5 Best Practices to Boost Sales during the Holiday Season

You have every intention to increase your sales during the holiday season (naturally), but just can’t seem to nail down an effective strategy. Days and weeks pass, and still no actionable plan. Soon enough, the holiday season is in full swing. Once that happens, you’re scrambling- hoping to capture some sales, and realizing it’s too late. The agony. Another missed opportunity. Does it always have to be this way?

It doesn’t.

We’ve compiled 5 best practices you should keep in mind when crafting your Q4 sales strategy.

1. Keep an eye out for deadlines – Selling during the holidays requires merchants to stay laser focused and organized. To put things into perspective as to why this is so important, more and more consumers are browsing and purchasing online Newegg has carefully monitored this trend and developed key promotions throughout Q4 to cater to these consumers generating record high traffic both on onsite and mobile. By knowing the upcoming deadlines you can plan ahead for those future campaigns, get your products seen earlier and more frequently, and avoid running out of time or mis-allocating your inventory. We advise that you communicate frequently with your category and merchandising managers. The team will keep you up-to-date on upcoming campaigns and deadlines.

2. Assess your product portfolio – The holidays are not the time to list and sell every product you have in the barn. Rather, it’s the best time to merchandise trending or gifting items at competitive price points. We suggest you curate products from the following trending categories: Consumer Electronics, Gaming, Radio Controlled Toys, Wearable Tech, Car Audio, Personal Transportation, Tools, and Small Home Appliances. Last but not least, secure enough inventory. The last thing you want to happen is a lot of orders coming in, but you don’t have enough inventory to fulfill.

3. Dress to impress—your content that is. You’ve selected the best products from your assortment. What’s next? Enhance the way your product page looks. Long gone are the days where you throw a listing up and hope it sells. So one of the best ways to spruce up your content is have your product listing tell a story; meaning content should engage consumers while being informative. Here is an example of what that looks like.
   
   As you can see, the seller populated the listing with lifestyle shots, embedded videos, and included informative content describing the product. This is what you want your content to look like. And you can do that by leveraging A+ Content Services. The service will piece together the assets producing a listing that is similar to the example. It’s as simple as that.

4. Save time and money on fulfillment – Remember when we mentioned securing enough inventory was crucial? Well, ensuring that a streamlined fulfillment service is in place is just as critical, especially around key holidays. According to Internet Retailer, UPS alone shipped an average of 18.6 million packages per day. Expedited shipping posted a double digit growth further demonstrating this service is no longer a luxury but a commodity. Typically sellers opt in to handle their own logistics, which is fine provided the whole process is smooth. We emphasize this point because consumers demand better service during this season. In addition, these operational costs affect your bottom line. An alternative that minimizes complexity and saves on costs is Newegg’s fulfillment program Shipped by Newegg (SBN). With SBN, sellers can hand-off the entire logistics and customer service operations to the Newegg team. By doing so, you can focus on selling. We take care of the rest. To learn more about SBN, please visit www.newegg.com/sbn.

5. Putting it all together— By setting up the blocking and tackling (steps 1 through 4), your products are ready for the spotlight. Newegg offers a number of placements ranging from onsite to email to external marketing channels such as Affiliates and Google PLA.
   Leveraging any combination of these placements can boost sales and facilitate long term brand building. To participate in upcoming campaigns and promotions, please contact us.