By Rob Toledo
Ah, the holidays. Remember them? A time when merchandise practically walked itself from crowded shelves to customer doorsteps — when being an ecommerce site meant checking and rechecking and re-rechecking that your servers could handle daily surges of frantic last minute shoppers. It all seems so far away now.
But springtime does not have to mean the ecommerce doldrums. Though your customer base might not be as imbued with the same sense of urgency as they do on December 23rd, there are a number of key ways to rev your ecommerce sales engine throughout the year. Let’s take a look at a few ways to do just that:
1. Take Your Inspiration from the Holidays
Yep, our first stop on the holiday nostalgia train is (drumroll please!): the holidays. Chances are, even if back then your products were hot sellers on their own, you also drove those sales with a concerted marketing push. Well, there’s no reason why you can’t repurpose a fair amount of that content to your efforts now. With a little restructuring, that blog post entitled “Santa’s Top 10 Tips for Selling Your Crafts Online” can easily become “Top 10 Springtime Tips” instead. And those elf-themed 25 percent off coupons? Swap the little helpers out for flowers, tweak the copy, and you’ve got yourself a new campaign.
Of course, whatever you repurpose will truly have to be different from the original, or else you’ll get pinged by Google for duplicate content, and your most loyal audience members will feel cheated. Amazon offers holiday ecommerce tips; use these as a guide, and go from there.
2. Up Your Facebook Game
Chances are, you have a Facebook page. But are you really using it to its maximum traffic-driving benefit? If you’re just tossing up a few posts here and there, the answer is a clear no. Spring is the perfect season for a little refreshment. Start by doing a page audit. Take a look at your analytics to see what kind of posts your fans are engaging with. Also take note of just how often you’re posting and the kind of content you’re providing. Is it varied? Does it provide expert help while still personalizing your brand? How often do you post videos and images, such as product collages or photos of your customers using your products in interesting ways? You can garner on average two times the amount of comments and likes with the latter included, which is bound to turn into traffic to your main site.
Your Facebook page is also a great place to get to know your customers. Pay attention to what they’re saying on your posts, respond to every comment, and ask for their opinions through surveys. Additional ways to engage customers include offering caption contests, gift certificates or other giveaways, and incentives, like free shipping. Taken together, all of these approaches are a great way to drive interest, engagement, conversions, and eyeballs to your main site.
3. Embrace Imagery With Instagram
If photos are a key part of capturing comments and likes on Facebook, imagine what they can do on social sites dedicated to imagery. Instagram, for example, has a massive and engaged audience of over 100 million people, many of whom enjoy participating in photo contests and otherwise interacting with brands.