While many of the early holiday sales figures for 2013 have been mixed, there’s one thing that seems consistent. Price competition is stronger than usual.
Early results show shoppers are spending less per purchase this year (3.9% less according to Bloomberg) and at least some of that is blamed on deep discounts.
So What Are You Going to Do About It?
The obvious answer is that you may need get into more price competition than you bargained for.
But you can offset some of the costs of added price competition with higher conversion rates.
The problem is that it’s a little late for this holiday season to get into a heavy conversion rate optimization program for your website and individual landing pages.
So here’s a few quick things you can do “on the fly” to give your conversions a boost and avoid competing on price alone:
- Coupons with Purchase – Offer a discount coupon for future purchases. Make it valid after the holidays or only on regularly-priced merchandise. Yes, it’s the same as a price discount, but you will encourage return purchases and defer the price cut to when your prices aren’t already discounted.
- Gift with Purchase – Adding a premium, even something as simple as a tote bag, can take customer’s eyes off lower prices elsewhere. Here’s what Nordstrom does in their Beauty section.
- Really Highlight Your Free Shipping – Having to pay for shipping is the biggest reason for shopping cart abandonment. Don’t wait until they are in the conversion funnel – the sooner you tell them you ship for free, the better.
- Get Social – Promote your Facebook posts. Yes, it costs some money, but you can promote just a single post for the cost of lunch. Promote your best deals and value-added features, like gift with purchase, coupons and free shipping.
Pinterest – If you haven’t already, open a Pinterest account for your business, add as many of your product photos as you can and their prices. Shoppers will then be able to browse your products according to price on a social platform where they spend almost twice as much as Facebook.
None of these are a magic pill. But conversion rate optimization can be a hedge against lower sales totals.
