We all know retail got flipped upside this year. The question now remains, what will all this mean for the 2020 holiday season?

The good news is, eCommerce is the place to be right now. The not-so-good news is, consuming buying habits have shifted like crazy since last holiday shopping season.

When eCommerce numbers have been hitting Black Friday frenzy numbers since April, what can brands do to prepare? First and foremost, focus on your consumers. Let’s take a look at some of the top 2020 eCommerce strategies for delighting customers this holiday season.

What Consumers Want this Year

Personalized Online Experience

Customers expect to be catered to these days. They want streamlined online shopping, convenient shipping options, personalized product recommendations and more. If your website is lacking these elements, it might be time to give your shopping experience a boost.

This also applies to your marketing communications. Try using some more targeted messaging and personalized offers in your emails to really get those click-through rates up.

Prep Your Merchandising Strategy

Time to do some serious planning. Figuring out what products you will sell most during the holidays is key, and it might not be the same products this year as last year. Dig into your current sales and identify any trends or shifts that may indicate what’s going to be popular this holiday season.

Then decide how you want to highlight these key items on your site. Do you need new festive product photography? Think about creating a new “gifts” category on your website to drive more traffic to these products and help direct consumers to the items they want.

Don’t Bomb on Returns

We know, returns suck. But they are also a great opportunity for you to win back the customer. They liked you enough to buy once, the last thing you want to do is mess that up during the returns process.

Most importantly, make it super easy for customers to make a return. Offer pre-paid shipping labels and make your return policy information easy to find on your website. If you want, you can take it a step farther and offer a discount to entice them to give you another try.

Show Customers Some Love

Your marketing should always be about connecting with your customers, but it’s even more important around the holidays. First, there’s more money at stake, and second, there’s more competition.

Make sure you are really leveraging user-generated content on your social media accounts, and highlighting great product reviews on your website. Bring a little festive storytelling into your marketing and messaging. Everyone is in a jolly mood around the holidays (at least until we get just a little too much family time…), so take advantage of that and have some fun!

SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a great way to capture customer traffic. Tons of people will be searching for gift items they don’t normally shop for, and therefore don’t know where to look. Optimizing not only your homepage, but also your product pages, can give you a big leg up.

When it comes to SEO, we can’t stress enough what a major difference a real SEO expert can make. The costs may be higher for someone with great experience, but the ROI will be so worth it.

Kick Butt this Holiday Season

The unknowns ahead this year can be intimidating. However, with the right preparation and some good hustle, you can give customers the shopping experience they want and have a fantastic holiday season.

If you need some help bringing your email and social media strategies up to speed before the holidays, we’ve got a few badass marketers at Nomadd that are here to help.