By Allison Wilkinson
For avid shoppers and bargain seekers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are even bigger holidays than Thanksgiving. But even your most loyal customers appreciate the opportunity to save money and get an early start on their holiday shopping. Reward your customers and help boost customer loyalty by incorporating these strategies to increase sales transactions on Cyber Monday and ensure customer loyalty all year long.
Offer Promotional Discounts & Free Shipping
If you want to keep your customers satisfied on Cyber Monday, make sure to offer your best deals of the entire year. Don’t cop out by offering a five percent discount or only discounting a few specific items. To really thank your loyal customers and inspire them to continue their loyalty, offer a site-wide discount at a high percentage than your usual sales (think 30 percent or more) and pair it with free shipping for orders over a designated dollar amount.
Take it a step further and offer certain choice customers early access to get first dibs on the sale items. For instance, you could reward your newsletter subscribers and reveal the discount code a few hours earlier than you reveal it to website visitors. Or you could reward you social media followers with special access or even a unique offer. Whatever approach you decide, be sure to announce your plans a few days in advance so you can leverage your Cyber Monday sale to get additional newsletter subscribers and social media followers.
Optimize Your Website
Once you’ve finally lured customers to your site with a great discount, the last thing you want is for poor website performance to frustrate them, or worse, prevent customers from completing a sale. Run comprehensive testing to evaluate your site performance and page loading speeds in the days leading up to Cyber Monday. The goal should be for customers to have a seamless user experience, even with heavy visitor traffic. Make sure to double check the accuracy of your inventory system and ensure that it can keep up with demand on the big day.
If after all of this testing and optimization, you still notice some quirks, be open and upfront with your customers about them. For instance, baby retailer Freshly Picked recently offered exclusive tips to newsletter subscribers for ways to make the most of one of the company’s biggest promotions of the year. The company’s sales garner massive traffic spikes, so these hacks are helpful for customers who are looking to make a specific purchase.
Stand Behind Your Shipping
While mail services can be somewhat unpredictable due to the high volume of shipments during the holiday season, this doesn’t change the fact that your customers deserve to receive their purchases promptly. Be as clear as possible with your shipping options, spelling out the shipping timeframes and pricing in an obvious place on your website. Take it a step further as Christmas nears, specifying what dates orders must be made by with the various shipping speeds in order to receive them by December 24.
In instances where products do not arrive within the designated window, be quick to remedy the issue. For instance, you could refund the shipping fee, or in the event that the customer took advantage of a free shipping offer, you could provide a discount code for 10 percent off a future order.
One company known for superior customer service on this matter is Amazon. In fact, for Prime members, if you don’t receive your item within the guaranteed two day shipping window, the company will extend your Prime membership by a month upon request.
Allison Wilkinson – As a mom, wife, writer, runner and amateur chef, adventure is the name of the game for Allison. When she’s not exploring with her toddler, she’s researching her next family vacation, trying to answer the never-ending question of what to make for dinner or taking some me time on her yoga mat.
