For eCommerce companies, the holidays are the most important time of the year. Black Friday and Christmas sales may account for a considerable portion of your annual revenue. In this blog, we’ve compiled the top 7 must-have eCommerce tool options to make your business step up the game now.
But first, why are technological eCommerce tools important for the holiday seasons?
Overview
The importance of eCommerce tools
Holiday seasons are when most businesses have to handle a large increase in the number of customers. It is because of the high shopping demand (such as for Christmas) or thanks to some promotional offers. Facing such a large number of clients, many businesses have now made use of online platforms to reach more audiences and share massive orders with physical store locations.
In this expansion, technological tools for eCommerce play a very important role. Besides handling heavy traffic, these tools can also minimize errors and help store owners to track data more efficiently.
Top 7 eCommerce tools for holidays
Point of sale system
The moment when customers pay for products or services at your shop is called a point of sale (POS). By definition, a POS system acts as a central center for all of your company’s transactions. However, modern POS software can perform much more than that.
It gives you more control over your company’s activities. With POS, you can see exactly which items you’ve sold on a daily or monthly basis, how many products are in the warehouse, and how much money you’ve made using a POS system. Moreover, a POS system can also make it simpler to keep track of inventory, observe and analyze movements and trends in sales operations. They can thus evaluate sales reports to better forecast future trends and your company’s needs. During holiday seasons, a unified system like this can help retailers to save time and labor costs, while minimizing inaccurate information.
A good example of POS is ConnectPOS, a leading point of sale system that specializes in the omnichannel experience. If you want to step up the same in the upcoming holiday season, don’t hesitate to explore the 14-day trial with ConnectPOS.
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Inventory management tool
Managing inventory is difficult at any point in the business cycle. It can get much more difficult during the holiday season, when most stores encounter rising demands for a variety of goods and services. This is when inventory-based businesses need inventory management tools to make sure a smooth-running operation. A powerful inventory management tool can assist you to figure out what will sell, how much stock you’ll need, and what seasonal sales goals to set.
This eCommerce tool is even more important for multi-store businesses, when inventory data needs to be real-time synced across different locations. Multi-source inventory tools such as MSI by ConnectPOS can be a good solution for this requirement.
CRM tool
As manifested in its name, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools strengthen the relationship between businesses and their clients. This eCommerce tool allows you to keep track of customer and prospect contact information, discover sales possibilities, track service issues, and manage marketing campaigns all in one place. In general, it makes information about every customer interaction available to everyone who needs it at your organization.
As an eCommerce business owner, it’s crucial to focus not just on conversion rates and return costs, but also on properly managing the customer list gathered from each campaign and using it for follow-up customer communication. For example, if a client purchases a seasonal service for Christmas, you can learn about their preferences. After that, you can share personalized product information with them based on their past buying history when a new product is released.
Email marketing tool
When preparing for the holiday marketing efforts, you can alert your existing customers using mailing tools and build an early-bird section for loyal consumers. Furthermore, holiday is a perfect time to provide personalized messages to consumers. In fact, 61% of SMBs indicate that repeat clients account for more than half of their revenue. This not only enhances the brand’s image and boosts consumer loyalty, but it also gives the marketing campaign free exposure to potential customers.
If you are looking for a powerful email marketing tool, here is another tip. If you run your business on an eCommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce, you should look into using a newsletter solution that has native app/plugin integration for better compatibility and ease.
Traffic tracking tool
Another eCommerce tool for the holiday season is traffic tracking tools, such as Google Analytics and SimilarWeb. In addition to newsletters, retailers need to learn about potential consumers’ traffic sources and focus our communication efforts on the top-ranking traffic sources. Holidays are also the time when people have more free time – they probably go online more often. Assuming that Instagram and organic traffic are the primary sources of traffic, you can publish regularly on Instagram while simultaneously improving keyword management on the official website. This can help you explore new terms and attract more prospective visitors during the holiday season.
Advertising tool
Advertising tools (such as Facebook Ads or Google Ads) can also be beneficial for eCommerce businesses during the holiday season. Let’s take Google Ads as an example. It assists you in reaching your ideal potential shopper for your eCommerce organization when they are actively searching for exactly what you have to offer. Your advertisements will be put on the top, bottom, or side of search pages, in YouTube videos, and on other niche-relevant material on websites all over the web. This happens after you bid on keywords or phrases (search terms), depending on the type of campaign you choose.
Advertising tools like this can significantly improve your brand’s visibility among niche customers. Those who look for Christmas decorations, for example, will come across your ads, which can increase the chances that they will become your real customers.
Loyalty management tool
An eCommerce loyalty program is a customer retention strategy designed to maintain and engage your existing consumers. As a result, they will buy more, shop more frequently, and connect with your brand regularly. The best programs will have to be simple to comprehend, provide a clear roadmap to higher tiers and incentives, and are enjoyable to participate in.
Holiday seasons are a time when people tend to shop more as a preparation for their breaks. Therefore, implementing a loyalty management tool can be a wise move to encourage customers to buy more. Nowadays, these tools often act as extensions to POS solutions, such as ConnectPOS which can be integrated with a Reward Points System of your choice.
Conclusion
Setting the objective of “growing sales” is vital, and indeed a nice way to start is considering which eCommerce tool you should use to support your business’ operation during the holiday season.
We’ll keep sharing the eCommerce trend and provide new business ideas to help your online business become more outstanding. Meanwhile, if you are interested in ConnectPOS, don’t hesitate to let us know, so that we can answer all of your questions!