way you’ll have the best chance of getting products in front of customers.
Giving Assistant put together comprehensive Cyber Monday gift guides.
2. Advertise Effectively
Now that you have a great deal for Cyber Monday, it’s time to develop an effective advertising strategy. To get the results you want, shoppers need to know about your store and your Cyber Monday sale. For online shopping, there are four main advertising channels we’ll focus on:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Build a Dedicated Cyber Monday Landing Page
First, a dedicated Cyber Monday landing page shows shoppers they’re in the right place for seasonal deals. Next, it converts them into customers.
A landing page is a single web page created to be linked to digital adverts like Google Ads or a Facebook ad campaign. They reduce normal website noise, including menus, contact forms, or other call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and simply offer one clear CTA that results in higher conversion rates than other webpages.
You need to build a slick-looking and on-brand landing page that pushes shoppers to purchase from your store. The key is to choose the right landing page platform for your business, writing catchy copy, defining a clear goal, and picking a compelling CTA.
SEO Cyber Monday Strategies
Online search is the No. 1 place holiday shoppers look for gift-giving inspiration—57% of shoppers plan on doing most of their shopping online.
The bad news is, as a small retailer, it’s harder to appear higher in the results of a Google search than large retailers like Target or Walmart, particularly if a shopper just searches for a generic term like “leggings.”
The good news is you can make your store more visible in online search by adding products to marketplaces—the top online marketplaces in the world sold over $2.6 trillion in 2020, around 62% of global web sales, according to Digital Commerce 360’s analysis.
Some of these marketplaces include:
- Google Shopping: Create a Google Shopping listing to appear on Google search results and under the Shopping tab.
- Amazon: Having an Amazon seller site is a good way to boost brand visibility.
- Etsy: Etsy appears high on search results for gifts and is a popular shopping site for unique items.
- Handshake: A wholesale marketplace, this site is best for unique non-mass-produced products.
- The Grommet: This site specializes in gifts and unique items from independent businesses.
- Bonanza: This is a newer buy-and-sell website that’s a popular eBay alternative.
- Walmart Independent: Sellers can register to sell on the Walmart website.
- Uncommon Goods: Submit your products for approval on this popular gift site.
With Shopify, businesses can manage their Google Shopping listings and Google Ads campaigns directly from their Shopify Dashboard.
Whether or not you choose to sell on third-party sites, you should optimize your own site’s SEO. If you use Shopify or BigCommerce to run your business, they have built-in tools and tutorials to help you. There are also many free and paid plugins you can add.
Start by:
- Better incorporating keywords across your site
- Adding alt text to images
- Building out your product descriptions
- Adding metadata
Here are a few additional tips for improving your ecommerce site’s SEO:
- Convert your site to HTTPS: Google favors secure sites, and so do shoppers, so this move is an easy win-win.
- Have a mobile-first website design: This will make your site more favorable to Google and shoppers; $1 out of every $5 spent this holiday season will be on mobile.
- Reevaluate your site layout: The overall structure and navigation system for your site should be easy to use and intuitive for your shoppers and Google.
- Create more content: Help build authority for your site by writing content like blog posts.
- Track your progress: Use a tool like Google Analytics to track and analyze your site data like page visits.
Cyber Monday Strategies for Facebook Advertising
Hopefully, you already have an active Facebook business page for your retail store. It takes no more than 15 minutes to set up—if you haven’t already, you can create one now. Once you have your Facebook business page, you can sell items directly through Facebook. This is a smart idea because it eliminates the friction of having to leave the social media site for another website to make a purchase.
Before running a paid ad campaign, the first step is to create regular posts to schedule throughout the week leading up to Cyber Monday. Facebook video posts receive a higher click-through rate (CTR) than other post types.
So feel free to make a video showcasing your products and deals. To liven up regular in-feed image posts, you could use a free tool like Canva to create professional-looking on-brand posts. To save time and ensure you’re targeting your audience at the right time, schedule the posts directly through Facebook.
Once your page and regular posts are set up, the final step is to advertise. Facebook is a powerful advertising tool, especially for small businesses. It offers an even playing field between big and small retailers for reaching a targeted audience for a relatively small investment.
There are several different ways to advertise on Facebook. You can boost a post or create an ad campaign. Often, the most effective strategy is creating a specific Cyber Monday ad campaign using Facebook Pixel. Pixel helps retarget people that have clicked on your ads or visited your website so that your Facebook campaigns are shown to people who have demonstrated interest.
Facebook Ads Manager lets businesses create ads targeted to specific audiences to increase conversions and store traffic.
Cyber Monday Instagram Strategies
Take advantage of visual social media platform Instagram to showcase your products in their best light. Like Facebook, Instagram is also shoppable, making it a great place to convert followers into shoppers. The first step to start selling on Instagram is to make sure you have an Instagram Business account. Next, create shoppable posts that promote your products and any deals you’re running.
You’ll need to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook account and create a product catalog or connect it to an existing online store.
The final step is to create an advertising campaign. Since Facebook owns Instagram, you create Instagram ads under your Facebook Business Page. Alternatively, if you are using an ecommerce platform like Shopify, you can manage your ads and product catalogs directly through your Shopify dashboard.
Cyber Monday Strategies for Email Marketing
Email marketing isn’t a new advertising method, but it’s still one of the most effective marketing tools for online businesses. In fact, according to Litmus email software, email campaigns generate $36 for every $1 spent on a campaign, higher than any other channel.
The key to email marketing for retailers is to personalize your campaigns to different audience segments—marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. Another study found that a segmented email campaign can get open rates as high as 94% and CTRs of 38%.
Many national brands send out their Cyber Monday promotions on the day itself. But attempting this strategy runs the risk of getting drowned out in a sea of other promotions. Get in first and send out your promotions the night before. You can then create an email sequence and send out a reminder later in the day.
Cyber Monday promotions aren’t exclusively for traditional retailers. Grocery stores, fitness studios, and more can capitalize on the shopping momentum with promotional emails.
An effective strategy for email marketing is to promote a specific deal or product in the email. Then, have the email link to a landing page that is specific to your deal. This helps streamline purchases and make the process easier for shoppers, especially for mobile users.
3. Provide a Great Experience
So you’ve attracted shoppers to your site with targeted advertising campaigns and irresistible promotional offers. What’s next? You need to make sure you’re providing shoppers with an easy-to-use, enjoyable and frictionless shopping experience. After all, you don’t want shoppers to lose interest the moment they land on your site.
There are a few simple steps you can take to drastically improve your site’s user experience.
Offer Price Comparison
According to Deloitte, 53% of shoppers prefer online stores over physical ones simply because it’s easy to compare prices.
Make life easy for customers by comparing prices and deals across your site. To take it up a notch, you could even compare industry-wide prices to show how your brand is offering the best value deals on top-quality products.
When shoppers understand your value and feel that your business has their best interests at heart, they’ll be much more likely to make a purchase with you.
Did You Know? Adobe found that consumers spent $34.4 billion during 2020’s Cyber Week, representing a 20.7% year-over-year increase.
Optimize for Mobile
Social media continues to drive more sales. Over the 2020 Thanksgiving weekend, social media drove one out of 10 visits to retail websites, a 17% increase from 2019, Adobe reported. An increasing number of shoppers are also using mobile to make purchases. In 2020, in-store mobile payment usage grew by 29% in the US.
Since many people like to browse from their phones, it’s worth optimizing your site for mobile to provide that seamless shopping experience.
If you’re using one of the major ecommerce platforms, all of the website themes should already be fully responsive for mobile and have a built-in mobile shopping cart.
All Shopify themes are automatically optimized for mobile, so there is no extra work needed.
Prepare for Excess Traffic
If you promote deals, you can expect a spike in traffic on Cyber Monday. And the last thing you want is to lose sales or have frustrated customers because your site crashes.
Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce run on systems that quickly respond and adjust to traffic demands. To be safe no matter what platform you use, though, contact your provider and ask for flexible bandwidth so your site can handle any traffic spikes.
Put Deals Front & Center
Shoppers click on your ads to buy the specific deals you are promoting. Don’t make them hunt for your promotions once they’re on your site—they may quickly lose interest and head to a competitor. Put your Cyber Monday promotions front and center on your homepage and along top and side banners throughout your site. It’s best to create a landing page for each promotional offer or ad campaign too. That way, you’ll increase your chance of conversions and you can better track campaigns.
Play Up Your Reviews
When considering a new business, 91% of people think reviews are important enough to sway their purchasing decision. Shoppers want to see reviews before making a purchase. Having them on your site allows shoppers to see past customers’ positive opinions of your brand; it also reduces the chance of shoppers going elsewhere to check reviews and possibly purchasing from a competitor instead of your store.
Instead of scrambling to get additional online reviews before Cyber Monday, make the most out of ones you currently have. Don’t be afraid to label a specific item as a “five-star product” if it does have five-star reviews. Put positive reviews and testimonials right in your product description for promotional items.
If you have reviews on Amazon, Google, Facebook, or even an active Instagram following, use a plugin to display those comments right on your website.
Good Notes displays customer reviews to help shoppers purchase with more confidence.
Consider Adding a Chatbot Service
Adding a chatbot to your website helps ensure every visitor receives assistance, no matter how swamped your in-house employees are. Chatbots can improve customer service by quickly pointing users to relevant products and company policies. You can also set them up to answer basic questions around shipping or product specs.
One way to quickly add this service to your business is to add a WordPress chat plugin. The key is to choose one that matches your goals, whether providing more support, driving sales, or handling live chat from multiple platforms.
Gem has an easy-to-use chatbot for customers to ask questions.
Upgrade Your Customer Service
Businesses expect a surge in demand and website traffic on Cyber Monday. But they can also expect an increase in customer service requests too.
Customers might want to know more about your product specifics or your returns policy. You’ll need to prep your team with helpful customer service strategies.
You may need to update your refund and returns policy or change delivery timelines for Cyber Monday, so make sure your customer service team is filled in on any changes. If your team needs some inspiration on what to say to customers for different inquiry types, try giving them customer service email templates they can use to build out their responses.
Given the uptick in inquiries, it’s a good idea to increase the number of staff on shift to effectively handle customer demand. If you haven’t already, you might want to implement a CRM to store customer data and provide a central platform to manage and resolve queries more quickly.
Throw in Complimentary Gift Wrapping
Make that delivery extra special by wrapping it in free gift wrapping. If the purchaser has bought the gift for themselves, they’ll love the feeling of getting a gift in the post. Or, if the item is a gift for someone else, you’ll save them the job of having to wrap it themselves.
Choose a visual wrapping paper that matches your branding, but don’t go too commercial and simply include your logo. You want to dress up the item to make it look like a gift from your brand to the purchaser. Go one step further and personalize it with a gift tag with the buyer’s name on it.
Extend Your Store Hours
While Cyber Monday is an online shopping event, some shoppers may see your online promotions and want to see your products in person before making a purchase.
For that reason, it’s a good idea to extend your store hours and ensure you have enough staff members on duty to help customers in person.
Try extending your store hours by a couple of hours in the morning and the evening to give shoppers plenty of opportunities to see your products. You may want to extend your hours throughout the following week too for those shoppers who missed out on a deal.
4. Create a Contactless Experience
Shoppers are conscious of the pandemic, and more than half of holiday shoppers feel anxious about shopping in-store according to Deloitte. As a result, they’re shifting their shopping habits to avoid in-person contact.
Contactless shopping experiences are in demand as 73% of shoppers planned to have items delivered in 2020 vs 62% in 2019. Shoppers’ preference for curbside pickup has more than doubled year over year too. Online retailers (62%) and mass merchants (50%) are the top holiday destinations as shoppers pull back from browsing formats.
Embrace shoppers’ preferences and make the shopping experience as comfortable as possible—and make sure to promote that alongside your deals and offers, so interested shoppers will know for sure they can pay in a safe way that suits them.
When selecting a retailer, having various delivery methods is very or extremely important to 52% of shoppers—with 46% preferring contactless delivery like BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), curbside pickup, or click and collect.
Engage with customers’ preferences by offering them a variety of different delivery options. By embracing options like click and collect, you’ll show customers you’re willing to make life easier for them and go the extra mile.
Learn how to set up click and collect for your store.
Pzaz shows customers where they can pick up the product in New York
Given people prefer to avoid in-person contact, it’s important to offer contactless pay. Cyber Monday is an online event, so contactless payment is a given; however, if you’re also offering some in-store promotions, make sure you have several contactless or NFC payment options like Apple Pay and contactless bank cards.
A Good Company clearly displays their payment options.
5. Close the Sale & Prevent Cart Abandonment
Getting customers on your site and clicking “Add to Cart” is only half the battle. On average, 88% of online retail orders are abandoned altogether. And Cyber Monday cart abandonment rates are only slightly lower at 80.6%.
Here are a few strategies for reducing cart abandonment rates on Cyber Monday:
Clarify Promotional Pricing
About a quarter of shoppers abandon a cart if they can’t calculate the order total upfront, while 49% of shoppers, according to Baymard, abandon carts because of high or unexpected fees such as taxes or shipping.
To prevent customers from losing interest because of unexpected costs, be specific with your pricing language. That way you eliminate the risk of misinterpretation or shoppers getting frustrated and leaving their order.
Ask yourself, “Is the sale price reflected on the page? Or, will it appear once they add the item to the shopping cart?” Either way, state the facts next to the product’s price.
Offer a running total that shoppers can see when they hover over the cart icon. If customers can track costs as they shop, they won’t be surprised at the end.
Example of a clearly labeled 40% off promotion from Express
Offer Multiple Payment Options
Baymard’s 2021 survey indicates more than 15% of shoppers abandon their cart if they don’t trust the site with their credit card information, while another 7% will abandon it if there are too few payment options.
In addition to accepting all major credit cards, accept PayPal and Apple Pay too. That way customers don’t have to enter their credit card information if they prefer not to.
Be Transparent With Shipping
About 20% of shoppers abandon carts because delivery options are too slow. Be sure to offer a wide variety of shipping: ground shipping, two-day shipping, and overnight shipping with clearly labeled pricing for each.
Even if the faster shipping options are more expensive, it’s better to have them as an option rather than risk losing a sale. Also, be sure to provide estimated arrival dates or at least timetables for when shoppers can expect their order to arrive.
Beauty Pie makes it easy for customers to see when they can expect their order.
Related: FedEx vs UPS vs USPS: Which carrier is best for small businesses?
Offer Buy Online, Pick Up in Store
During the last six months, BOPIS has evolved from primarily a safety concern into a preference for convenience, with Deloitte reporting that 33% of shoppers use it as a cheaper delivery alternative and 29% use it as a faster delivery alternative.
BOPIS is a win-win for customers and retailers, as customers can receive their items same-day, and retailers save on the expense and hassle of shipping. Plus, many shoppers purchase additional items when they’re picking up their online orders.
Shopify has plugins to enable BOPIS or click and collect orders on your online store
Establish a Clear & Flexible Return Policy
Baymard’s survey reveals 11% of shoppers abandon carts because of an unsatisfactory return policy. This number is likely even higher during the holiday season when items are being purchased as gifts. You need to have a clearly stated return policy so that shoppers know what to expect. Include the return policy on your checkout screen and in all digital receipts.
It’s worth considering a more lenient policy for the holiday season. If shoppers are buying Christmas gifts on Cyber Monday, the recipient won’t even be given the gift until almost 30 days later. Offer at least a 60-day window to ease shoppers’ minds and minimize customer service issues.
Lusso Cloud makes it easy to start returns directly on their site.
Minimize the Number of Clicks to Purchase
About a quarter of shoppers will abandon a cart if they are required to make an account to complete the purchase. While collecting customer data and contact info are valuable, you don’t want it to be at the expense of sales. Give time-pressed shoppers the option to create an account or checkout as a guest.
Every screen a shopper has to click through is an additional opportunity for them to drop the sale, especially if the customer is shopping on mobile. Having one-click payment options like PayPal and Apple Pay helps streamline the payment process. For customers who do enter their credit card information, have the option to save their information for future payments so it’s easy to purchase again.
Retarget Lost Customers
If someone does abandon their cart, all isn’t lost. Instead of giving up, try to win back lost customers with email marketing.
Many major ecommerce platforms like Shopify have features that automatically send out emails to lost customers with links back to their abandoned cart. As time runs out, consumers often rush to take advantage of Cyber Monday sales.
Think about setting up retargeting email sequences to arrive toward the end of the day. That way you’ll capitalize on those last-minute converters.
Lorna Jane sends personalized emails containing cart items to encourage people to purchase.
6. Earn a Lifelong Customer
Cyber Monday is a great opportunity to get in front of new customers. Ideally, these customers will continue to buy from you long after the holidays are over.
Since existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, when compared to new customers, it’s worth hanging onto previous customers.
Even if you manage to just hang on to a few of your Cyber Monday customers, the results in time will be well worth the effort.
Here are a few Cyber Monday Strategies to increase customer retention:
Provide Accessible & Responsive Customer Service
Roughly 50% of customers say they would switch to a new brand after one bad customer service experience. Having top-notch customer service is vital, especially for small online businesses where customers don’t see you in person, and you don’t have the credibility of a large brand to stand behind.
Providing great service will help humanize your business and make it more trustworthy. Above all, just be open, honest, and responsive to customers. Most customers (93%) are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service.
Here are some top quick tips for providing great online customer service:
- Be accessible: Have a phone number on your website with real people answering calls.
- Be personable: Have an “About Us” section of your website so shoppers can see the human side of your business.
- Be responsive: Take no longer than one day to answer emails; ideally, answer all customer emails within a few hours.
- Be social: Use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to connect with customers.
- Be clear: Send confirmation emails after shoppers make a purchase detailing their items, costs, and expected delivery date.
- Be thorough: Send another email once the order ships; alerting customers during each step of the process adds transparency and helps build trust.
Collect Contact Information for Future Campaigns
Keeping in touch with customers allows you to inform them of new products, promotions, or other news they might be interested in.
Most online stores have some type of box or form for customers to sign up for a newsletter. Change up your email sign-up verbiage so that it’s more exciting than “Sign up for our newsletter.” Try something like “Like what you see? Get more great deals year-round.”
Oat Haus offers 10% off to newsletter subscribers.
Then, of course, follow through with your promise of great deals by sending out emails with additional holiday sales and new year promotions.
7. Prepare for Next Year
Hopefully, by following all of these tips, you’ll experience record-breaking Cyber Monday sales. But, believe it or not, once the holiday season is over, it’s already time to start planning for next year. You can never prepare too early. And starting preparations early will get you ahead of the competition.
Here are some Cyber Monday strategies to prepare for 2022:
Beef Up Your Social Media Presence
Take the same concepts you used to create your Cyber Monday sales posts and use them to showcase your products year-round. By scheduling your social media posts ahead of time, you can keep an active page by just investing a few hours a week. More followers on social media equal more eyeballs for your Cyber Monday promotions. So, work on building followers throughout the year so that next year’s promotions have an even greater impact.
Take High-Quality Product Photos
Brick-and-mortar stores have the advantage of letting customers feel and test products in person before making a purchase. For online sellers, your product page and photos are all you have to work with. Give shoppers a clear idea of your products and ease any concerns by having high-quality photos that highlight products individually and lifestyle shots that show your products in action.
- Give multiple perspectives: Make sure to offer pictures of all angles of each product so there is nothing left to the imagination and customers aren’t surprised when their order shows up.
- Showcase different sizes: If you sell apparel, which has notoriously high return rates, take pictures of models wearing different sizes so shoppers can get a better sense of how the item will fit.
- Lighting matters: Bright white lighting will help showcase the product accurately.
Check out our guide to DIY product photography and tips to take your product photos to the next level.
Huey uses clear and bright photos to display their products.
Gather More Reviews
Online reviews are social proof and help build trust among consumers. Nearly 80% of consumers say they trust the reviews they read online as much as personal recommendations.
Reviews also help shoppers understand what makes your product or service stand out from the competition.
Your website needs genuine reviews to show customers that what you’re selling is worth their money, whether they are buying something for themselves or a gift for someone else.
Noodie displays positive customer reviews across their site.
Here are a few tips to get more customer reviews:
- Offer an incentive like loyalty points or discount coupons to current customers who write reviews; Adagio Teas, for example, rewards customers with five loyalty points for each review written, and it has helped them generate hundreds of reviews per product.
- You can also offer raffle entries to customers who leave product reviews; prizes may include gift certificates or bestselling items in your store.
- Use a customer loyalty program like Podium that makes it easy for employees to ask customers to leave reviews.
Cyber Monday Sales Trends
As you review our seven tips and plan your Cyber Monday strategies, keep in mind recent trends that can inform your decisions.
Every year since 2009, Cyber Monday sales have steadily increased on both mobile and desktop devices. Plus, the general trend toward online purchases has been accelerated as a result of COVID-19 restrictions and general pandemic anxiety.
- According to the 2020 Deloitte survey, 74% of consumers planned to shop online during the Thanksgiving period to avoid crowds, with up to 57% planning to avoid shopping in-store altogether.
- Adobe reported that Cyber Monday 2020, which generated $10.8 billion in sales, was the biggest online shopping day in US history.
Additionally, like its sister shopping holiday Black Friday, Cyber Monday is increasingly expanding beyond just a single day. Some retailers, particularly those with both brick-and-mortar and ecommerce operations, are effectively merging the two events into one long sale. For other online retailers, Cyber Monday is evolving into a weeklong sales event, known as Cyber Week.
Whether you’re an online business or a brick-and-mortar store with a shoppable website, taking advantage of the shopping momentum on Cyber Monday, should help boost your business.
Bottom Line
Standing out from the crowd on Cyber Monday isn’t always easy. You need to have clear Cyber Monday strategies and make your offers irresistible to your target audience. Effective advertising, compelling deals, and a smooth shopping experience are all essential components of a successful Cyber Monday. Approach Cyber Monday with a step-by-step strategic approach and see what results you can drive.
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