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BFCM 2024: How E-commerce Businesses Can Prepare for Success

Sashank Ravindranath — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 14:01:38 +0000

Just like how the Super Bowl is a day for sports enthusiasts or the re-release of a famous franchise movie is a treat for the fans, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a tailor-made event for e-commerce businesses to boost revenue, attract new customers, and build brand loyalty.

As BFCM 2024 approaches in less than two months, it’s time for you to be well-prepared to capitalize on the opportunities and stand out from the competition. To help you do that, we’ve come up with this BFCM special where we’ll explore preparation strategies and provide tips for a successful 2024 season, using insights from previous years and evolving trends.

What is BFCM and Why is it Special for E-commerce Businesses?

BFCM is a two–way street, customers have been following the tradition of shopping more than usual for Thanksgiving gifts from the brick-and-mortar days, and with the rise of e-commerce, customers who wanted to get their shopping done ASAP to prevent their favorite products from going out of stock, began shopping for Christmas right at the end of Thanksgiving. Businesses too saw this as an opportunity to spur them to spend more via sweet deals.

Technically BFCM is just Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Friday and Monday following Thursday’s Thanksgiving). However, in the recent past, due to increased shopping sprees and businesses’ efforts to capture more sales, BFCM has become much more than just two days of deals and is now Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Businesses Saturday, and Cyber Monday, also dubbed as the Thanksgiving Weekend or Cyber Five.

There’s usually high demand for items such as toys, home furnishings, mattresses, and apparel on Black Friday. At the same time, Cyber Monday is known for low prices on tech-related merchandise, like smartphones, laptops, TVs, gaming consoles, and VR devices.

BFCM also marks the unofficial start of the peak holiday shopping season, where you have to come up with effective strategies to increase sales and prevent issues that might affect your goals.

Why BFCM stands out for e-commerce businesses

Largest shopping event of the year – BFCM has evolved into the biggest shopping event, generating billions of dollars in sales over a few days. Consumers actively seek deals, and businesses see record-breaking sales, often surpassing the entire quarter.
High customer acquisition potential – BFCM is synonymous with deep discounts and exclusive offers. Shoppers expect lucrative deals and are prepared to make more and more purchases during this time. For you, this is a prime time to reach a broader audience and acquire new customers.
Increase sales revenue – For many e-commerce businesses, BFCM accounts for a large portion of their annual sales. Some businesses say as much as 20-30% of their annual sales volume is generated during this short period. This makes it a crucial event for you to maximize revenue and meet your sales goals.
Boost brand awareness – With customers actively looking for deals, BFCM creates the opportunity for you to dramatically boost your brand’s visibility by running well-targeted marketing campaigns and increasing your share of voice in a competitive market.
Increased customer retention opportunities – If your retention game is as strong as your acquisition, then BFCM is the best time to build long-term relationships (through exceptional post-purchase experiences) and convert one-time holiday shoppers into repeat customers.

In summary, BFCM is special because it is a short window of opportunity to access a large pool of potential customers and set the tone for long-term business growth. It’s a crucial moment, where you need to capitalize on consumer demand and cement your presence in a crowded marketplace.

Key Preparation Strategies for BFCM 2024

Here are some tips and tricks for you to make the best out of BFCM 2024:

1. Start early: create buzz and build anticipation

The BFCM hype doesn’t start on the day — it builds over weeks or even months. Most customers have their top pick of purchase in mind as early as July while looking for the best deal to get them. If you’d like to make the most of this, you should begin teasing deals and promotions to build excitement. For starters, you can offer early access deals to create a sense of urgency or exclusive offers for loyal customers.

64% of consumers surveyed plan to take advantage of early promotions and discounts.

2. Optimize your website for traffic surges

BFCM attracts a massive influx of visitors, so it’s essential to ensure your website can handle the increased traffic without crashing or slowing down. Test your website’s performance and optimize page speed. Also, make sure that your store offers the same level of seamless experience on both desktop and mobile, as a large portion of BFCM shopping happens on mobile devices.

In 2023, a record 79% of Cyber Week e-commerce traffic originated from mobile phones.

3. Fine-tune your inventory and delivery processes

One of the worst things that can happen during BFCM is running out of stock or delayed orders. To avoid this, plan your inventory well in advance by analyzing data such as last year’s sales data and anticipated demand or predictions based on carrier delay rates. You can also consider strengthening your supply chain by coordinating with suppliers to have an accurate inventory or shipping with multiple carriers to ensure on-time deliveries.

4. Offer competitive promotions and deals

Discounts are the main attraction during BFCM, everybody’s doing it. So, how can you do things differently to beat the competition? The answer: think beyond basic percentage cuts. Offer bundles, free shipping, and limited-time flash sales to entice customers. A good ploy is to implement tiered discounts to increase the average order value, such as “Spend $100, save 20%.”

With the checklist or ‘must-haves’ for BFCM covered, we’ll move on to the next section: the list of items that will be the ‘talk of the town’ for this year’s BFCM.

E-commerce Trends for BFCM 2024

As mentioned, for e-commerce businesses, BFCM is a golden opportunity to boost sales and acquire new customers. It’s that time of the year when people have their wallets readily open.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of innovative trends and campaigns driving sales. Let’s look at some unique strategies that e-commerce brands must incorporate to stand out during BFCM 2024.

1. Personalization will be at the forefront

In 2024, customers expect more personalized shopping experiences. AI-powered personalization tools have become more accessible, allowing e-commerce businesses to tailor product recommendations and promotions based on individual customer behavior. By using data from previous interactions based on customer preferences or shopping history, you can create highly targeted email campaigns, show personalized offers on their website, and offer custom discount codes.

2. Omnichannel shopping experience

With shoppers engaging across multiple platforms (websites, apps, social media, and even physical stores), providing a seamless omnichannel experience is paramount. You need to leverage tools that unify customer data across channels and allow you to offer consistent and personalized experiences, regardless of how customers engage. For instance, promotions or items added to a cart on social media should sync with the e-commerce website or app for a smoother shopping journey.

3. Video commerce and live-streaming shopping

Video commerce has been on the rise, with platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube enabling brands to showcase their products through short-form videos or live shopping events. Integrating shoppable video content or hosting livestream events with exclusive BFCM deals and real-time discounts can help create a sense of urgency.

4. Social commerce

Social commerce has continued to grow in 2024, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook offering native shopping features. Brands should focus on creating direct shopping experiences within social platforms, making it easier for customers to purchase products without leaving the app. Using BFCM-specific hashtags, promoting exclusive deals, and leveraging user-generated content are some strategies that can enhance your reach and boost conversions.

Over 73% of people actively shop on social media for Black Friday in 2024.

5. Influencer and affiliate partnerships

In 2024, influencer and affiliate marketing remain powerful channels for BFCM promotions. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand allows you to tap into their engaged audiences, while affiliate programs can amplify your reach. Both approaches can help you reach new customers who might not have discovered your brand through traditional advertising.

Most businesses who give their all to implement the aforementioned strategies miss out on putting the same effort to optimize their post-purchase. One of the primary reasons behind this disparity is that businesses often assume that a BFCM sale ends with the customer’s purchase. While that’s partly true, your after-sale efforts such as offering a seamless post-purchase experience can improve repeat purchases and turn one-time BFCM shoppers into regular customers.

Here are some strategies to optimize your post-purchase right on time for this year’s BFCM.

Post-Purchase Strategies for BFCM 2024 Success

1.Handle WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries in advance

The surge in orders during BFCM inevitably leads to an increase in customer inquiries around order status. Implementing proactive communication with customers about their order status can drastically reduce these WISMO inquiries and improve customer satisfaction. For starters, you can automate shipping updates through email or SMS by using real-time tracking tools to keep customers informed of their orders at all times.

2. Automate post-purchase customer service for delivery issues

Delivery issues are frequent during times like BFCM due to high shipping volumes. In order to minimize their effect, you need to stay on top of them instead of relying on the carrier to take action. You can make use of automation to enable proactive customer service — such as notifying customers of potential delays. This can help prevent your support reps from getting overwhelmed while reducing frustrations by providing your customers with immediate assistance.

3. Ensure a seamless returns process

With higher order volumes comes the likelihood of more returns. Offering a clear, easy-to-navigate returns process can encourage hesitant customers to buy with confidence, knowing they can return or exchange items if necessary. Also, customers might already feel frustrated having to return their holiday purchases. So, make returns as easy as possible to mitigate their dissonance. Here’s how you can do it — provide a self-service returns portal that automates the entire process to streamline the experience.

4. Create loyalty programs and VIP access

Customer loyalty has become a top priority in 2024, and leveraging exclusive VIP programs or early access for your most loyal customers can significantly boost sales during BFCM. Offering special deals to existing customers before BFCM begins, along with reward points or exclusive perks, helps strengthen customer relationships and encourages repeat purchases. Additionally, VIP access can create a sense of exclusivity, driving early sales.

Think you’ve got it all figured out? We’ve got more. Here are some last-minute tips and tricks that can help you with your whole BFCM strategy.

Last-Minute Tips to Maximize BFCM 2024 Sales

Leverage Social Proof: Showcase customer reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content across your website and social platforms to build trust with new shoppers.
Ramp Up Customer Support: Prepare your customer support team for increased inquiries by adding extra hands or using automated tools to handle common questions. Ensure live chat options are readily available for quick assistance.
Abandoned Cart Recovery: Set up email reminders or retargeting ads for customers who leave items in their carts. Use incentives like free shipping or additional discounts to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Use Countdown Timers: Add urgency to your offers with countdown timers for flash sales, limited-time deals, or when stock is running low. This drives conversions and reduces cart abandonment.

BFCM can be one of the most profitable weekends you can have if you have the proper strategies in place. If the customer is impressed with your BFCM, if the customer is comfortable with the BFCM experience, they might revisit your website to buy something else for the holidays.

In the moments leading up to BFCM 2024, take a deep breath and trust in your thorough preparation. The potential for growth and success is significant, and your dedication to serving your customers and delivering value will be the foundation of your achievements.

Here’s to a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday, filled with joy, growth, and memorable customer experiences.

Happy Holidays!

The post BFCM 2024: How E-commerce Businesses Can Prepare for Success appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

E-Commerce Post-Purchase CX Playbook For The Up-And-Coming Holiday Season

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 15:05:20 +0000

The Post-purchase CX Mandate

Knowing what’s coming and staying ahead of delivery and return-related issues is key to perfecting post-purchase.

However, e-commerce post-purchase issues are nothing out of the ordinary, especially during times like the Holiday Season. The impact they bring is catastrophic — wrecking customer experience, straining customer support teams, and ultimately threatening profit margins.

Regardless of who the shipping partner is, a leading carrier or a 3PL, some hard truths that you deal with are.

E-commerce post-purchase is a missed opportunity in the current state

The ‘post-purchase customer experience (CX)’ is an integral but often overlooked function in any e-commerce business. When done right, it has the potential to ensure your customers have a hassle-free ‘order delivery’ and ‘return’ experience. In the long run, this can help you boost customer loyalty, efficiency, as well as profits.

That said, let’s see why post-purchase is a huge missed opportunity for most businesses out there.

Up to 20% of shipments face issues such as late delivery, attempted-failed delivery, lost or damaged in transit
30% of customer support team’s time and effort is wasted handling repetitive delivery and return related inquiries
12% of revenue is lost because businesses don’t encourage repeat purchases during order and return tracking moments
35% of all products purchased online are returned

The link between Post-Purchase CX and Customer Loyalty

As mentioned earlier, post-purchase CX has everything to do with what happens after the customer makes a purchase.

To make things more familiar, shipping updates, order tracking, or in some cases returns and exchanges. Either way, this is the last thing your customers are going to remember about their experience with your brand. Therefore, you have to ensure that it stays memorable.

Remember, a positive post-purchase experience can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, while a negative post-purchase experience can lead to customer churn.

78% of shoppers won’t buy from the brand again after just ONE bad delivery or return experience.

Now, one might ask: On whom does the onus of perfecting the post-purchase CX really fall?

The answer is: on everyone — from marketing to sales, to operations and customer service. By bringing all business functions together and working towards excelling in both, your post-purchase customer experience and operations at every stage of the process is vital.

To help you provide a great post-purchase experience and reap its benefits, we have developed a playbook covering everything you need to know about creating an e-commerce post-purchase strategy that will improve the customer experience and boost customer retention this Holiday Season and beyond.

6 Post-purchase Plays to Dominate Customer Experience During the Holiday Season

1. Enabling real-time tracking and delivery alerts

With unprecedented visibility into the status of their order in transit, you can stay in the know of all your packages at any given moment. This also gives you the ability to gain real-time alerts and be able to identify potential issues, such as delays much ahead of the customer.

You can leverage this data to proactively address problems, such as offering solutions or even just informing customers.

Such actions can ensure that customers’ frustration levels are significantly reduced and as a result, there is a positive brand perception.

2. Engaging in regular and personalized order status notifications

Even when things are going perfectly, you can keep your customers engaged with order updates and personalized conversations by making use of the customer and order information in your hand.

Send email and SMS shipping notifications at every stage of the post-purchase package journey, i.e., delivery and return status events such as in-transit, delivered, and returned, etc, to keep customers informed at all times. This makes them less prone to getting anxious regarding their parcels, reduces the volume of WISMO inquiries, and allows support teams to focus on more complex customer issues.

Such personalized conversations also let the customers know that you are committed to delivering them a positive post-purchase experience which leads to increased customer satisfaction.

3. Leveraging memorable tracking experiences

An extension of real-time tracking and proactive order communication is making use of a “branded” tracking page that is hosted on your website, from where your customers can track their orders whenever they want to.

Apart from tracking details, your tracking page can also include additional content such as an on-brand website design (color, font, etc), a complete order summary to let customers if they’ve entered the correct details, delivery satisfaction ratings to collect customer feedback, easy returns initiation and reaching out to customer support to provide hassle-free experiences, and so on.

The best part, you can add elements such as sale announcements and personalized product recommendations to ensure an increase in cross-selling. All of this helps in reinforcing your brand identity, leaving a lasting experience, improving your brand reputation, and ultimately driving more sales.

4. Enhancing packaging and unboxing experience

Receiving their orders might be the moment your customers have been expecting since they hit that ‘buy’ button. Make that moment etched into their memories with the right packaging and unboxing techniques.

Packaging plays a much bigger role than just covering your product. Firstly, a great-looking package creates a positive first impression, setting the stage for a great post-purchase experience. Following these are the branded elements that reinforce identity, good quality that ensures lower chances of damage and frustration, and sustainable materials used to improve brand image.

Following packaging, there comes the relatively new trend of unwrapping/ unboxing experience being capitalized by e-commerce brands. Ensure customers share their unboxing videos on social media as user-generated content to create larger brand awareness and attract new customers.

5. Handling returns and exchanges effectively

Your efforts to provide a positive post-purchase experience do not end with the delivery being made, as there are always chances of your customers returning their purchase.

But remember, customers don’t always look forward to returning their purchases — so, don’t make the experience frustrating for them. Keep things as seamless as you can via easy and quick returns, multiple return options (exchanges and store credits), clear returns policy, transparent return status communications, etc.

When handled effectively, returns can be an opportunity to demonstrate customer-centricity, resolve issues efficiently, build trust and loyalty, and enhance customer satisfaction and brand reputation.

6. Encouraging reviews and ratings

A great post-purchase experience is one that is constantly evolving. So, give room for it to grow and fasten the process by encouraging your customers to provide feedback on the post-purchase experience that they received.

You can start by making it easier for customers to leave their feedback — probably in the order delivered/ returned email or on the order tracking page, once the progress is completed. In case there’s a review and a place where you don’t want them leaving one, try to reach out to them at the earliest and offer a solution that they expect in order to change the emotion of the feedback from negative to positive. You can also take a step ahead and reward customers via incentives for their feedback to ensure that they leave more and spread good word-of-mouth.

By resolving their negative comments or displaying their positive review on your website or social media, you are conveying that their feedback matters and as a result builds strong customer relationships. Either way, reviews and ratings from customers provide an opportunity to make regular improvements and reach a wider audience.

How LateShipment.com Can Help Power your Post-purchase Success

LateShipment.com is the ultimate all-in-one post-purchase success platform for e-commerce retailers, D2C brands, and businesses shipping small parcels, regardless of their size or shipping volume.

Our Post-Purchase Success platform includes:

Delivery Experience Management (DEM): To build memorable order delivery experiences and boost recurring revenue during order tracking moments.
Returns Experience Management (REM): To make returns hassle-free with flexible return options and smart automations to help retain revenue.
Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds: To save big on shipping costs through automated shipping refunds and drive supply-chain optimization with in-depth shipping analytics and insights.

Also, LateShipment.com seamlessly integrates with 600+ Shipping Carriers and Business Tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, Helpdesks, and Marketing Automation tools to help you drive post-purchase experiences and shipping cost savings at scale.

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7 festive packaging ideas to drive up the holiday sales

Raksna Anand — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 11:02:14 +0000

Have you come up with creative holiday packaging ideas? Holiday packaging is essential to bring a festive mood to the customers.

The sole purpose of a package is to protect the shipment of the product from being damaged while in transit. But, a package can also be used as a marketing tool. Find out how.

Why do you need holiday packaging?

Great Unboxing experience: There are various social media trends out there, but one trend that’s still existing. It is the unboxing experience. When a customer receives a very great package from any brand, they tend to make Social Media videos of them unboxing the package. This could spread your brand awareness and improve a positive customer experience. The customer also gets to be curious and delighted to open the package.
Bringing in the holiday mood: Your site is going to be decorated with festive elements, you will have seasonal products marketed into your strategy, why not enforce the festive touch in your package by adding colourful elements to the whole unboxing experience? This would make it visually appealing and also holiday-themed.
Time-saving for your customers: Often products are purchased to be gifted to someone else during the holiday season. While your customer would be busy during the holiday season spending their time with their loved ones, they’d have to go to an extra length to package the gifts themselves. If you as a brand go the extra mile to do this for your customers, the customer will have an everlasting impression on you that you saved time during the holidays for them. In fact, time is everything during the holiday season.
Free marketing and promotion: This packaging would definitely be branded and holiday-themed. What more can you do for free margarine promotion among your audience?

Here’s a checklist of packaging to-dos.

7 festive packaging ideas to drive up the holiday sales

1. Wax seals

Wax seals are one unique way to seal your packages during the holiday season. Wax seals can be easily customized to match your brand’s theme and the holiday theme, creating a good memory for the customers, which also creates a very great unboxing experience. There is elegance and tradition in wax seals.

2. Personalized note

Personalization is very important, especially during the holiday season. It contributes to retention. You can add the feature of customers writing personalized notes for their loved ones to be gifted during the holiday season. You can add handwritten notes from the brand also wish your customer very happy holidays. A handwritten note would be a nice personal touch and the customer would also recognize your efforts to engage with them, turning them into loyal customers.

3. Interactive Unboxing

Interactive Unboxing would be a very delightful surprise for your customers. On top of not only receiving gifts, they will also have an additional element of surprise in their gifting, which is Interactive Unboxing. Below is a video of an example of Interactive Unboxing.

This increases social sharing, sales and engagement, enhances customer experience, builds brand loyalty, generates buzz and anticipation, and provides customer satisfaction.

4. Eco-friendly packaging

Your product might be sustainable. Make your packaging also sustainable to entice your customers into buying from you.

66% of customers would pay more for sustainable products. (Statista)

This is one trend that is here to stay. Who said that eco-friendly packages aren’t cute? Look at the inspiration below.

5. Creative packaging

Start to get creative with your holiday packaging. Most of the brands would go for the red and white traditional packaging and also establish their branding elements onto the package. You don’t have to necessarily follow that. You can go with different packaging ideas that don’t resemble traditional holiday season vibes but bring an entirely different vibe. That is one perfect way to stand out from the crowd.

6. Adding festive elements inside the package

While you concentrate on the product and the outer surface of what the package looks like, it is important to create a very good unboxing experience too by adding festive elements inside the package also. You can add snowflakes or glitters or dried flowers inside your package so that it falls on to the customer when they open, bringing in a magical spirit to your product.

7. Interactive QR code

Every single area of your package can be utilized to bring in a festive mood. One such creative idea is a QR code. You can leverage AR and VR for the unboxing experience of your customer. You can create interactive QR codes that would take your customers to your holiday content, products on sale, or holiday-themed videos to entertain your customers. Customize your QR code for easy returns and exchanges. Another way to creatively use these QR codes is to enroll your customers automatically for holiday contest entries.

Protect your packages

An e-commerce brand goes to a great extent to give a positive customer experience, starting from luring the customers into their store through various promotional activities, up until the time when they send shipping and tracking notifications to their customers to keep them in the loop. But what if your high-value product or your limited-edition product gets lost or damaged during transit? As an e-commerce brand, you can do many things to protect your package and one such thing is shipping insurance.

Shipping insurance is a great way to get your product insured and if anything goes wrong, you can always file claims with your shipping insurance provider to get back the money that you have invested in the product. While supply chain disruptions are very common during the holiday season, we recommend that you protect your packages with shipping insurance.

Wrapping Up

Remember that you do all these activities to retain a lifetime customer. Giving a positive experience to your customer by concentrating on every single touch, including holiday packaging ideas is a great way to show your dedication towards keeping your customers satisfied. Keep in touch with them by collecting their feedback and making them feel valuable. Send out frequent communications regarding your offer and discounts. Reach out to your customers during their important dates and make them feel satisfied.

Good Luck with the Holidays!

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Holiday Website Design Ideas to bring in the Festive Joy

Raksna Anand — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:40:57 +0000

The holiday season is just around the corner and we’re starting to see festive cheers everywhere. The streets are going to be decorated with lights and chandeliers. The mall is going to have Christmas trees and the houses would have wreaths in front of them. But have you ever thought of this? A person who’s walking around all these festive cheers would expect those festive cheers to follow them everywhere. With ‘ecommerce delivery here to replace chimney delivery’, most people would visit Ecommerce sites to do their holiday shopping. It would only do justice for them if they are greeted by the brands with the same holiday mood. Yes, we’re talking about Holiday Website Designs.

It’s not just enough to promote your special holiday offers, gifts, bundles and discounts without the holiday vibe. ( vibe – we’re adapting the Gen Z vocabulary now). Bring in that fun, excitement, and job and make the users get indulged with your brand by creating some awesome holiday website. Here are some inspirations website design ideas for you.

Best Practices for Holiday Website Design

Typography, iconography, imagery, and the animated elements should align with your brand’s guidelines.
The Holiday Website design shouldn’t be a hindrance to the overall user experience
Research Current trends and stay on top of them
Do highlight your best moving products on your website
Dont Use Cliché Imageries

Holiday Website Design Ideas to bring in the Festive Joy

1. Homepage Design Inpiration

The Homepage is the first page your visitor is going to see. The first impression should always be the best impression. Brands need to make the homepage visually appealing and at the same time convey all the ongoing offers. Here’s when Bold CTA’s, Interactive elements and countdowns play a major role. Here are some website design ideas for your website.

2. Timer - Creating a sense of Urgency

A timer constantly running as a floater on top of the website is an effective strategy, constantly reminding the users that the offer is going to expire. This creates a sense of FOMO and nudges them to take action. These critical timers can improve conversion rates.

3. Gamification through Spin-the-wheel

The holiday season is a time when a brand gets a lot of new visitors to their website. A gamified pop-up is said to improve the engagement rates.

Benefits of using a gamification strategy

Grabs attention
Offers a variety of offers in one single pop-up
Reduced abandonment cart rate

A gamification element can also be easily installed on popular website creation platforms.

4. Custom animations

There are various types of animations that you can include in your website. Some of the animations that are used in general include hero animation, loading animation, accent animation, interactive animation, scroll animation, hover animation, and hover animation. These animations can very well be changed to look like Santa or any other holiday element to bring in joy and enthusiasm. This exerts playful energy and festive joy from the e-commerce brand. These types of animations offer a unique user experience which could be a great holiday website design idea.

5. Use Micro-interactions on your holiday website design

Microinteractions are audio or video-visual cues that respond to a visitor’s action. Microinteractions can be beneficial in various ways. It improves customer experience. It brings fun and excitement. It boosts user satisfaction. It creates a brand identity.

There’s micro-interactions can be used on

CTAs
Simple Swipes and Transactions
Form submissions

Get your Website ready for the Holiday Season

While it is important to get your website look holiday ready, it’s equally important to note that your website is ready to handle all the incoming holiday rush. Some tips for handling the holiday rush and to convert them.

Optimise your website speed: “A slow website is a lost opportunity”. Users expect a website to get loaded in just 2 seconds (pagespeedinsights). A slow website risks losing visitors, customers and conversions. Create a smooth engaging experience with a faster website. Know how.

And it’s not just about the users. A slower-loading website can affect your Google SERP ranking.

Site-search optimisation: Up to 30% of users use the site search option when one is provided and these 30% are the highest converting user segments. During the holiday season, customers have a lot on the list to tick off from and some of these customers might know what they want or they might even know the category in which they want to shop from. A simple site search optimization could do the magic. It is important that you optimize the product pages also for maximum conversion. Don’t lose customers over simple site search optimisation.

Quick tip: Display social proof to nudge customers into buying your product

Prioritize mobile-first optimisation: With billions of smartphone users, it important to optimize your mobile site. Remember to always keep it mobile first. people get influenced by social media and actively search for gift inspirations on those platforms.. Since social media is widely used on mobile phones, users tend to directly click on links provided on social media to go to the website. It makes absolutely no sense to not prioritize your mobile optimization, especially product display pages.

Final Word

Relationship marketing is an important factor in the e-commerce world now. There are many ways you can do relationship marketing. It could be done by offering seamless customer support, awesome post-purchase journey and a hassle free returns experience. But bringing this holiday touch to your website is a very micro touch point which would have a very big impact on your user experience. Even minor changes to the website design, adding festive elements would provoke joy and enthusiasm among the audience. Embrace the holiday spirit and convert as many customers as you can with a visually aesthetic and seamless website.

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Unique Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce brands with Examples

Raksna Anand — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:30:32 +0000

Ho Ho Ho! The holiday season is upon us and it’s time for brands to wipe the dust off the box, get in it and think outside of that box to bring in some quality holiday traffic. Holiday marketing could be very different from marketing throughout the year. Brands need to get all in with their tricks and tactics to pull off a successful and profitable holiday season.

And this season, we come bearing holiday marketing ideas.

Why should brands focus on their Holiday Marketing this season?

This year, the global e-commerce holiday sales is set to hit 1.2 trillion dollars. (Salesforce)
The holiday season is one of the most profitable seasons for any business. This year, the global retail spending will rise by 4.5% during the holiday season. (Deloitte)
An average consumer is set to hit $1,430 on an average during the holidays. (Salesforce)

If consumers are ready to open their wallets and splurge admist inflation, e-commerce brands should use this opportunity to make the most of it.

Holiday Marketing Ideas brands should focus on

1. Spreading the spirit of Hope - Sephora

Sephora, the universal beauty brand, decided to spread ambition and joy in its holiday marketing campaign. This ad ‘Believe in your wish’ features people who are courageous enough to wish and say it out loud. It encourages people to be bold and positive. Brands that use the power of emotion in their ads seem to establish a unique connection with their audience.

2. Giving back to the Community - M&S

M&S launched the campaign “Gift of Giving” for the holiday season. M&S partnered with a giving back platform called Neighborly, which supports local community groups. As you can see in the video below, the ad features different ethnicities and races, and the importance of giving back during the holiday season. M&S, partnered with Neighborly, donated one million pounds to 1,000 local community groups during the holiday season. They announced that a chunk of the profits from the holiday sale would contribute to the one million that is being donated to the local community groups.

People often want to give back during these festive seasons, and M&S understood the assignment.

Anna Braithwaite, M&S Clothing & Home Marketing Director, said: “Through our campaign and product ranges we want to help make that possible; providing much needed funds to the incredible groups that light up our local communities and by doubling down to deliver the exceptional trusted value our customers want – as they seek out more considered, stylish and thoughtful gifts. There’a really is no better feeling than giving – and we hope this feel-good campaign puts a smile on our customers’ faces this festive season.” (Industry fashion)

3. Gamify the Shopping Experience - Target

Gamification is a strategy through which a brand can increase customer engagement and loyalty. The concept of gamification is to influence human behavior through games. Target leveraged this particular strategy in their holiday marketing, to drive traffic to their website. The strategy targeted millennial moms who are digitally connected and kids.

Target used Augmented Reality to further influence children to get involved in this game. When a kid adds a product to the wish list, the wish list is virtually sucked into a tube which is portrayed to be sent to Santa’s headquarters. This was a huge hit. The brand saw 75,000 installations of the app and 100,000 wish lists being created. The wish list was directly connected to the moms and they can be collaborated with the relatives. This particular campaign led to the creation of 9,200 new Target.com accounts. The average wish list consisted of 30 items worth $1,500. (adforce)

4. Hyper-personalise your products - Oreo

Oreo decided to bring in personalization by customizing their package. This allows users to go online and choose various colors that they want to be included in the package. Based on the colors they’ve selected, Oreo comes up with a suggestion of designs inspired by the graphic artists, Jeremyville and Timothy Goodman. Or the customers have the liberty to pick up the brush and design their own package.

Oreo also allowed customers to mix in the seasonal elements, such as a waving snowman, singing patridges, hugging penguins, and mustache presents donning bowler hats. This colorful experience could be ordered online. Oreo has a very large fan base and this particular campaign was a huge success among their audience. This was available only for a limited period of time during the holiday season. This created a sense of FOMO among the customers.

Customers also had the option to personalize heartfelt notes along with the packages. Some cliche Christmas phrases such as “joy” and “ho-ho” were also included in the elemental designs.This campaign was a huge hit.

5. Bringing in Excitement through Staged Techniques - Costco

Brands always face heavy competition during the holiday season. Bizarre techniques would be adopted by brands to gather the attention of the audience and convert. One such hilarious strategy used in holiday marketing by Costco was the “staged email leak”. Yes, that’s right. You heard it right. Costco actually staged an email leak where they sent Black Friday deals one month before Black Friday to their customer list through email. It was made obvious that it was staged and not an actual email. This still instilled a lot of curiosity and excitement among the customers.

Additional Holiday Marketing Ideas

Dress up your Homepage.
Offer Holiday special bundles and product variants.
Improve site search optimisation and product recommendations for the holidays.
Curate a personalized gift guide for your customers
Bring up products on sale front and up in the site search bar.
Gamify the experience with spin-the-wheel, floaters.
Retargeting with social media and email with special personalised coupon codes.
Provide personalisation on gift wrap options.
Display shipping countdown for the last date to be shipped.
Hyper-personalisation is the norm.
Show that you care about your customers and your community.
Provide shipping optionality.
Try to offer free shipping.
Cross-sell and Upsell through a branded tracking page.
Make returns policy easy and clear.

Wrapping Up

There’s no one strategy that fits everyone when it comes to holiday marketing. As a brand, you have to stand out of the crowd and know what works for you. Try analyzing data from the past. Try collecting data from five years back and create a sheet of what’s working for you and what isn’t working for you.

Consumer trends keep changing and it is important that brands adapt to those changes in order to survive in this heavily competitive space. There are so many new things that brands can do which include hyper-personalization, optimizing the post-purchase customer journey, providing an excellent customer support interface and so on. Identify the gaps in the customer journey that your brand needs to concentrate on and provide a full-on experience for the customers. Set the stage for retention by providing a seamless customer journey.

The holiday season is one of the seasons through which you can experience a lot of new traffic. Don’t go cold on your customers. Loop them in via loyalty programs or retention programs and turn them into lifetime customers.

The post Unique Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce brands with Examples appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

7 Quick and Effective ways to increase holiday sales

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:22:58 +0000

Tis’ the season for cheer and joy not only for consumers but also for merchants due to the surge in holiday sales. Tis’ the season where e-commerce brands face a lot of competition and unprecedented challenges. Tis’ the same season when the business becomes very lucrative. Tis’ the reason why you want to concentrate on handling the holiday rush and increasing sales.

Here are 7 ways in which you can increase sales.

7 Quick and Effective ways to increase holiday sales

1. Get your website holiday ready

The holiday season is when people open their wallets and they are ready to make purchases. Normally, e-commerce brands would experience a surge in orders during the holiday season. It is essential that you keep your site ready for that spike in order volumes and traffic volumes. The streets are going to have festive cheers during the holiday season, the physical retail stores will be decorated, and even the USPS delivery office will be decorated with Christmas trees. Why not add festive cheers to your site to encourage customers to bring in joy?

Create a sense of urgency: You can add various limited-time offers and create floaters for those deals creating a sense of urgency.

Add customized holiday pop-ups: You can customize pop-ups or spin-the-wheel elements representing the holiday season and can offer special coupon codes to encourage purchases and increase holiday sales.

Test your site speed: As mentioned earlier, more traffic can be expected and it’s important that your website loads quickly in order to not lose your customers.

2. Improve SEO for holiday traffic

Optimize your product pages descriptions and copies and create holiday specific landing pages. Include more holiday specific keywords. Get found when people are searching.

It takes time for the SEO to actually drive results. If you haven’t started yet, it is high time that you start improving your ranking now and drive holiday sales.

Bonus tip: If you can offer express delivery to the customer;’s location, target them through local SEO. This would very much appeal to the last minute shoppers.

3. Optimize your website for mobile to increase holiday sales

Experts always recommend e-commerce websites to optimize for mobile, keeping it mobile first. This is stated while keeping several reasons in mind.

One, with the rise of social commerce, people tend to find stores through social platforms. Right from the discovery phase to the checkout phase, everything is taken care of on the social media platform itself. In this case, social media is mostly viewed through the mobile device and it’s better if your website gets optimized first on a mobile device.

With 6.4 billion users using a smartphone and the internet to discover various e-commerce brands, it would be a shame not to optimize for your mobile and convert most of the customers coming to your website.

Second, Google has created a mobile-first indexing policy, where the mobile version of the website is first crawled and ranked in Google. And Google being google, it’s vital that you optimize for mobile and get ranked in Google first. Here are some tips to improve mobile conversion rates

4. Display UGC

UGC is HIGHLY STILL RELEVANT. And it’s going nowhere. During the holiday season, people trust the opinions of others. Online reviews are as good as personal recommendations. Websites displaying UGC content have resulted in 29% high conversion rates. [websell.io]

Be transparent, display honest reviews and set the customer expectations right so that you don’t experience a lot of returns post holiday season.

5. Concentrate on Abandoned cart recovery

Statistics show that only 3 out of 10 people who add products to their cart actually checkout.

You can employ various techniques to re-market to these people, to those who have abandoned carts. You can send gentle reminders through email notifications, SMS and push notifications, urging them to finish their transaction. Sometimes a special coupon code can be sent to encourage those customers to convert them. Again, this creates a sense of urgency. You can enhance the urgency by saying

That only one product is left in the category that they were browsing
That ‘X’ many people have viewed this product recently

This would also create a sense of FOMO in them and encourage them to convert.

6. Offer multiple shipping options

It is always a good option to offer diversified shipping options to customers who are checking out. The customers get to choose when they want this product to be delivered. You can expect people to shop earlier during the holiday season and you can expect last-minute shoppers as well browsing through your website. You can’t take the risk of offering very limited shipping options that might potentially affect the bottom line of your store. By offering shipping optionality, your brand can cater to a diverse range of customer needs and preferences.

For example, when a last-minute shopper is looking for same-day delivery, shipping optionality would be the differentiator here. It might be easier for the customer to choose your website to buy their holiday gifts from. Multiple shipping options that people expect e-commerce brands to have are as follows:

Same day delivery
Free shipping
Expedited shipping
Overnight delivery
Overnight delivery,
Two-day delivery, and
International shipping.

A survey says that most people who opt for same-day delivery and two-day delivery often choose to pay more for shipping. This might be a relevant choice to consider. Amazon has set the bar very high for delivery and brands need to come up with a variety of options to meet customer expectations.

7. Turn your post-purchase customer journey into a holiday sales channel

The buy button is not the end of the customer journey, it’s rather the beginning of a relationship with a brand. It’s important for brands to acknowledge that the post-purchase customer journey plays a very big part in determining whether the customer returns back to the brand or not.

91% of customers say that they won’t return to a brand after a poor shipping experience and return experience.

The order tracking page is one of the most viewed pages. An average person visits the order tracking page 6-8 times after purchase. There are a number of ways with which you can turn your post-purchase customer journey into a sales funnel and increase your holiday sales.

Display personalized product recommendations: Leverage user data and provide personalized product recommendations to convert them again into a repeat user.
Cross-sell and Upsell:When people visit the order tracking pages, you can show them the related products or products that are of high value, which people might convert for and they might get to know that this particular product is available.

Display product reviews:Product reviews are a great social proof of showing that your brand and the products that you offer are very reliable. So it is always advisable to display relevant reviews of your products.

Bring in the holiday cheers to your tracking page: Why shouldn’t your order tracking page have a little holiday touch to it? People get in the holiday mood and the brand should also hop in with them to bring in the mood
Build trust and confidence through proactive communication: . The holiday season is known for its notorious shipping delays. Customers tend to get anxious and they might not shop with you again. By proactively communicating the status of their order, you can assure them that their package would reach them on time.

The post-purchase part of the custom journey is often overlooked. You can kill two birds with one stone by displaying a branded tracking page increasing brand recall and communicating the order status proactively, thus promoting holiday sales.

Final word

High Holiday Traffic Volume = High Holiday sales = Possible increase in the return rate.

As an e-commerce business, you should prepare for the holiday surge in sales and the post-holiday surge in returns. Don’t look at returns as a burden for your business, look at it as an additional opportunity to build a relationship with your customers. Turn your return process also into a sales funnel by giving a great customer experience.

The post 7 Quick and Effective ways to increase holiday sales appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How To Handle The Holiday Rush With Post-Purchase Order Tracking

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 07:50:15 +0000

The holiday shopping season means an entirely different thing for shoppers and merchants. For the latter, it’s not just about festivities, gift-giving, and visiting places but the busiest time of year, when they have to work amidst the incoming rush if they’re looking to stay ahead of the competition and maximize sales.

In the case of physical stores, the customer collecting their purchase and leaving the store marks the end of a sales cycle. However, with order delivery and the other aspects that follow, the order getting accepted is only half the battle done for e-commerce merchants. Moreover, with a surge in orders and customer inquiries, thanks to the holiday rush, managing order deliveries during the holiday season gets tougher than usual.

If you’re an e-commerce merchant who is looking to navigate the holiday rush with ease and efficiency, this article is for you.

But first, let’s get to the basics to understand the magnitude of what we’re dealing with.

Understanding the Holiday Rush

The holiday rush as a concept is pretty simple.

Witnessing a spike in consumer spending towards the end of the year, particularly on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas, stores decided to create special offers to spur existing customers to spend even more and to bring in more customers. This soon created a norm where customers rushed to stores to get things at the lowest rates before they went out of stock — leading to the coining of the term.

With time and technological advancements, the shopping trend continued with e-commerce, bringing in a huge revenue opportunity in the form of consumer spending. However, there exists one small problem. Shoppers expect the same level of experience from physical stores to e-commerce. What they don’t realize is the fact that e-commerce businesses and shipping carriers strain their capacity and resources during the peak season to deliver orders properly and on time.

E-commerce brands too, with the goal of staying profitable during the holiday season, strive to provide shoppers with a great experience. Their only catch? Prone to face multiple hurdles that make their efforts to provide quality post-purchase experiences difficult.

Frequent post-purchase challenges e-commerce businesses face during the holiday rush

Increased shipping delays: Increased order volume during the holiday season amplifies the odds of shipping delays, which in turn have the capability to frustrate customers and damage the business’s reputation.
Increased customer support inquiries: The holiday season is also a time when customers are more likely to have questions or problems with their orders. This can lead to an increase in customer support inquiries and consume all of the customer support team’s time.
Increased returns and refunds: When things go wrong with their orders, customers don’t hesitate to expect returns and refund requests. Issues like this further put pressure on the already strained capacity of shipping carriers and cost you efforts and money.

While these challenges are concerning enough on their own, they can also have adverse effects on your business in the form of operational inefficiency and potentially harm long-term customer relationships and brand reputation.

Prevention is better than cure. An old saying but holds true to this context. All these issues can be easily prevented by making use of an order-tracking software from placement to delivery.

How An Order Tracking Software Can Help You Tackle Post-Purchase Challenges With Respect To The Holiday Rush

A post-purchase order tracking software can help e-commerce businesses during the holiday rush in a number of ways, which we’ll take a look at each of them in the form of problem statements.

1. "I’m an e-commerce merchant. Like every other business owner out there, I always look forward to the holiday season to make the most out of it and improve profits. But for the past few years, my profit margins have been really looking low — thanks to delays and other shipping issues, which are causing my customers to drop off".

This is a really frustrating situation for e-commerce merchants.

Imagine having to face the consequences of something that happens due to no fault of your own.

With shipping carriers straining capacity as a result of the holiday rush, coordinating shipping logistics can be complex and error-prone. Hence, delivery incidents like late deliveries can become frequent and result in dissatisfied customers.

What makes the situation even worse is that disgruntled customers are quick to blame you for delays and other delivery errors, leading to increased costs such as customer acquisition and service recovery.

On average, 1 in 5 parcels shipped face delivery issues resulting in high customer frustration and negative shopping experiences.

Now imagine the whole scenario with an order tracking system in place.

Thanks to real-time tracking, you now have the ability to receive alerts for critical delivery failures and proactively notify customers when there’s an issue with their order. This way, you can practically ensure that your customers’ frustration levels are mitigated and thereby achieve CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) scores of 80+ even when delivery issues occur.

2. "As a customer support representative, I’ve always felt most of my time is being spent on answering customer queries, mainly related to their order status (WISMO). This is taking away from my ability to handle other customer inquiries and tasks and at the end of the day, customers too want a quicker resolution and often get frustrated when things get late. If only there was a way for me to improve the way that I handle WISMO inquiries…"

Customers get increasingly anxious in the post-purchase phase when they are left in the dark regarding their orders, making them prone to bombard your support reps with WISMO requests.

So much so that WISMO requests that they make approx. 50% of customer inquiries and overloaded customer support teams. This number is only going to shoot up during the holiday rush when order volumes are high and orders hold high emotional value for customers.

To prevent this from happening, you need to empower your support reps to properly address customer issues and display your strong commitment to the high standards of customer service you offer. Here’s how you can do just that:

As an extension of tracking your orders in real time — provide proactive delivery status updates to keep your customers in the loop about the whereabouts of their orders and free up your support time to focus on more pressing issues. This can help you reduce WISMO requests by up to 70% and also revive customers’ trust in your brand.

You can also take it one step further and let customers check the status of their deliveries at any time they need to by embedding a 24×7 order lookup widget on your website and chat tool to make tracking self-service.

TLDR;

Enhanced Customer Experience – By determining the status and location of their orders in real-time, you can now be transparent with your customers regarding delivery issues thereby enhancing the overall customer experience. Even if there are no issues, you can still share proactive order updates and reduce customer inquiries.
Reduced Customer Support Workload – When they’re informed throughout the order delivery process, customers are less likely to contact customer support for order status inquiries. This frees up customer support teams to focus on resolving more complex issues and providing exceptional service.

How Lateshipment.Com’s DEM Platform Can Help You With Post-Purchase Order Tracking Needs

1. Identify shipments facing issues at a glance

LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) makes it ridiculously easy for you to keep a watch on your packages in transit and identify issues around package deliveries. With the help of real-time parcel data:

Know what’s happening with your parcels
Take preemptive action before customer impact where needed

2. Resolve critical shipping incidents before they happen

Delivery issues are inevitable but that doesn’t mean you just watch as they happen. Instead, you can step in before customer impact by proactively addressing them.

Automatically have tickets triggered to your helpdesk system and
Send timely and customized notifications

For critical delivery events and thereby instill confidence in your customers.

3. Reduce delivery inquiries by 70% with real-time updates

Keep customers in the loop of their orders via:

Automated email and SMS notifications
Self-serve order tracking widget anywhere on your website

And Replace angry WISMO calls with seamless order tracking experiences

BONUS:

4. Boost revenue from repeat purchases by up to 12%

DEM also helps you provide ‘branded’ tracking experiences via tracking pages and emails. Not just to provide complete order tracking information, you can also use your tracking assets as a real-estate for marketing campaigns to double your chances at driving repeat sales

Final Word

That’s all from us for now. Preparing for the holiday rush is critical. By investing in an order tracking software, you can streamline your operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and set yourself up for success during this busy season.

With real-time order monitoring and proactive customer communication, you can navigate the holiday rush with ease, turn customer frustration into delight, and make the holiday season an enjoyable time of the year for your business.

The post How To Handle The Holiday Rush With Post-Purchase Order Tracking appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Holiday Schedule 2023: Marketing Calendar and Shipping Deadlines

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 06:23:04 +0000

The holiday season is fast approaching, and for e-commerce businesses, this means it’s time to prepare for the busiest time of the year.

We’re still 2 months away from things getting really hectic but remember, early preparation is key to ensuring a smooth holiday season.

Thus, in this blog, we’ll explore why early preparation is necessary and in order to help you get started, provide you with a comprehensive holiday schedule in the form of a marketing calendar and information on shipping deadlines for the 2023 season.

Why An Early Preparation Holiday Season is Necessary

The holiday season is a time when shoppers are on a buying spree, looking to get the perfect gifts for their loved ones and deals for themselves. However, this great opportunity brings up a great challenge for businesses such as yours.

The holiday shopping rush can turn out to be overwhelming, leading to issues like shipping delays, inventory shortages, customer service overload, and so much more.
Building excitement and anticipation among your customers takes time. Early preparation allows you to create engaging content, run teaser campaigns, and build relationships with your audience.
The holiday season is not just busy but also very competitive. You need to have your marketing campaigns in place early in order to capture the attention of consumers and get ahead of competitors who are still planning their holiday campaigns.
The holiday season is a time when shipping carriers are straining their capacity due to experiencing high volumes of packages, which often leads to delays. This means that you need to plan accordingly to get your products shipped out for timely delivery.
Customers are more likely to make impulse purchases during the holidays, especially towards the last minute. For such customers, you need to be prepared by having their trending products in stock and ready to ship.

This is why starting your plans for the holiday season early is crucial:

Now that we understand the importance of early preparation, let’s dive into the details of the holiday marketing calendar and shipping deadlines for 2023.

Part 1: Holiday Marketing Calendar

Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of key holiday season dates and marketing strategies that work best each day so that you can implement them easily and maximize your sales.

October

While the holiday season officially kicks off with Thanksgiving at the end of November, shopping for the holiday season (yes, quite early) starts this month.

This is the time for you to execute fresh plans that you haven’t tried out before, watch out for what your competitors are planning (something that you’ve not thought of), etc, and set your plans in place for the holiday rush that will commence in less than two months.

The major event in October for retail and e-commerce is Halloween. Taking place on the 31st of the month, the spooky ancient Celtic festival is a time for customers to get creative and businesses to capitalize on.

Halloween - October 31

Popular trends – costumes, decorations, candy, and food

Expected consumer spending – around $100 per person

Effective marketing techniques – Halloween is no longer confined to a single day of trick-or-treating. It has expanded into a season that spans the entire month of October, with consumers engaging in various activities such as decorating, attending parties, and visiting haunted attractions.

For e-commerce businesses, this extended Halloween season provides ample opportunities for sales and engagement:

Create Halloween-themed marketing campaigns that resonate with your target audience. Use spooky visuals, themed emails, and social media content to set the mood.
Produce blog posts, videos, or infographics that offer Halloween tips, DIY ideas, and costume inspiration.
Run contests, giveaways, and user-generated content campaigns on social media. For example, encourage customers to share their Halloween preparations using your products with a dedicated hashtag.

Halloween presents a golden opportunity for e-commerce businesses to engage with customers and increase sales. With a well-planned marketing strategy, you can enjoy the fruits of ‘spooktacular sales’, it can bring.

November

Only 2 months for 2024, less than a month for Thanksgiving — November is the time when things get quite hectic at e-commerce workplaces as businesses come together to run things for a week full of shopping.

Key holiday events in November are collectively called The Cyber Weekend and include Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.

Let’s start taking a look at them one by one.

Thanksgiving - November 23

Thanksgiving, traditionally a holiday for expressing gratitude and sharing a bountiful meal with loved ones, has evolved into a significant shopping event in recent years.

For e-commerce businesses, Thanksgiving presents a unique opportunity to engage with customers and kickstart the holiday shopping season.

Expected consumer spend – $6 Billion

Popular trends – Food, home goods, and apparel

Effective marketing techniques – With the evolution of holiday shopping, the Thanksgiving landscape has largely shifted from a day of just families coming together to becoming synonymous with early holiday shopping, thanks to the rise of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Here are some ideal marketing techniques that e-commerce businesses can come up with to have a great Thanksgiving sale:

Create Thanksgiving-themed content: Send out a big “thank you” to your customers by crafting out social media posts, personalized emails or messages to display your gratitude. This is also a great way to get into the spirit of the season and attract customers.
Mobile Shopping: With the rise of mobile devices, many consumers shop on their smartphones during Thanksgiving gatherings. Ensure your website is mobile-responsive, and consider mobile-specific promotions.
Thanksgiving Giveaways: Run Thanksgiving-themed giveaways or contests like free products, gift cards, or even a trip. This is a great way to generate excitement and engagement around your Thanksgiving sale.
Get into the spirit of Thanksgiving: You can also try spending the day with your local community and try giving back to them in order to associate your brand with the Holiday theme and etch your brand in your customers’ minds.

Black Friday - November 24

In this section, we’ll delve into Black Friday’s significance, average consumer spending, emerging trends, and effective marketing techniques for a successful Black Friday sale.

Expected consumer spend – Close to $10 Billion

Popular trends – Electronics, Apparel, Home goods, Toys

Effective marketing techniques – Over the years, Black Friday has transcended its brick-and-mortar origins and has become a global shopping extravaganza across e-commerce and the U.S. It’s characterized by doorbuster deals, massive discounts, and a shopping frenzy that lasts well beyond the traditional single day.

To have a successful Black Friday sale, e-commerce businesses can look forward to implementing the following marketing techniques:

Early Promotions: Start building excitement weeks in advance. Tease upcoming deals and exclusive Black Friday discounts to create anticipation.
Countdown Timers: Add countdown timers to your website and emails to create a sense of urgency. Highlight limited-time offers.
Personalization: Leverage data to provide personalized product recommendations and targeted offers based on customer preferences.
Post-Sale Engagement: Keep the momentum going with post-Black Friday promotions, ensuring that customers return for more holiday shopping.

With well-planned marketing strategies, you can ensure your Black Friday sale is not just successful but also a memorable shopping experience for your customers. So, gear up for the Black Friday shopping extravaganza and make it a win-win for your business and your potential shoppers.

Small Business Saturday - Saturday, 27th November

Small Business Saturday, a shopping holiday celebrated on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses and local entrepreneurs. As an e-commerce business, you can capitalize on Small Business Saturday by aligning with the values of supporting independent sellers and having a successful sale.

Expected consumer spend – The average shopper spends around $150

Popular trends – Electronics, Apparel, Home goods, Toys

Effective marketing techniques – Looking to have a successful Small Business Saturday sale? Employ the following marketing techniques:

Embrace the “Small” Identity: If you’re a small business who is also relatively new to the e-commerce world, then this is your chance. Highlight your unique story, values, commitment to quality, etc, and position yourself as a small, independent venture.
Collaborative Giveaways: Partner with other small businesses for joint giveaways or promotions to expand your reach.
Email Marketing: Send targeted emails to your subscriber list, announce your participation in Small Business Saturday, display your promotions, and express appreciation for their support.

In short, Small Business Saturday offers e-commerce businesses an excellent opportunity to connect with consumers who value supporting small, independent ventures. If you’re a small business, it’s time to embrace your small business identity and offer compelling promotions. If you’re not, you can still capitalize on the holiday by supporting other small businesses and making an impact on your customers.

Cyber Monday - November 27

Cyber Monday, which follows the Thanksgiving weekend, is a digital shopping phenomenon known for exclusive online deals and discounts. For e-commerce businesses, it represents a golden opportunity to boost sales and engage tech-savvy shoppers.

Expected consumer spend – More than $11 Billion

Popular trends – Electronics, apparel, and home goods.

Effective marketing techniques – Cyber Monday marks the peak of the holiday shopping season. Thus, it is crucial for you to implement effective marketing strategies that capture their prospects’ attention and put your brand on the top of your customers’ minds compared to that of your competitors.

Here are some of the strategies that can come in handy:

Extended Cyber Monday: Cyber Monday is no longer a single holiday but is extended into a week-long event, allowing shoppers to take time and spend time with brands beyond one day. You too can take advantage of this situation and extend your product offerings and deals to cover for a week.
E-commerce store optimization: The competition will be huge on Cyber Monday — don’t let factors like slow loading times, bad UI/UX to cause your shoppers to drop off. Ensure your website is optimized for speed and ease of navigation. Remember, a user-friendly experience can significantly impact conversion rates.
The importance of social media: Social media is a powerful tool for businesses to promote their Cyber Monday sales. Make sure to promote your sales on all of their social media channels, and also run social media contests and giveaways to generate excitement.

By keeping these trends in mind, you can create a successful Cyber Monday sale that will boost their sales and grow their customer base.

December

Peak season is over, but for e-commerce businesses such as yours, it’s not yet time to sit back, relax, and write your Christmas lists. You still have just a couple more hurdles left to end the year on a successful note.

Close to 30 days in between to major shopping/ customer spending days of the holiday season. Goodbye Cyber Monday, Hello Christmas.

Christmas - December 25

Christmas, celebrated on December 25th worldwide, is a time of joy, celebration, and gift-giving.

For e-commerce businesses, it’s also a season of tremendous sales potential, thanks to shoppers’ decision to actively seek the perfect gifts for loved ones and themselves.

Expected consumer spend – Average spend of over $725 for men and $609 for women in the US

Popular trends – Toys, electronics, and apparel

Effective marketing techniques – Here are some ideal marketing techniques that e-commerce businesses can come up with to have a great Christmas sale and successfully culminate the holiday season:

Festive Visuals: Decorate your website and social media profiles with festive visuals, evoking the Christmas spirit.
Social Media Campaigns: Run Christmas-themed social media campaigns, contests, and giveaways. Encourage customers to share their holiday purchases using a dedicated hashtag.
Bundled Gift Sets: Create attractive bundled gift sets that offer savings and convenience for shoppers.
Last-Minute Shopping Promotions: As Christmas draws near, offer last-minute shopping deals and guaranteed delivery options to cater to procrastinating shoppers.
Post-Christmas Sales: Extend the holiday shopping season with post-Christmas sales to capture gift card redemptions and late shoppers.

In conclusion, Christmas is a season of joy and giving, making it the perfect time for e-commerce businesses to spur their customers to spend more. With well-planned marketing strategies, you can ensure that this Christmas becomes a season of success for your business.

New Year’s Eve - December 31

Almost done. We’ve now come to the ‘thank you note’ of the holiday season. New Year’s Eve — a time that is mostly for celebrations and parties but is also a great opportunity for e-commerce businesses to capitalize on customers looking to end the year with a bang and kickstart the new one.

Expected consumer spend – More than $100 on an average

Popular trends – Apparel, accessories, and alcohol

Effective marketing techniques – Here are some ideal marketing techniques that e-commerce businesses can come up with to have a successful New Year’s Eve sale:

Themed Marketing: Use New Year’s Eve themes and visuals in your marketing materials to set the mood.
Social Media Engagement: Utilize platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to welcome your customers to the new year and make a great impact.
Last-Minute Deals: Conduct clearance sales for your older products as a way to attract last-minute shoppers who are still looking to make the most of great deals.

By keeping these trends in mind, e-commerce businesses can create a successful New Year’s Eve sale and end the year on a high note.

Adhering to the marketing calendar and implementing the strategies required is just one half of your holiday planning task.

There exists a bigger, much more important half that plays major roles in influencing your customers’ experiences, repeat shopping, and all the other factors that ensure that one time holiday shoppers become loyal customers. And that half is just about getting better at giving your customers what they want — hand over your customers’ parcels to them on time.

Part 2: Holiday Shipping Deadlines (FedEx and UPS)

As we mentioned, preparing yourself for great holiday sales is just halfway to the finish line. Getting your products into customers’ hands is a bigger challenge for e-commerce businesses during this busy season.

On the one hand, carriers are straining their capacity to ship out huge volumes of packages during the holiday rush. On the other hand, on-time deliveries and the overall post-purchase customer experience play a key differentiator for businesses. So know what steps you must take to get on the right track this holiday season.

To make things simpler for you, we’ve noted important holiday-season dates for UPS & FedEx and have presented them to you.

UPS Holiday Schedule

To help shippers plan their deliveries for the holidays accordingly, UPS releases their schedule, i.e., a calendar with information on when services will not be operated, special restrictions for certain services and geographical locations, etc.

Staying updated on this schedule can help e-commerce businesses such as yours follow shipping deadlines and send out deliveries on time.

Thanksgiving

November 23, 2023, Thursday: Thanksgiving (UPS Holiday) – No UPS pickup or delivery service. UPS Store locations are closed. UPS Express Critical service will be available. Call 1-800-714-8779 or visit upsexpresscritical.com.

November 24, 2023, Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) – Normal pickup and delivery service.

Christmas

December 24, 2023, Monday: Christmas Eve – Unlike last year, where services were operated with modifications, UPS this year will have their pick up and delivery service closed on Christmas Eve, with The UPS Store being opened only in select locations (check with your local store for specific hours of operation). UPS Express Critical service will be available.

December 25, 2023, Monday: Christmas Day (UPS Holiday) – No UPS pickup or delivery service. The UPS Store locations are closed. UPS Express Critical service will be available.

New Year

December 31, 2023, Sunday: New Year’s Eve – Similar to Christmas, UPS this year will have their pick up and delivery service closed on New Year’s Eve, with The UPS Store being opened only in select locations (check with your local store for specific hours of operation). UPS Express Critical service will be available.

January 1, 2024, Monday: New Year’s Day (UPS Holiday) – No UPS pickup or delivery service. UPS Store locations are closed. UPS Express Critical service will be available.

FedEx Holiday Schedule

Similar to UPS, FedEx announces their holiday service schedule YoY to help businesses that ship plan their dates accordingly and avoid shipping delays.

If you’re a business that uses FedEx for your shipping needs and isn’t much worried about service delays on the assumption that you can claim refunds via FedEx’s Money-back guarantee policy, know that from December 13, 2022, to January 2, 2023, the FedEx money-back guarantee will be temporarily suspended for select FedEx Express services for U.S. domestic and U.S. export shipments. Thus, make shipping on time your priority to avoid a bad customer experience and unnecessary costs.

Thanksgiving

November 22, 2023, Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving) – FedEx Ground, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx SmartPost, FedEx Freight, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. Early on-call pickups in some areas for FedEx Express. FedEx Office locations will close by 6 PM.

November 23, 2023, Thursday (Thanksgiving) – Only FedEx Custom Critical will be open. All other services will be closed for Thanksgiving. FedEx Trade Networks is subject to availability.

November 24, 2023, Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) – FedEx Ground, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx SmartPost, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. Only FedEx Freight will be closed. Early on-call and dropbox pickups in some areas for FedEx Express. FedEx Office locations will open by 7 AM or at their regular time.

November 25, 2023, Saturday – FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx SmartPost, FedEx Trade Networks, FedEx Office, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight will be closed. Early on-call pickups in some areas for FedEx Express.

November 26, 2023, Sunday – Only FedEx Trade Networks, FedEx Office, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, and FedEx SmartPost will be closed. FedEx Home Delivery will be made only in Sunday-eligible stations.

Christmas

December 16, 2023, Saturday – FedEx Express, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx Office, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight will be closed. No pickups, but deliveries will be made as usual via FedEx SmartPost.

December 17, 2023, Sunday – Only FedEx Office, FedEx Custom Critical, and FedEx Trade Networks will be open. FedEx Express, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx SmartPost, and FedEx Freight will be closed. FedEx Home Delivery will be made to Sunday-eligible stations.

December 18, 2023, Monday to December 21, 2023, Thursday – All services will be open.

December 22, 2023, Friday – All services will be open with Early station, on-call pickups, and dropbox closings in some areas for FedEx Express. FedEx Freight will be working on a modified schedule with its pickup and delivery options. For example, parcels picked up today will resume on December 27 and be delivered on December 28.

December 23, 2023, Saturday – FedEx Express, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight will be closed. No pickups, but deliveries will be made as usual via FedEx SmartPost. FedEx Office locations will have modified hours the day before the holiday, with some locations closing early. Please contact your local FedEx Office location for details.

December 24, 2023, Sunday (Christmas Eve) – Only FedEx Custom Critical will be open. Almost all other services will be closed for Christmas Eve. Sunday residential delivery will not be available to all destinations except for stations that deliver on Sundays, which are open. FedEx Office locations will have modified hours, with some FedEx Office locations closed. Please contact your local FedEx Office location for details.

December 25, 2023, Monday (Christmas) – Only FedEx Custom Critical will be open. All other services will be closed for Christmas. FedEx Trade Networks is subject to availability.

December 26, 2023, Tuesday – All services will be open. Parcels picked up by FedEx Freight on December 22 will be delivered today.

New Year

December 27, 2023, Wednesday, and December 28, 2023, Thursday – All services will be open.

December 29, 2023, Friday – FedEx Ground, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx SmartPost, FedEx Office, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Freight will only be open with for pre-arranged pick-up and delivery shipments. Freight shipments picked up today will resume on January 3 and will be delivered on January 4. Early on-call and drop box pickups in some areas.

December 30, 2023, Saturday – FedEx Express, FedEx Home Delivery, FedEx Office, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Custom Critical will be open. FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight will be closed. No pickups, but deliveries will be made as usual via FedEx SmartPost. Early station, on-call pickups, and dropbox closings in some areas for FedEx Express.

December 31, 2023, Sunday (New Year’s Eve) – Only FedEx Custom Critical will be open. Almost all other services will be closed for New Year’s Eve. Sunday residential delivery will not be available to all destinations except for stations that deliver on Sundays, which are open. FedEx Office locations will have modified hours, with some FedEx Office locations closed. Please contact your local FedEx Office location for details.

January 1, 2024, Monday (New Year) – Only FedEx Custom Critical will be open. All other services will be closed for the New Year. FedEx Trade Networks is subject to availability.

January 2, 2024, Tuesday – All services will be open.

Bottom Line

Following the Holiday calendar can help you with your marketing campaigns by giving you data like important shipping dates, popular products on particular days, effective short-term marketing techniques, and sales data.

Similarly, following the schedule of services and operations from shipping carriers like FedEx and UPS can help you plan your shipping game in advance and not succumb to sky-rocketing surcharges.

That’s not all! Planning for the holiday season is a huge task that requires you to tick all the boxes and have everything ready in place to manage the upcoming rush and whatnot.

One area that most businesses unwillingly ignore is the post-purchase phase, which holds incredible value in boosting retention rates and revenue. To help you tick that box as well, we’ve come up with a downloadable guide that you can make use of. Follow the strategies in the guide and not just cover but dominate your post-purchase customer experience for this holiday season.

The post Holiday Schedule 2023: Marketing Calendar and Shipping Deadlines appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Last-minute Techniques to Mitigate Post-purchase Dissonance This Holiday Season

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 06:00:08 +0000

Not everything is A-OK after your customers complete their purchase with your e-commerce store and are awaiting their orders. It is at this stage, where even the ones who have been most excited to shop with your store can get disappointed and end up in a position where they refuse to shop with you once again.

If you’re wondering why this happens, the retail pundits have a term for it — post-purchase dissonance.

But what really is ‘post-purchase dissonance’?

What is Post-purchase Dissonance?

Post-purchase dissonance is simply the buyer’s remorse that happens particularly in cases of online purchases. It is a sense of regret for the customer, who feels they’ve made a hasty or wrong decision after completing a purchase with an e-commerce business.

Customers who have experienced post-purchase dissonance may frequently feel the urge to cancel their purchase, initiate a return, or in the worst case, even post a sharply-worded review on social media.

Dissonance in the post-purchase phase can happen due to internal conflicts such as

Indecision over having chosen one from two products of the same business
Indecision over two having chosen one from two competing businesses

Realizing the plan to spend their budget on other expenses that have lined up at the same time.

Post-purchase dissonance can also occur due to external reasons that involve something to do with you. Let’s take a look at them as well.

Post-purchase dissonance is a sense of regret for the customer, who feels they’ve made a hasty or wrong decision after completing a purchase with an e-

Reasons for post-purchase dissonance

Your customers feel unsatisfied with the product or customer service you provide, leading to a bad order experience associated with your brand.
Your customers did first-hand or second-hand research after their purchase which puts your brand experience sub-par, to that of your competitors.
Your customer finds a negative review about your brand or product that they recently purchased.

Effects of post-purchase dissonance on your e-commerce business

Increase in unwanted returns – 70% of all returns are size and fit related.
Decrease in customer satisfaction – 78% of shoppers won’t buy from a brand again after ONE bad delivery or return experience.
Increase in support tickets created – 40% of customer support inquiries are WISMO (Where Is My Order) or RETURN related.
Decrease in brand credibility – 30% of consumers who have had a negative customer experience say they would share it on social media.
Increase in customer acquisition costs – It costs 5x to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

It is clear that your e-commerce business can stand to lose a lot of your customers due to your customers’ psychological discomfort.

But remember, the approach you take can be different if the customer is in the early stages of the funnel and is just casually browsing through your e-commerce website. Things are really serious when a customer has made a purchase but yet decided to cancel or return it.

This is where you must immediately step in and take efforts to provide a great post-purchase experience and use it to mitigate the impact of post-purchase dissonance.

How a Great Post-purchase Experience Can Reduce the Impact of Dissonance

During times like the holiday season, your CX can play a differentiating factor amidst the long list of competition. However, brands such as yours unintentionally leave out the CX opportunities in the post-purchase or what comes ‘after customers hit the buy button’ in search of acquiring customers and maximizing sales.

The post-purchase takes up 50% of the overall order experience, so ignoring it is not an option.

However, you must keep in mind that it costs 5x to acquire new customers while returning customers spend 30% more than new customers.

Quality post-purchase experiences assures customers that they’ve chosen the right brand and prove to be helps you compensate for any product-related incidents, if any. Also, customers who have faced a delightful post-purchase experience will share their feedback on social media — assuring confidence in customers facing dissonance.

Given that it’s never too late to provide delightful post-purchase experiences, you can definitely try out some last-minute post-purchase techniques to reduce dissonance for this holiday season and beyond.

Last-minute Techniques to Reduce Dissonance for This Holiday Season and Beyond

1. Transparent order tracking

Today’s customers have been spoiled by choices and have increased expectations on order deliveries to the extent that brands going out of their way to provide great experiences have become the bare minimum.

One such expectation from customers is the ability to track their orders at all times. But imagine a scenario where the order’s current status hasn’t been updated or a supposed delay wasn’t informed.

During times like the holiday season, 82% of the shoppers are worried about their orders NOT reaching them on time. Thus, even when everything is going alright, customers’ worries can end up affecting their delivery expectations.

This can soon result in bad delivery experiences and cause customers to stop shopping with you without hesitation.

So if you want to mitigate the impact of post-purchase dissonance, you have to start with being transparent with your order tracking, including delays.

With post-purchase automation platforms such as LateShipment.com, you can enable customers to track their orders at all times on your branded tracking page. Not just to keep your customers aware of their parcel status, you can plug your tracking pages with marketing campaigns to boost repeat sales, given that on average, a customer tracks their order 4-6 times.

2. Regular order information

Apart from enabling your customers to track their orders, you can as well send post-purchase transactional Emails and SMS notifications to keep your customers in the loop of their orders throughout the delivery lifecycle.

With LateShipment.com, you can seamlessly integrate with your email marketing tools to set triggers and automate shipping-related notifications to your customers.

You can also add an order-tracking widget anywhere on your website and make tracking self-service for your customers and free up your support time to focus on more pressing issues.

30% of the customer support team’s time and effort is WASTED handling repetitive delivery and return-related inquiries.

You can include product usage guides and explainer videos in your post-purchase emails for product-related dissonance and reduce unwanted order returns to a great extent.

3. Proactive support workflow

Delivery issues are one of the major contributors and the thing about these issues is that they are inevitable even with the most efficient carriers and more common during times like the holiday season.

Up to 20% of shipments face issues such as late delivery, attempted-failed delivery, and loss or damage in transit during the peak season.

While you do not have control over such events, you can enable your support reps to proactively address post-purchase issues and take action to resolve them before such discrepancies impact your customers.

This can greatly increase customer confidence and set them on the path towards choosing your business, for the next time.

To know more about this and get started immediately, check out LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform. DEM can help you easily spot shipments facing issues, so your support agents can dive in where needed.

4. Taking customer feedback into action

The best way to mitigate post-purchase dissonance is to understand the reason behind frequent customer frustrations and what might be a better option than asking your customers directly.

As the order is delivered or the return makes its way back to your e-commerce store, you can proceed to collect feedback from your customers regarding the post-purchase experience they’ve received and use these actionable insights to consistently direct efforts and improve brand credibility.

Apart from just helping you deliver delightful post-purchase experiences, LateShipment.com also helps you to capture delivery and returns feedback via ratings to understand from your customers the experience your brand delivered and perfect your post-purchase strategy.

5. Easy returns

35% of all products that are purchased from e-commerce retailers are returned.

In the worst case that the customer’s dissonance is due to faulty or unsatisfied expectations with your product, there is no option left for them rather than returning their order.

In such cases, the onus is on you to make sure that the returns process is not hard enough to infuriate your customers further. Also, on the contrary, 92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the returns process is easy.

Thus, give your customers the confidence to keep shopping with you by optimizing your returns process to be fast and easy in the form of:

Easy-to-spot and detailed returns policy
Self-serve returns with close to zero support interactions
Proactive returns updates to keep customers in the loop
Live returns tracking page to reduce customer anxiety, etc.

Mitigate the Impact of Post-purchase Dissonance to Increase Repeat Purchases

Now that you’re aware of what’s to be done, it’s time to make your move right before the holiday season arrives.

Make use of the last-minute essentials from this article to ensure that at the end of the day, your customer feels confident about their decision of choosing your brand, not just after hitting the ‘buy’ button but after they’ve received the orders in their hands as well.

And try not to antagonize returns. We understand that it’ll be quite hectic to handle them along with the already hectic holiday season. But remember, they hold incredible power to boost your bottom line and create loyal customers for life.

If you still have second thoughts, you can read more on how post-purchase helps in boosting retention and revenue in our holiday e-commerce guide or simply talk to our product expert to understand LateShipment.com’s role in it.

That’s all from us! It’s now up to you to do what it takes and enjoy the fruits of Holiday season success.

Happy Holidays!

The post Last-minute Techniques to Mitigate Post-purchase Dissonance This Holiday Season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Guide for E-commerce Businesses to Thrive This Peak Season

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 09:47:53 +0000

No more talking about this year’s holiday season in the future sense. It’s already up and running. Your fellow e-commerce businesses, shipping carriers, third-party logistic partners, etc have all geared up to handle the peak season’s shipping volume without succumbing to delivery issues and negative customer experiences.

But just because the times are busy doesn’t mean we run helter-skelter till the peak returns season in January. You can still work on your strategies to make improvements for last-minute shoppers.

We have compiled as much as peak season trends and metrics to help you make data-backed decisions to optimize your post-purchase during the critical Holiday season and beyond.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll be seeing in this article.

Peak season trends by the numbers
Forecast of peak season carrier performance rates
Frequent issues that e-commerce businesses might face during the peak season
Strategies to ensure post-purchase success

Without further ado, let’s get into things.

Peak Season Trends by the Numbers

We’ll start with the most important trend that is pretty much going to be a first for the peak delivery season in a while. Experts are predicting a lower shipping volume compared to the last two years, thanks to the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom slowing down and customers navigating high inflation.

Despite inflation and other concerns, e-commerce is projected to grow, at a slower rate of 6-8% YoY compared to 18% in the year before.

Also, it is expected that peak sales will happen only later in the holiday season this year with shoppers hoping to take advantage of discounts. Major brands too have anticipated such trends and are pushing early sales with lucrative deals. Amazon launched a second Prime Day, and stores like Target and Walmart followed suit with early fall holiday deals.

Also, major retailers are expected to take extraordinary measures to tackle stockpiling by maximizing discounts in the month of December which will result in Holiday sales peaking a little bit later.

Happy sales numbers aside, there seems to be some doom and gloom, i.e new challenges for e-commerce shippers in the form of the supply chain, inventory, and fulfillment issues.

Despite the possibility of a lower shipping volume, record high shipping costs, shipping network congestion, and labor shortage will affect the 2022 Holiday Season. This can in turn hurt the operational efficiency of shipping carriers.

But shipping carriers would’ve taken proactive measures to stay ahead of these challenges or have they?

Forecast of Peak Season Carrier Performance Rates

Major carriers like UPS and FedEx are aware of the incoming peak season shipping volume and have taken appropriate measures to counter them.

All major carriers in the US, like FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are equipped to handle about 110 million packages per day, and that could outpace peak season handling capacity by about 18 million packages per day. However, despite all of this, the on-time delivery performance is projected to significantly stay impacted.

In the 5th edition of our annual “2022 State of Holiday Shipping in the U.S.” report, we have forecasted that UPS is expected to outperform FedEx across all shipping types, going by on-time performance indicators from the past 12-24 months.

Also, when it comes to shipping services, packages shipped through both Ground and Express services offered by UPS and FedEx will remain affected.

That’s not all! The report focuses on understanding the impact of the surge in order volumes and supply chain disruptions on the on-time delivery performance of UPS & FedEx in the United States during the peak season, with actionable strategies to optimize post-purchase operations.

Undoubtedly, shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx will be stretched to the limits in order to meet on-time delivery promises this Holiday season, this will result in an unprecedented spike in delivery disruptions. Additionally, peak season surcharges will escalate shipping costs to fulfill Holiday orders.

Not just delays, there are further issues that can take a toll on the post-purchase experiences you provide. Let’s take a look at what they are and how they can affect your business.

Frequent Issues That E-commerce Businesses Might Face During the Peak Season

1. Shipping deadlines can be stressful if you’re not aware of them

UPS and FedEx have been following this necessary practice of setting deadlines for shipping because parcel volumes during the peak season are typically significantly higher.

If you are planning to send out a parcel at the 11th hour via expedited service to satisfy last-minute shoppers, you have no choice but to be aware of the deadlines in their carriers’ holiday schedules, or else, you may end up as a victim of peak surcharges and deplete your shipping budget.

Also, you can communicate holiday shipping deadlines with your customers to ensure that your customers are not set up for frustration over their holiday gifts getting delayed but instead will have a seamless order delivery experience.

Click here to access the special holiday-specific calendars drawn up by UPS and FedEx:

2. Tracking parcels with the shipping carrier can cause anxiety

An increase in the shipping volume can only mean the odds of your shipment going haywire getting higher. Apart from delays, your parcels can get lost, damaged, etc. Even when everything seems to go well, an anxious customer who is unaware of the parcel status can bombard your support reps with WISMO inquiries.

In either of the cases, the customers are quick to blame you, the retailer, instead of the shipping carrier, who is in charge of fulfilling their parcels.

This is because customers often consider that the onus is on retailers to make sure that their parcels are delivered according to their expectations and when they face a slight inconvenience, they feel aggrieved and helpless.

To mitigate your customers’ parcel anxiety and ensure they enjoy a delightful delivery and returns experience, you can make use of a post-purchase solution that tracks your parcels in real time and keeps your customers informed about the status of their parcels at all times.

3. Shipping carriers have levied surcharges and suspended money-back guarantees

With carriers putting higher efforts to improve one-time shipping performances, investments will be the need of the hour. To meet ends and see profits just like any other industry, shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx make levy additional surcharges on select parcels to select locations.

As a retailer, such costs can be a burden, especially if your shipping volume is high and your customer base is throughout the country. In such cases, if you are looking for temporary relief in the form of shipping refunds for service failures, then here’s another shocker. Shipping carriers suspend their money-back guarantee on certain dates in their holiday schedule.

UPS on the other hand, are continuing their suspension of Service Guarantee since the pandemic, except a few selected services. Click here to know what they are.

While this makes shipping more expensive and works to your disadvantage, you can take steps to make sure that you are relatively less affected by them.

The solution is really simple — take control of your post-purchase phase and reduce parcel issues from impacting your customers. This makes sure that you don’t have to compensate the customer who might stop doing business with you citing the bad experience. Also, a quality post-purchase experience from your end can increase repeat purchases. That’s two birds with one stone!

In the run-up to the holidays, the supply chain will take center stage and the winners are going to be those retailers who will take measures to mitigate the impact of delivery delays on customer experience and loyalty.

Strategies to Ensure Post-purchase CX Success This Peak Season and Beyond

Taking measures to close the post-purchase CX gap and provide customers with a frictionless delivery experience can cement you as their preferred brand to shop from. Adopting the following ways to improve your post-purchase CX will ensure a positive impact on both your customers’ lifetime value and the retention rate of your business.

This is where we come in.

LateShipment.com is the world’s only cloud-based Post-purchase Success platform built to enable retail parcel shippers of all sizes to provide memorable order delivery and returns experiences — besides reducing shipping costs by up to 20%.

Here’s how LateShipment.com can help ensure post-purchase CX success:

Proactively identify and resolve delivery related issues
Reduce customer anxiety with automated shipping notifications
Offer custom-built branded tracking experiences on your online store
Make order tracking self-service to reduce delivery related support tickets
Leverage order tracking moments to increase sales and reduce returns
Get customer feedback around order delivery experiences
Optimize your returns process to make it hassle-free while maintaining profitability

BONUS: Bring better performance accountability to shipping carrier services by recovering millions of dollars in refund claims.

That’s not all!

LateShipment.com seamlessly integrates with over 600 shipping carriers and business tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, CRM and Marketing Automation tools to help you craft delightful post-purchase experiences, at scale. Visit www.lateshipment.com to find out more.

The post Guide for E-commerce Businesses to Thrive This Peak Season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5 Ways to Ensure Great Post-purchase Customer Support

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:29:07 +0000

Exceptional customer support is not an option but a necessity.

Especially if you’re part of an e-commerce business, there can be no second thoughts when it comes to a great customer support service, as it plays a huge role in positive customer experiences (CX), which then further leads to repeat purchases.

However, high order volumes, increased customer support requests, etc, can be a burden in your commitment to provide a quality support service.

This can cause trouble to your business in more than one ways.

Increased volume of support tickets and associated costs due to anxious customers reaching out with order status requirements.
Customers frustrated with lack of support response for issues, taking their complaints to social media and tarnishing your brand’s reputation.

Thus, the verdict is clear.

Offering stellar customer support can bring in plenty of benefits for your e-commerce business.

To know the benefits, let us get to know how you can provide customers with a superior support experience, particularly in the post-purchase phase.

Why specifically addressing the post-purchase phase, you ask?

The post-purchase, comprising of order delivery and returns is an often left out part due to many businesses depending on the already strained shipping carriers to take care of them.. But the truth is that, carriers neither have the interest nor the commitment towards your customers’ post-purchase experiences.

Thus, it is time for you to take control of your post-purchase, let’s start with quality customer support techniques.

How to Provide Great Customer Support in the Post-purchase Phase

1. Automate chats to handle frequent and repeated customer queries

People expect fast replies from businesses. Many people are more willing to leave a bad review about a poor customer service experience than over a
suboptimal product.

Live chat, FAQ's, robots, social media can all help with this.
— Andrew Spence (@AndrewSpenceIM) March 23, 2021

One of the quickest ways to get started with a great support experience is to automate your response to frequently asked questions from customers in order to reduce wait time and overall ticket resolution time.

Set frequency levels for different questions asked by your customers and incorporate questions with high volume into a chatbot that can respond on your behalf.

Keep in mind that, nothing impresses customers more than the realization of talking with a human at the other end. Therefore, keep your chatbot sound as human as possible. Also, human-back your conversations, so that your support reps can take over where necessary.

And last but not the least, have a designated FAQ page with answers to all possible questions from customers so that they do not have to ask these questions in the first place.

All of this can help you reduce ‘thankless’ tickets and provide increased customer satisfaction.

2. Provide omnichannel customer support service

Your customers can reach you via any of their preferred channels such as social media, phone calls, website chats, etc. Therefore, you must be prepared to reach them at any of them and not miss out or provide a delayed response. Because not doing so can result in weaker relationships and customer churn.

The key lies in leveraging your help desk tool that lets you take an omnichannel approach while resolving customer queries.

Viewing all interactions with your customer across channels and touchpoints enables your support agents to initiate contextual communication and provide a consistent and seamless customer experience.

3. Make meaningful interactions with customers during the post-purchase phase

Customers are highly anxious while awaiting their orders and bombard you with WISMO calls, and stress about what is going on with their orders (particularly when they sense their orders are likely to be delayed).

A bleak post-purchase customer experience can be the result of poor engagement, thus, it is important to not only frequently engage with your customers without missing out on any touchpoint, but also to keep the engagement meaningful and contextual.

Apart from regular shipping transactional event notifications such as order shipped, in-transit, and delivered, you can also keep your users updated on uncommon occurrences such as delayed in-transit, failed delivery attempts, suspected loss, etc., and keep them in the loop of their orders.

You can communicate the updates via Email and SMS notifications and let them know that you are in a position to handle issues (if any) and are committed to providing them with a great support experience.

4. Identify and proactively resolve delivery issues

Customers are aware that delays and other delivery incidents (not just the ones that are a result of the supply chain crisis) are inevitable and occur due to no fault of yours. But at the least, they expect the business they shop with to be proactive and empathetic towards their situation.

You can keep up or even exceed their expectations by notifying them of such incidents before they occur and being empathetic enough to offer alternatives to ease the situation.

Create a list of FAQs on your customers’ frequent needs and common questions during the Holiday season such as WISMO and keep a track of all these issues regularly. Once you’ve identified these issues, you can then empower your support team to leverage this data and proactively step in to resolve them.

Proactive delivery issue resolution during the order delivery phase is usually offered via timely order updates.

5. Make order tracking and returns self-serve

A great order tracking and returns experience boosts loyalty.

And the most seamless experience you can provide your customers while they are tracking their orders getting delivered or being returned is to make it as easy and fast for them with zero interactions with your support agents.

Self-serve tracking paired with proactive updates keeps your customers in the loop effortlessly and eliminates blind spots about the whereabouts of their package.

Such seamless tracking experiences can also help in revenue retention via repeat purchases.

Bottom Line

Following all the above steps can help you empower your customer support team and further result in:

Demonstrating a strong commitment to the high standard of customer experience you offer
Showing empathy towards your customers’ issues and
Ultimately building a loyal customer base

Making use of a post-purchase and returns management solution such as LateShipment.com will strengthen the hands of your support team and help you do the same.

Once you’ve implemented these hacks into your support model, you can be confident that your support experience is optimized and you’ll be confident of your customers choosing your business repeatedly.

Try these out and let us know your experience in the comments below!

The post 5 Ways to Ensure Great Post-purchase Customer Support appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5 Tactics to Make Your Small Business Festive Ready

Sashank Ravindranath — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 05:30:20 +0000

The festive season is always a golden time for eCommerce store owners – online holiday spending broke records in 2021 and is poised to go even higher in 2022.

Shoppers are in a spending mood. They have long lists of items they wish to buy, and your store should welcome them stocked!

With their tastes and preferences more nuanced than ever, you should offer the shopping experience they desire and deserve.

We’ll cover the tactics your small eCommerce businesses can implement to become festive ready and ensure your customers are eager to spend more with you.

1. Strengthen Your Website’s Security

Unlike your customers, hackers never take a holiday. And if they cause your eCommerce store to crash during the holiday season, you’ll lose a huge amount of traffic and sales.

You’ll also upset your customers who

can’t browse your store and
may be concerned that their details are at risk.

Cyber attacks include ransomware – when hackers hack your systems and hold them until you pay a fee, as well as phishing.

Here are some tips to safeguard your store as a way to become festive ready:

Back up your data. This includes your key files, your cloud data, and the whole website. Back up website codes, database information videos, settings, and configurations.
Use firewalls. There are two types of firewalls you should look to install – application gateways and network security systems. Both are designed to protect your online store from unauthorized individuals and groups getting in.
Hire IT security. If you currently have no cyber/IT security specialists, it might be a good idea to hire someone for the holiday period.

2. Make It Easy for Your Customers

It’s the festive season, which generally means one thing – your customers are in a hurry. They’re in a buying mood, looking to find the online shopping experience to be as hassle-free as possible.

What does this mean?

It means they want fast-loading websites, an easy-to-navigate online store, a quick-fire checkout, and fast responses to their questions via better customer service.

As a small business, you can take the following steps to keep things ready for the festive season and meet your customer’s needs:

Run your store through a site speed checker.

Work with a web designer to make sure your website is easy to navigate (you can also make changes yourself, such as adding relevant dropdown menus, and search bars and testing the site yourself).
Add guest checkout. Cart abandonment rates can soar during the holiday period. One of the sticking points for customers is a lengthy checkout process requiring account creation before any purchase.
Add chatbots to your website. Chatbots are available 24/7 to answer your customer’s queries promptly. This is ideal for ensuring their problems get solved and they’re able to continue with their shopping.

3. Personalize the Shopping Experience

Personalization can increase revenue by 15% at the best of times. So while your customers might be in a rush during the holiday season, they still want to associate themselves with brands that build relationships (as opposed to just going for the sale all the time).

Personalization in eCommerce means marketing to your customers in a way that feels personal to them.

In other words, to include effective personalization in your “festive ready” plan, use data, and analytics such as onsite behavior and past purchases to learn more about your customers. You can then proceed to display content that’s relevant to their actions, needs, and wants.

With eCommerce personalization, you can:

Create an email list and segment your audience. This allows you to target different people with different offers so that you improve your email metrics, and your customer loyalty and boost sales during the holidays.
Product recommendations. Product recommendations are a form of behavioral targeting. Essentially, you use onsite actions like ‘most frequented category pages,’ as well as past purchases, to display products you already know your customers will be interested in.
Dynamic content. This personalization strategy lets you target specific segments with specific offers and content. For instance, if you’re selling products worldwide but you’re only offering free shipping in the US during the holidays, you can display the offer of free shipping to all your US site visitors via a site banner.

4. Run Promotions!

Online shopping promotions are the equivalent of a yuletide stocking filler, allowing customers to take advantage of a few little treats that make them feel like they’re getting significant value.

The trick, of course, is to run promotions that attract new customers – but which don’t eat into your profits.

On the flip side, if you ignore promotions altogether, you could miss out on customers who instead do business with your competitors who are offering discounts.

So what’s the answer?

Be strategic with your promotions to ultimately become festive ready. Here are some ideas:

Offer free shipping when customers spend over $50 – for example.
Offer discounts. You don’t want to go too deep with your discounts as too many of them can cause consternation among your customers who’ll start to question the quality of your products. But you could – for example – use an exit intent popup that entices new customers with a discount on their first purchase. And if you’ve got seasonal deals? Promote them on your landing page for everyone to see.
Cross-sell. This is a great way of maximizing sales during the holiday period. For instance, you can offer value-driven bundles that knock a few $$$’s off the total price if a customer buys complementary items.

5. Stay on Top of Ecommerce Fulfillment

eCommerce fulfillment is important at any time of the year because it helps store owners to get their items delivered to their customers on time, thereby reducing returns and customer churn.

Seasonal peaks, however, are one of the biggest challenges you’ll face. And during the holidays is generally when online stores face higher order volumes than at any other time of the year.

And not only that. There’s so much that store owners need to consider such as fulfillment, international shipping, and inventory management. There are also trends like freight rate changes and their subsequent costs.

Here are two important ways to stay on top of eCommerce fulfillment and become festive ready:

Work with a 3PL. A Third-Party Logistics company can take care of your supply chain for you, which then allows you to focus on other core aspects of your business that matter. Especially during the holiday period when you’re expecting an upswing in sales, 3PLs allow you to take advantage of supply and distribution resources that ensure your items are delivered to your customers on time.
Set your inventory levels. You can invest in inventory management software to help you understand your optimal inventory levels, which will then ensure you avoid inventory problems. Inventory levels change during the year – and especially during the holidays – which is why it’s key that you maintain optimal levels so that you can meet customer demand, secure their trust – and fulfill their orders.

Conclusion

The holiday season will soon be upon us, which is why there’s no better time to start implementing our eCommerce tactics as quickly as possible. Preparation is key and will ensure you have enough time to make any half-time adjustments where necessary.

Take care of the “small stuff” – such as implementing excellent customer service and thanking each customer for their purchases. This will give you every chance of becoming festive ready and secure loyal customers over the seasonal period that sticks around once the holidays are over.

This is a guest contribution from Jake Rheude

Jake Rheude is the Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an eCommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of eCommerce. He has years of experience in eCommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

The post 5 Tactics to Make Your Small Business Festive Ready appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How E-commerce Businesses Can Have a Great Festive Season in 2022

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 13:15:27 +0000

For shoppers, the festive season comprises the much-needed break they deserve from their daily lives to spend quality time meeting friends, family, and colleagues; traveling; buying gifts for their loved ones; etc.

However, for e-commerce retail businesses the next 3 months (From Halloween to New Year) are pretty hectic, as they have to come up with new initiatives to sell more products, delight all customers, and most importantly have a season to remember.

To help them save time and effort. We have come up with some ideas that can help them get prepared in advance and increase revenue opportunities this festive season.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at what they are.

But before that, we at LateShipment.com have prepared a downloadable checklist comprising 30+ actionable ways to help you boost holiday sales. Feel free to check it out.

How E-commerce Businesses Can Have a Great Festive Season in 2022

1. Anticipate higher than regular seasonal visitors/potential shoppers

Holiday sales are usually 3x or even 4x than the rest of the year. Also, this year, experts are still hopeful of holiday retail and e-commerce sales increasing over 2021 numbers despite inflation putting a burden on customers’ spending.

Thus, it is clear that e-commerce businesses will have to deal with a higher number of shoppers than usual. However, more shoppers won’t equal more sales if businesses have not anticipated this holiday season trend.

For example,

A website/ application that is not optimized to handle the incoming traffic and crashes often
A lack of inventory at hand that there are frequent ‘out-of-stock’ labels on fast-selling products
Insecure site and payment gateways
A lack of personalized experience

All of it can cause customer dissatisfaction and discourages sales and repeat purchases.

Therefore, businesses must start with an optimized shopping experience to enjoy festive season success before the incoming rush.

2. Get into the festive mood

A great way to display trustworthiness in today’s scenario is staying relevant to the current trends and frequently updating business practices to suit the customers’ trends.

Let’s take a look at the former for now.

Imagine customers with the festive mood flowing through them, looking for holiday gifts for a very important person in their life. But to their shock, the website looks the same old — without a holiday theme, no special season offers, no special product launches, etc. This gives them the feeling that they might be shopping for the holiday season in March and June. And this might be bad for businesses.

To avoid this scenario, businesses must extend the holiday theme across social media promotions, landing pages, and the website (primarily the home page and product pages) to display that they’re just as excited about the festive season as their customers.

3. Provide a lot of seasonal offers and giveaways

Attracting customers’ attention by getting into the festive mood is just half the job done. There’s more to do if businesses are actively looking to increase their conversion rates. All of it involves providing offers and giveaways.

Run limited-time offers such as “Flat 25% on combos”, “Buy 1 Get 1”, etc.
Include giveaway elements such as a countdown timer or a limited-period discount spin-wheel on your landing pages
Share special offers for customers who are sitting on the fence
Use non-product marketing techniques such as “Free shipping and returns”, “Cash-on-Delivery”, “BOPIS, etc.
Begin a customer loyalty program and share personalized recommendations during order tracking moments (products that go well together)

Such offers can help businesses to bring in new customers by catching their attention, preventing cart abandonment, and also encouraging repeat shoppers.

However, businesses must keep in mind that offers must be treated as the last arrow in the quiver. Therefore, they must be strategically placed across campaign funnel stages, so that they’re not overlapped and result in higher acquisition costs.

4. Expand your sales channels to boom festive season sales

One of the great ways for businesses to maximize sales during the festive season is considering making use of multiple channels other than their e-commerce store, such as:

Online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
Social commerce: sell your products directly on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Brick-and-mortar shops: Ensure your efforts are consistent across online and offline channels.

The idea of selling your products on multiple channels, particularly social media platforms is a great way to improve the CX as customers now enjoy better convenience by shopping from the place where they spend most of their time.

All brands have to do now is not stop with just introducing different channels but integrating them to offer the same level of experience across channels.

5. Update your seasonal merchandising strategy

The festive season is also a great way to introduce new products to your showcase. It might be too late to start with it now. But I’m guessing you, as an e-commerce retailer, would’ve had that figured out.

Interacting with customers can give brands an idea of what their customers expect from them. If a major demographic of them desire specific seasonal products, then brands have no choice but to sell them as holiday specials.

Even if brands aren’t keen on introducing new products to their shelves, they can still make use of their merchandising strategy by categorizing seasonal items into holiday gift bundles and creating upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Quick pro tip: ensure that the product pages have clear and accurate product descriptions, sizing charts, etc. This creates a win-win situation for both customers and merchants as the former is now the recipient of a great customer experience while the latter can reduce cart abandonment.

6. Focus on providing memorable post-purchase experiences

All brands are hell-bent on making their customers hit that ‘buy’ button. But most of them unwillingly leave out what happens later as they feel the post-purchase phase to be the responsibility of a third-party shipping carrier (who does not share the same level of commitment to it as you do).

However, what must be kept in mind is that the post-purchase experience is just as (if not more) important than every other step in the customer journey. It’s the last touchpoint your customer will have with your brand, and if, God forbid, it goes haywire, it could be what your customers remember most about your brand.

For starters, here are some ways e-commerce businesses can focus on providing memorable CX in the post-purchase phase:

Proactively resolve delivery issues before they impact your customer.
Keep customers updated on their order status to mitigate customer anxiety about late deliveries and lost/damaged shipments.
Provide an on-brand and seamless order tracking experiences.
Regularly collect customer feedback and make better shipping decisions to optimize the shipping experience.
Make the returns process easy and frictionless for your customers.
Make the packaging and unboxing experience special via personal and seasonal messaging.

Remember, don’t just stop with making a one-time sale. Also focus on providing memorable post-purchase experiences, as they are key to customer delight and long-lasting relationships.

Final Word

We’ve just scratched the surface here.

For deeper insights, feel free to check out our downloadable holiday sales checklist for the 2022 season.

The checklist provides you 30+ actionable ways to help you boost your holiday sales and ultimately have a successful 2022 holiday season.

The post How E-commerce Businesses Can Have a Great Festive Season in 2022 appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

8 Tips to Handle the E-commerce Holiday Rush

Sashank Ravindranath — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 14:00:23 +0000

Less than 2 months to go for the holiday season to officially kick off — which means as an e-commerce retailer, you have to make use of the little prep time left to get better equipped at handling the holiday rush. Here are some tips categorized via different stages of the customer journey to help you do just that.

Pre-purchase: Awareness and Exploration

1. Plan your promotional strategies in advance

The holiday season is the best time to spread the word about your product and e-commerce business. However, it can be difficult amidst your competitors trying the same thing. This is why you need to be unique with your promotional campaigns.

For starters,

Bring the whole holiday spirit across your website and marketing campaigns to let customers know that you’re relevant.
Keep posting interactive content on your Social channels to catch the viewers’ attention
Add a touch of personalization in your conversations to make sure that your brand is at the top of their minds.
Provide timely offers and discounts across different funnel stages to increase your chances of sales and repeat sales and reduce cart abandonment.
Influencer partnerships and event marketing to spread the word about your product on a larger scale and increase your lead base.

2. Optimize your online store

If your online store’s website or application is ineffective to handle the holiday rush, then all your promotional efforts just go down the drain. Therefore, keep in mind to optimize your website and motivate shoppers to get converted as customers.

Here’s how you can do it right before the holiday season:

Increase website load speed
Optimize the User Interface and Experience (UI, UX)
Enable seamless checkout
Proper and interactive content.

3. Talk great content

One of the things that go well with a great-looking website or application is content — which needs to complement each other to enhance brand content and widen reach.

Your content is your key to the locked doors of holiday shoppers’ hearts. Therefore, take care of it before the holiday rush gets into action.

Here are some suggestions that you can keep in mind:

Fill your content with relevant holiday-aligned keywords to increase your ecommerce site’s traffic.
Include User-Generated Content (UGC) in your content strategy to cement social proof for your e-commerce business.
Add product reviews and customer testimonies to make your brand seem trustworthy.
Keep your content holiday-themed and make it interactive to engage with shoppers who visit your online store.

Purchase: Conversion

4. Enhance your sales game

The holiday season is your chance to make more sales than the rest of the year combined. Therefore, look out for strategies that help you make use of the holiday rush and maximize revenue.

When it comes to your sales strategies, here are some areas that you can cover:

Open doors to new sales channels like marketplaces, to reach customers where they spend most of their time (Amazon, Instagram, TikTok, etc).
Make effective use of social commerce to improve brand recognition and increase incoming order rates.
Identify your industry products that are the “buzz” or “sensation” for this year’s holiday season, ensure you have proper stock of them, and promote them as your bestsellers.
Use the holiday rush as an opportunity to cross-sell products that might go along great with their recent purchases.

5. Automate whatever you can

In the retail e-commerce space, it is always wise to stay relevant and implement technological advancements if you need to keep up with the ever-growing competition. One of such technology trends is to automate specific areas of your existing business operations to make your process efficient.

Here are different business areas where you can introduce automation:

Automate email and SMS notifications for different transactional shipping events such as order shipped, in transit, delivered, etc.
Keep track of your inventories and avoid over-stock and out-of-stock issues with the help of an Inventory Management solution or a Third-party logistics (3PL) partner, who can help automate logistics.
Automate customer support by incorporating chatbots into your mix and make issue resolution self-service.
Make returns management automated by integrating with a system that centralizes returns and enables easy configuration, management, and tracking.

Post-purchase: Loyalty

6. Empower your support reps

The holiday rush makes your customers increasingly anxious regarding their orders. This leads them to bombard your support reps with repeated order status inquiries and consumes all of your team’s time.

Therefore, it is time to empower your support reps to properly address customer issues and display your strong commitment to the high standard of customer service you offer. Here’s how you can do just that:

Enable a live chat option 24/7 to ensure faster issue resolution with low or even zero support interactions.
Empower your support team to proactively resolve issues and take preemptive action before discrepancies impact your customers.

7. Provide delightful shipping and delivery experiences

Your customers hitting the ‘buy’ button is only half of the job done. There’s an entire phase of the customer journey called ‘the post-purchase experience (shipping, delivery, and returns)’ left that plays a great role in your CX efforts.

Focusing on your post-purchase experiences, particularly during the holiday rush is not just an option because 1-in-3 customers will stop shopping with a brand after just ONE instance of a bad post-purchase experience.

Here are some ways for you to optimize your shipping and delivery experiences. We’ll focus specifically on returns later:

Partner with multiple shipping carriers (FedEx, UPS) and provide multiple delivery options (two-day, BOPIS) to manage incoming shipping volumes and reduce the odds of delivery delays.
Employ real-time shipment tracking to enable customers to seamlessly track their orders via order tracking pages and know what’s happening at a glance.
Keep your customers in the loop of their orders throughout the delivery lifecycle and mitigate their anxiety.
Delight your customers by providing on-brand order tracking experiences via shipping notifications and tracking pages.
Regularly collect delivery feedback from your customers to make better shipping decisions and improve customer loyalty.

8. Create a frictionless returns strategy

Up to 30% of eCommerce orders are returned and 96% of the customers will shop with a store again if it offers seamless returns and exchanges. Therefore, make sure your returns strategy is easy to process for the customer, while also not compromising your revenue.

Here’s how you can do it:

Draft a clear-cut returns policy that is neither too strict to repel customers nor too lenient to encourage fraudulent returns.
Make returns easy and seamless for your customers with faster returns initiation and frictionless returns status tracking.
Provide flexible return methods such as exchanges and store credits to convert returns into repeat purchases.

Bottom Line

As we mentioned earlier, the holiday season is a time when the rush is high and you can bring in more sales.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon you to focus on the tips, highlighting different areas of the customer journey to provide memorable experiences (CX) this Holiday season.

Preparing for the upcoming holiday rush is just one part of the Holiday season. There’s more to do if you’re looking to get your hands on a great holiday season sale.

Make use of our e-commerce holiday sales checklist — a collection of strategies, along with relevant factual and unbiased insights that help you maximize holiday sales in 2022, at a time when inflation is having an impact on consumer spending.

Download, read through, and let us know your feedback on how helpful it was for your business. Feel like we’ve missed something? Share that as well, so that we can make improvements.

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14 Holiday Insights for E-commerce in 2022

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 14:25:47 +0000

The holiday season is the time when businesses need fresh insights to draw their plans so that they could make the most sales. But, coming up with holiday plans has been an wildride — thanks to recent global events.

E-commerce, particularly shipping and delivery has taken a toll since the 2020 holiday season. First, there was a widespread infection of COVID-19 prompting a surge in online shopping. In the 2021 season and 2022 so far, we’ve seen supply chain disruptions, followed by the geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

However, experts are hopeful that things are changing for the better yet we still need to keep an eye out to have a better understanding of how this season might turn out to stay ahead of potential issues.

Here are some critical e-commerce holiday insights such as time-tested predictions and trends to help you do just that.

1. How Will the 2022 Holiday Season Be Different?

1.1. Inflation will pose a problem

The annual inflation rate in the US accelerated to 9.1% as of June 2022, the worst since November of 1981, leading to resources such as oil and gas getting really expensive. However, as of now, there is a considerable decrease in gas prices, compared to a couple of months ago.

On the other hand, the global annual inflation rate is predicted to be around 6% by Christmas, making the holiday season inflation higher than its counterpart in 2021.

1.2. The impact of supply chain disruptions

Adding to the woes of inflation will be the increased odds of holiday gifts arriving late or getting out of stock for the worse. While not severe compared to last year’s holiday season, the supply chain constraints still very much exist and will pose a threat to e-commerce production and deliveries.

Experts are also adding that the efforts taken to improve the supply chain via strategies such as technological and workforce investments will make holiday items expensive as well.

1.3. We will see an extended holiday shopping season

As the holidays near, customers will be looking to start their shopping earlier, even as early as June for their Christmas gifts, to not fall prey to the increased costs and possible shipping delays.

Businesses too would be eager to capitalize on this opportunity and start extending their deals for BFCM (Black Friday – Cyber Monday) for more than a week. Thus, similar to the last two years, we can expect the holiday season to start sooner and go on for a few more days rather than just being single-day slots.

1.4. E-commerce will evolve and dominate the shopping space

E-commerce sales have been rapidly growing for the last couple of years and this time as well, one can see a 15.5% increase over 2021 and reach $236 billion. However, the worry of inflated costs on holiday gifts will lead to shoppers using marketplaces to buy many gifts at once.

Also, the need for convenience will put shoppers to buy their holiday gifts via mobile devices thus predicting mobile commerce sales to grow 20% over 2021 to $115 billion.

1.5. The competition between brands will be higher than ever

With e-commerce and consumer demand constantly on the rise, retail businesses that have not yet jumped on the online bandwagon will now take the opportunity to get started.

This makes it difficult for existing businesses to turn visitors into customers amidst the fierce competition during the holiday battlefield.

1.6. CX will be the key differentiator for holiday success

New marketing strategies such as discounts and offers are cool but remember — a lot of businesses might be doing the same thing thus, making you easily forgettable.

Therefore, if you really want to improve conversions and maximize sales during the peak season, you will have to provide personalized customer experiences that work as a differentiator for your brand. Also, in an experience economy, that is exactly what customers expect from you as well.

To help you get started, here are some ways to prepare your business for the holiday season by making use of Customer Experience (CX) as a competitive advantage.

2. How You Can Prepare for The 2022 Holiday Season

The customer’s journey with your brand consists of touch points between the two of you. From product discovery to post-purchase communication and returns, all touchpoints should be leveraged if you’re looking forward to offering the best possible experience for your customers.

If you are indeed looking to do just that, you need to keep up with these holiday insights in the form of handy trends in different areas of your business.

2.1. Make the website and checkout experience seamless

Despite lower COVID-19 cases and almost entire restrictions lifted, 57% of shoppers still planned to do their shopping online, with only 43% heading in-store in 2021.

If this number increases based on projections, the chances of your online store getting traffic also increase. However, all this opportunity is lost when your website is not optimized to gain or handle the holiday traffic, especially during peak shopping days like BFCM.

Website optimization can improve conversions by 70%.

So, what is that you should be focusing on to make sure that your website visitors convert into customers?

Outdated websites and social media campaigns can lead your customers to question the authenticity of your e-commerce store. Therefore, keep your website and social media pages holiday-aligned with new products and promotions for them to stay relevant.
Boring websites cause customers to drop off and heavily increase bounce rates. To avoid that scenario, produce content that is both educational and engaging. This can encourage visitors to stay long enough to hit that ‘buy’ button.
Slow and sloppy websites can lead to frequent crashing and result in frustrated visitors. So, frequently check and optimize your website’s loading speed and design leads to keep it user-friendly and reduce cart abandonment.

Following the above steps can ensure that you provide customers with a seamless experience and exceed their expectations when it comes to the checkout process.

2.2. Personalize the experience

Marketing campaigns aren’t just for making your customers shop with you for once. You can also use them wisely to increase your satisfaction metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or CLTV).

One way to do that is to make sure their experiences with your brand are personalized. Suggesting new products based on your customers’ recent purchases can spur them to spend more with your brand. For more personalized recommendations, you can collect information from them via feedback or ask them to fill out surveys such as questionnaires.

Remember, taking efforts to provide personalized experiences also impresses customers, who are delighted by your level of service to them.

2.3 Explore new ways to fulfill orders

A great customer experience strategy requires a time-tested strategy for multiple shipping and fulfillment options. And one way you can do that is by expanding your sales channels across your website.

Your customers use multiple devices while looking for convenient purchasing. Extend the same convenience for them while reaching out to them where they spend most of their time. P.S. You also get to make more sales this way.

When it comes to selling, try considering multiple sales channels such as marketplaces and social commerce. All you have to do is make sure you have the same level of user experience across these channels.

For fulfilling orders, make sure to explore convenient and customer-friendly ways like BOPIS (Buy Online & Pickup In-Store) and curbside pickups to enable your customers to collect their orders at the earliest without succumbing to delays.

You can also follow the same when it comes to shipping and delivery by offering multiple shipping options ranging from same-day delivery, overnight delivery, 2-day delivery, etc.

Providing your customers a list of options to choose what best suits them rather than putting them in a corner with a lack of choice, assures them of decision-making authority and boosts their confidence to keep shopping with you.

2.4. Be aware of shipping carrier deadlines & possible delays

Check here to see the FedEx holiday operations schedule for 2022 that can help you plan your shipments for the holiday season without succumbing to delays.

Click here to view the UPS holiday schedule that can give you tips for managing your shipping calendar and costs.

Being aware of the various timelines associated with shipping carriers can help you stay a step ahead of possible delays.

Major carriers like FedEx and UPS draw up special holiday-specific calendars each year. These contain important dates during the season as well as the last days for parcels to be handed off to the carrier to be delivered on time for key days like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Carriers have been following this necessary practice of setting deadlines for shipping because parcel volumes during the Holidays are typically significantly higher than during the rest of the year. In the past few years (and this year) it is bound to be even busier as more people choose online shopping than brick and mortar.

As an e-commerce retailer, you need to keep these deadlines in mind and be prepared to ship out your parcels on time to avoid your customers’ parcels getting delivered late on account of the considerably high volume that shipping carriers deal with at this time of the year. This assures, even in the slightest way, that your customers are not set up for frustration over their holiday gifts getting delayed but instead will have a seamless order delivery experience.

2.5. Give precedence to post-purchase CX

No matter how hard you try, delays are inevitable and can certainly hurt your customers’ happiness when it comes to order deliveries.

Worry not! That’s where the CX efforts you continue to take in the post-purchase phase come in handy.

Some of the best practices to optimize your post-purchase CX are:

Resolving delivery issues such as delays before customer impact
Keeping customers regularly informed of their order status
Increasing customer delight via tracking experiences that are on-brand
Improving delivery experiences by taking customer feedback into consideration
Making your returns process hassle-free, etc

All of this can improve your retention rate and particularly during a time like the Holiday season, can bring in more sales.

2.6. Clearly define & display your return policy & make returns easier

Having a clearly-defined and frictionless returns policy prominently displayed on your website makes your brand seem less risky for shoppers. In fact, the generous returns policy is one of the aspects that makes e-commerce giants like Amazon tick as a business.

Tailor your returns policy in a way that best suits your customers’ experiences as well as your business’ interests. For example, being too strict with your returns can repel customers from shopping with you a second time due to a lack of convenience.

At the same time, being too lenient can encourage unwanted and fraudulent returns that can be expensive for your business. Therefore, the best ploy would be to keep it balanced when it comes to the time window as well as the product condition.

Also, make returns easier for your customers, who already are not happy with returning a holiday gift that they longed for. You can do just that by making returns initiation frictionless via self-serve methods and keeping customers in the loop of their returns effortlessly.

2.7. Empower your customer-support executives

Regularly tending to customer queries such as delivery issues or WISMO inquiries takes up all of your support reps’ time thus, preventing them from tending to other important queries that can turn out costly for your business.

On the other hand, empowering your support reps to stay in the know of your customer’s parcels which are error-prone, and proactively resolving them before they impact your customer saves your reps’ time and also helps you forge strong relationships with your customer.

You can also provide omnichannel support on your website, social media, etc to avoid issues being escalated and reduce the number of support tickets being created.

2.8. Update your tracking pages with relevant campaigns

Beautiful-looking product pages with relevant holiday content set the customer on the path towards making that purchasing decision. So why not try the same strategy to target repeat shoppers?

Make your tracking experience more than just transactional by having personalized product recommendations for every customer and further encourage them by giving them special offers such as discounts on their upcoming purchase.

Customers engaged via tracking pages and delivery-related notifications have drastically reduced anxiety levels and would be glad to shop with you again given the experience you’ve provided them. Such personalized ads can truly ace the motivating factor and double your chances of driving repeat sales.

Implementing all of these might seem too much to do right before the holiday season. But trust me, they’re not.

These holiday insights set to provide the best possible experience for your customers can ultimately help you in making more sales, especially in an environment where your CX can work as a differentiator for your brand.

3. How LateShipment.com Can Help

LateShipment.com’s post-purchase suite, helps you focus on the post-purchase touchpoints of the customer journey and boost retention and lifetime value through memorable delivery and returns experiences this Holiday season, all while improving carrier performances and reducing shipping costs by up to 20%.

Our feature-packed Delivery Experience Management platform helps improve shipment visibility and drive customer delight post-purchase.
Our customer-first Returns Experience Management platform makes returns effortless and efficient — all while retaining revenue.
Our Automated Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution recovers dollars in the refund claims and enables you to make data-backed shipping choices.

LateShipment.com also seamlessly integrates with over 600 shipping carriers and business tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, CRM, and Marketing Automation tools to help you craft delightful post-purchase experiences, at scale.

Consider trying out LateShipment.com as well as these trends and let us know how well things worked out for you. Have any other trends that you would like to share with fellow e-commerce retailers? Let us know in the comments.

The post 14 Holiday Insights for E-commerce in 2022 appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

10 Ways to Turn a Holiday Shopper into a Lifetime Customer

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 13:47:04 +0000

Did you know that the chances of you doing business with a shopper is close to 4x more during the holiday season than on regular days?

That means, the holidays are the perfect time for you to make a strong impact on prospective customers and increase sales. But think about this, what if you could do more than just finishing a sale? What if you could improve your retention rates and turn a one-time holiday shopper into a lifetime customer?

Running an online business, you must already be aware of the impact of retention on your profit margins but let me reiterate the fact that increasing retention rates by just 5% can increase your profits by 25-95%.

One of the best ways to retain your customers is to offer them a great customer experience. This can ensure they will be coming back as regular customers, even after holiday sales. However, it is not as easy as it looks. This is because your CX efforts are often hindered by the existing post-purchase gap. And can turn out worse during busy times like the holiday season.

Post-purchase CX Challenges That Can Deter Holiday Shoppers

The control of customer experiences is strong with you until you direct all efforts to make your customers hit ‘buy’. But what happens beyond the buy button?

All of this can lead to severe issues for your business in the form of:

10% of all parcels shipped are either delayed, lost, or damaged
Customers blame and penalize the brand they shop from and NOT the shipping carriers for delivery failures
1-in-3 consumers will switch to a competitor after just ONE bad post-purchase experience with a brand
> 40% of all customer support tickets created are either shipping, delivery, or returns related.

Taking measures to close this post-purchase CX gap will ensure a positive impact on your customers’ lifetime value and the retention rate of your business. Here are the following ways you can adopt to improve your post-purchase CX and turn a one-time holiday shopper into a lifetime customer.

10 Post-purchase Strategies to Turn a Holiday Shopper into a Lifetime Customers

1. Optimize delivery experiences

1.1 Proactively identify and resolve delivery-related issues

Order deliveries during busy times like the holiday season are highly error-prone. Therefore, start monitoring your in-transit parcels in real-time and stay in the know about parcels facing delivery issues. This ensures proactive and faster resolution of delivery-related customer issues and ergo, sets the stage for your holiday shopper to enjoy a great post-purchase experience.

1.2 Reduce customer anxiety with automated shipping notifications

Customers are always anxious regarding their parcel status. This is only worsened during the holiday season. Use this opportunity to turn the tide in your favor and effectively engage with your customers throughout the order delivery lifecycle. Keeping your holiday shoppers informed via timely email and SMS alerts about their delivery status helps you reduce their anxiety levels and revives their trust in your brand.

1.3 Make order tracking self-serve to reduce delivery-related support tickets

Significantly reduce time-consuming (and expensive!) ticket volume raised by anxious holiday shoppers. Enable self-serve order tracking for your holiday shoppers directly from within your website or app. Your support reps will now have time to focus on more pressing issues that could hurt customer satisfaction. Your support reps can also give you a hand on product usage guidance or boosting sales via upselling.

1.4 Offer custom-built branded tracking experiences

To ensure seamless brand experiences in the order delivery phase, start taking complete control over every customer interaction. Offer brand consistent order tracking pages over the dull and off-brand tracking pages provided by the shipping carrier. Such beautiful and branded tracking experiences drive customer delight and keep your brand on the top of the supposedly one-time holiday shopper’s mind.

1.5 Leverage order tracking moments to increase sales and reduce unwanted returns

Make the tracking experience more than just transactional. Run post-purchase marketing campaigns on order tracking pages and double your chances of driving repeat sales. You can also consider featuring relevant product usage information and support channels to reduce the burden of unwanted returns for both holiday shoppers and yourself.

1.6 Get customer feedback around delivery experiences

Capture customer feedback after every order delivery to know how your holiday shoppers feel about their delivery experiences. This can help you understand the detractors of a great CX and make necessary changes to perfect your post-purchase strategy. Also, using this data to consistently direct efforts to improve your CX largely promotes brand credibility.

2. Enhance your returns process to make it hassle-free

2.1 Offer easy-to-initiate returns

The first step to hassle-free returns is to be transparent and establish trust with a clear returns policy. The best ploy is to keep it balanced between being holiday shopper-friendly and meeting your objectives. You can extend your customers’ confidence to keep shopping with you by making returns effortless via fast and easy initiation.

2.2 Communicate throughout every step of the returns process

Similar to deliveries, send proactive updates on returns requests, via automated status notifications and a live returns tracking page. This eliminates customer anxiety and keeps holiday shoppers in the loop of their returns effortlessly.

2.3 Reduce returns by encouraging repeat purchases

70% of all returns are size and fit related — meaning you don’t have to give your holiday shopper a refund for almost three-fourths of returns initiated by them. Get smart by incentivizing customers to opt for exchanges and store credit options rather than refunds. Encouraging your customers to shop with you again instead of cutting them off with refunds helps you retain both holiday shoppers and the revenue they bring in.

3. Keep a close watch on delivery issues

Make sure your deliveries are on-time by keeping a close watch on possible issues during the holiday season. This can help you captivate a regular holiday shopper to spend more with your business in the coming days by reducing their frustrations. Also, this data at hand works as a bonus in evaluating your carriers’ performance and making informed shipping decisions, which can ultimately lead to lower shipping costs during the already expensive holiday season.

Implementing these ways might seem too much to do right before the holiday season. But trust me, they’re not. Delivering these stunning post-purchase experiences for your shoppers ultimately helps you strengthen customer relationships and foster brand loyalty.

And if you’re looking to be an early bird and get this all done even before the holiday shopping season arrives, here comes an all-in-one platform built to deliver phenomenal post-purchase CX and measurable results.

Provide CX Excellence Beyond the Buy Button with Lateshipment.Com

Our feature-packed Delivery Experience Management platform helps improve shipment visibility and drive customer delight post-purchase.
Our customer-first Returns Experience Management platform makes returns effortless and efficient — all while retaining revenue.
Our Automated Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution recovers dollars in the refund claims and enables you to make data-backed shipping choices.

Bottom Line

Holidays are the time of the year when companies try to maximize their profits from one-time shoppers and gain loyal customers for the rest of the following year. If you play your cards well with your post-purchase at this time, you will be able to increase the satisfaction of your customers and keep them happy with every order.

Which of these ways are you looking forward to implementing for your own online business to turn a holiday shopper into a lifetime customer? Let us know in the comments section!

Meanwhile, feel free to check out LateShipment.com or write to us at sales@lateshipment.com

The post 10 Ways to Turn a Holiday Shopper into a Lifetime Customer appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Must Know BFCM Customer Service Insights | Zoho x LateShipment.com

Hemalatha Sekar — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 05:37:02 +0000

2021 holiday season, especially the BFCM period, witnessed one of the busiest e-commerce seasons ever to be recorded.

The US holiday e-commerce sales hit $206.88 billion and accounted for a record 18.9% of total holiday season retail sales. – eMarketer

This colossal success can be attributed to factors brooding over a couple of years such as the increased number of online shoppers and the extended BFCM run (due to the pandemic-induced change in the shopping habits).

If you remember, BFCM was a time when order volumes were high and shipping carriers were straining to meet delivery promises, increasing the magnitude of the problem multifold for the upcoming Holiday season.

Ensuring quality customer support helps you handle all of these without a worry. On the other hand, failing to do so can cause further trouble to your e-commerce business.

But was it truly exceptional customer service that helped businesses equip themselves to handle these challenges better?

To understand the magnanimity and study the impact of this behavioral shift, we partnered with our friends at Zoho Desk to study the metrics on customer service around BFCM. Here’s what we found.

Important BFCM-related Customer Service Metrics

Channels used to raise tickets

Let’s start with the most obvious. How did customers reach out to businesses with their queries in the first place?

Knowing your customers’ preferred channels can help you be prepared to reach them at any of them and not miss out or provide a delayed response. Because not doing so can result in weaker relationships and customer churn.

During BFCM 2021, Emails were primarily used to raise tickets, accounting for more than 90 percent of the tickets raised. Telephony and chat assistance took the consecutive places after email.

Ticket Volume during BFCM

The primary task of any help desk is to maintain a consistently low ticket volume. But the phase of BFCM saw about a 50% increase in ticket volume.

The reason behind it is pretty obvious. Customers are almost always demanding, can be either obvious and stupid, or their issues can be way too difficult for you to resolve. But we can’t blame them. Customers can get easily frustrated due to their impatience resulting from anticipation.

This sometimes leads them to bombard your support reps with inquiries and thus increase the ticket volume. To avoid this situation, you need to look forward to resolving incoming tickets at a steady rate and make way for fresh tickets.

However, despite the help desk maintaining a healthy ticket churn, tickets still tend to pile up. This might be an indicator of underlying problems with the help desk

The period between Nov 19th and 25th saw a 20% increase in incoming ticket volume, summing up to a total of 3,026,666 overall tickets.

The second window [Nov 26th – 30th] saw a further increase in incoming ticket volume – 3,235,508; another 10% rise from the previous number, totaling up to a whole 50% increase in incoming tickets.

Average Response Time

One way of preventing tickets from piling up is by reducing the time taken to resolve each of them. To do that, you need to equip your support team with all the required data that can help them resolve issues faster.

However, that wasn’t the case with most businesses during BFCM.

The Average First Response time was recorded at 492 minutes, while the average resolution time took 9337 minutes. That is, it took an average of 6.4 days to resolve an issue reported by a customer during the BFCM period.

The above stats are in contrast to what customers expect of their brands. To give you some context, this is what a modern customer believes to be the ideal customer support service, according to FinancesOnline.

Self-Service is on the Rise

Did you know that customers have always had strong expectations regarding how they want to be serviced? In fact, customers have time after time, stressed on prioritizing customer service over the price, product, or how you sell.

84% of shoppers are willing to spend more to get better customer service and 79% of customers also say that personalized customer support is more important than personalized marketing.

However, customer service can be tricky at times. Not everybody wants to be helped. Many customers are eager to resolve their own issues and go ahead with their day. For such customers, businesses can look forward to making frequent customer queries and issues self-service.

E-commerce businesses can make customer support self-service via channels such as a knowledge base on their website, proactive resolution, help widgets, chatbots, knowledge base, and order tracking pages.

Comparing all the above statistics you would get a clear idea of how far from expectations the actual service was during the BFCM, especially in e-commerce.

Thus, the verdict is clear.

Offering stellar customer support during important Holiday season events such as BFCM can bring in plenty of benefits. To know the benefits, let us get to know what e-commerce businesses such as yours can provide customers with a superior support experience

Importance of Optimizing Your Post-purchase Customer Experience

It cannot be stressed enough what a difference, providing a memorable post-purchase experience can do to build strong customer relationships.

Many businesses push the envelope on things like design and marketing and yet ignore the post-purchase experience.

If you take a look at the graph above, you can see that over 40% of the customer support inquiries are post-purchase (shipping, delivery, and returns) related.

The main reason why customer queries during the post-purchase phase are higher than during pre-purchase is that customers’ anticipation is at its peak when they are waiting for their packages and we’re sure your support agents can’t agree more.

So, how exactly can e-commerce businesses improve customer service in the post-purchase phase?

What can companies do to better their customer service game, particularly during the post-purchase phase?

We’ll get straight to the point. It is of utmost importance to address the elephant in the room — the customer services issues during busy times like BFCM.

High ticket volume and prolonged resolution time can be reduced by e-commerce businesses via automation, self-service, and proactive outreach.

First Response time and average response time can also be reduced via automated updates in shipping, returns, and refunds of customers, given that over 40% of all e-commerce queries are post-purchase related.

This is why investing in a postpurchase experience suite would have proven fruitful to the e-commerce brands.

With separate branded tracking pages dedicated to tracking shipments and refunds, most of the delivery-related queries can be deflected.
A Delivery Experience Management suite also enables brands to send automated updates that can be customized for their customers. These proactive and empathetic upgrades play a vital role in boosting your customer experience score.
Be proactive in communicating your delivery updates, particularly those facing delivery issues, by auto-triggering tickets on your helpdesk and bringing down your overall ticket resolution time.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Download the infographic to get more insights on customer behavior during the BFCM period, and ensure you go in prepared to wow your customers this BFCM. It’s never too early to get started!

The LateShipment.com x Zoho Desk Advantage

The LateShipment.com integration x Zoho Desk enables your customer support team to:

Automatically trigger delivery-related tickets for delivery errors that are preemptively pushed to Zoho Desk from LateShipment.com
Proactively address delivery-related issues from Zoho Desk based on the tickets generated from LateShipment.com by initating contextual communication.
Set up automated email and SMS notifications for shipping events like “Shipped,” “Out for delivery,” “Attempted,” and “Delivered” to keep customers in the loop of their orders.
Provide customers with easy-to-track, branded tracking pages, so they can have quick access to their order delivery status
Capture critical feedback from customers on their delivery satisfaction to improve delivery quality.

That’s not all! Here’s how you can save up to 20% on your shipping costs.

With this integration, you can also take advantage of LateShipment.com’s Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution to automatically identify, file, and recover your shipping refunds effortlessly and save up to 20% on your shipping costs; without changing a thing about your shipping operations!

How to enable the LateShipment.com - Zoho integration

Create a LateShipment.com account
Add your shipping carrier details
Connect your Zoho Desk account
And you’re set!

That’s all for now! It’s now time for you to start providing better post-purchase experiences while we collect and deposit your refunds.

LateShipment.com for Zoho Desk can be a win for your organization. It only takes two minutes to get started on providing your customers with memorable delivery experiences at scale and saving money.

Explore LateShipment.com for Zoho Desk

The post Must Know BFCM Customer Service Insights | Zoho x LateShipment.com appeared first on Lateshipment.com.