Category: Advice

After you established a strong brand and made your first online sale, you probably hoped that running an ecommerce store would feel like clockwork. However, in order to gain loyal customers, you’ll likely need to run frequent promotions.

Fortunately, you can use some key dates to guide you. Taking advantage of the most important ecommerce sales bonanzas, such as Mother's Day and Cyber Monday, is key. That way, you can create dynamic marketing campaigns for times of the year when people are already spending lots of money.

In this post, we’ll discuss why you may want to base your promotional calendar on some specific holidays. Then we’ll highlight the six best days of the year to run online sales. Let’s get started!

Why You May Want to Run eCommerce Promotions on Specific Holidays

While evergreen content and promotions are essential for any online business, holiday deals offer a unique opportunity. These limited-time offer sales will likely draw attention in a way that run-of-the-mill discounts cannot.

Holiday deals can be designed around vibrant color schemes or a particular seasonal product. This makes them more fun and interesting.

Furthermore, this sort of playful content is great for social media, such as on Instagram:

Even when they are less flashy, these campaigns still create a sense of urgency that can be hard to resist.

Additionally, holiday campaigns are ideal when you're hoping to create a comprehensive conversion funnel. This is especially true for your email marketing efforts. Through this channel, you can use targeted messaging to create hype around a holiday sale well before it arrives.

Furthermore, as your business grows, cyclical sales on specific days can signal to your audience that you're dependable. For all of these reasons, we recommend that every ecommerce business consult the most important holidays when creating a promotions strategy.

6 Best Days of the Year to Run Ecommerce Promotions

Now, let's go through some of the most lucrative holidays for ecommerce stores. To keep it simple, we're going to go through them in chronological order.

1. Mother's Day

In the United States, Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. When polled, Americans anticipated spending a total of close to $30 billion on gifts for their moms.

After all, mature gifts typically have a higher price tag. Therefore, if you offer any sort of luxury goods or services, you won't want to miss out on this one.

If you're not sure how to approach Mother's Day sales, you can always offer a limited-time gift card:

Amazon gives customers the option to send gift cards in sweet, themed boxes that feature flowers and hearts. You might want to experiment with a similar tactic. Also, keep in mind that this holiday falls just before the start of the summer season, so you may want to broaden it to offer site-wide sales.

2. Father's Day

Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. When it comes to dads, buyers anticipate spending about $20 billion collectively per year.

Additionally, this holiday is perfectly timed to coincide with any last-minute purchases your buyers need to make before their summer travels.

Once again, you can upsell your customers by offering irresistible, site-wide deals. Rapid flash sales seem to be particularly popular on Father's Day:

While we typically recommend that you give your customers ample time to take advantage of a deal, the occasional flash sale can make an impact. You may also want to use short and sweet discount codes that feature the word “dad”.

3. Back-to-School

Instead of one specific day, back-to-school promotions can encourage many weeks of increased revenue. We'd recommend offering these sales starting in mid-to-late August and running them through early September.

Since fast-growing children have a diverse set of needs, many ecommerce stores will be able to benefit from back-to-school sales:

If a youthful aesthetic is not ideal for your brand, you can always modify this theme to make it more seasonal. You could swap out your website's usual banners to feature your fall sales instead.

4. Black Friday

By now, the modern phenomenon of Black Friday is well-known. When Americans are resting at home, recovering from their Thanksgiving stupor – they shop.

They turn to their desktops (where purchases are most profitable) or their mobile devices to get a head start on their Christmas gifts. This makes it one of the most valuable days of the year for ecommerce businesses.

You can't go wrong with Black Friday sales. At this point, consumers expect them:

In fact, you may even damage your image if you don't offer Black Friday deals. Since this is the most iconic flash sale of the year, we recommend alerting your customers well in advance about the terms of your promotions.

You can do this via email, on social media, and in your website's header. Additionally, you might want to reserve your boldest discounts for this day, since customers have come to expect more and more.

5. Cyber Monday

The term Cyber Monday was coined by the National Retail Foundation in 2005. It was meant to encourage buyers to shop online – and it succeeded.

Thanks to these efforts, the Monday after Thanksgiving now marks one of the most important online sales days of the year. Its continuing success proves that ecommerce has a bright future. This day has been so successful that it has now transformed into Cyber Week:

This provides the perfect opportunity to offer a wide variety of discounts. You can offer percentage-based site-wide sales, or promote free gifts to motivate your shoppers. If you have the resources, you'll likely want to re-brand your entire site so you can further maximize sales.

This might also be a good time to introduce new products or services, as it will help ensure that they make a splash. If you don't have the budget to go big for Cyber Week, you can also offer more modest deals, such as free shipping, content upgrades, or giveaways.

6. Boxing Day

Officially, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas. Its origins are rooted in charitable acts, but today it is often considered the ‘Black Friday of the UK'.

However, on December 26th, American shoppers may be just as likely to turn to their favorite online stores in search of ‘after Christmas deals':

This is likely because, similar to Thanksgiving, people are usually still on vacation. One unique benefit of this day is that you have plenty of flexibility when it comes to marketing it.

For example, you can use the term “after Christmas” or “end-of-the-year” to describe your sales. Since this will likely be the last promotion on the calendar, you may want to go big in terms of discounts.

Conclusion

If you’ve been searching for innovative ways to bring in new customers (and keep them coming back) regular promotions can be a perfect solution. However, it may seem daunting to generate original ideas for these temporary deals. That’s when you can lean on an ecommerce holiday calendar for help.

From Mother’s Day to Boxing Day, classic festivities offer great opportunities for profit. Modern ecommerce bonanzas such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday provide even more universal chances to boost your conversions.

For best results, don't forget to spread the word about your deals and make it easy for customers to join in using ‘buy now' buttons.

Do you have any suggestions for the best days to run ecommerce promotions? Let us know in the comments section below!

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The amount of data that business owners can use is constantly growing and becoming more complex. This can spell trouble for a business that isn’t equipped to manage or utilize the available information.

Fortunately, the potential benefits of big data far outweigh the negatives, and this is equally true for small ecommerce businesses. With adequate planning and clear objectives, you can leverage big data in multiple ways.

In this post, we’ll explore four ways to make big data work for you. These applications are goal-oriented, require little upfront investment, and deliver speedy returns. Let’s take a closer look!

An Introduction to Big Data (And Why It Matters)

In a nutshell, big data refers to large volumes of information. These are data sets so substantial and complex that they are unwieldy and difficult to manage with traditional methods.

Big data can be structured or unstructured. Structured data includes customer contact information, transaction histories, or anything that can fit neatly into a spreadsheet:

In contrast, unstructured data includes social media content, customer reviews, or anything without a predefined format. The latter can require more advanced storage techniques such as data lakes.

Both of these types of big data are important for small business owners because of the valuable insights they can provide. Learning more about your customers and their behaviors means you can offer better services and streamline your operations.

Since so much business happens in the digital world, big data affects small business owners just as much as giant corporations. Let's now see how your small ecommerce venture can utilize this information.

4 Ways Small Ecommerce Businesses Can Use Big Data

There are so many ways that small businesses can utilize big data, and it would be overwhelming to take all of them on. The applications we’ve listed here are starting points for improving customer retention, boosting sales, and making your processes more efficient.

To collect big data, we recommend using software such as AFS Analytics:

This powerful tool uses real-time monitoring and reporting to show you customer data related to engagement, conversions, buyer journeys, and more. We'll also explore some free data collection methods later in this article.

1. Improve Customer Service

Quality customer service is one of the most crucial elements of running any successful business. When customers feel taken care of, they’re more likely to recommend the business to others and become repeat buyers.

One of the major advantages of doing business in the digital age is that almost all consumer interactions can be turned into learning opportunities. Each time a customer makes contact, whether to ask a question, make a complaint, or leave a review, you can use the event to improve customer service.

You might utilize big data by monitoring response times across various communication channels. Customers have different wait time expectations for each platform.

For example, consumers using live chat will wait an average of 35 seconds for a response before leaving. By monitoring your communication delays across all channels, you can identify any weak spots.

2. Create Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are important tools for any business. They are fictional representations of your target audience.

These representations can contain superficial information such as ages, locations, genders, and job titles. They can also focus on more nuanced information like challenges, desires, and objections.

Customer personas can be useful for ecommerce businesses because they help with personalization and targeted marketing — the modern consumer has little patience for marketing that isn’t relevant.

A straightforward, free way to create buyer personas is to use Google Analytics. You can take a look at the location, gender, and interest data in the Demographics section to understand your ideal customers:

To get the most of the demographic data available to you, you may have to tweak a few settings. However, there are some clear instructions that make the process easier.

3. Decrease Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment is one of the main reasons that ecommerce businesses lose sales. This Baymard Institute study showed an average abandonment rate of almost 70%. Therefore, improving the checkout experience could be very worthwhile for your company.

A major reason for cart abandonment is the various hurdles a customer must overcome to complete a purchase. Factors such as load times, pop-ups, finding the checkout button, or too many input fields to complete can create friction.

As such, reducing friction is one of the most effective ways to decrease cart abandonment and increase sales.

You can use big data to reduce friction in several ways, and you don’t need anything more powerful than Google Analytics. The platform has a Conversions and Shopping Behavior tab that displays this data:

To identify friction in your sales process, investigate when customers leave your site. Look closely at which stage consumers abandon the buying process, and you can identify trends.

For example, if a consumer has added items to a cart, they may just be shopping on multiple sites simultaneously. If they’ve made it to the checkout page and then left, there may be too many obstacles in their way.

4. Personalize the Customer Experience

Personalization is key to doing business. Consumers even expect it, especially with ecommerce.

For example, a study found that 80% of consumers like to receive emails with product recommendations similar to previous purchases they’ve made:

In addition to targeted marketing, you can personalize the customer experience by using a visitor's preferred currency and language. You can even use greetings for repeat buyers to encourage loyalty and win their business in the long term.

Using surveys is a great way to gather tons of relevant data about consumer preferences. You can then utilize this information to personalize their experiences.

Conclusion

Big data is powerful. Massive corporations and small businesses alike can use it to improve their operations and make better-informed decisions. However, this information can also be overwhelming without a clear plan of action.

Let’s take another quick look at how small businesses can take advantage of big data:

1. Improve customer service to upgrade the buying experience and earn customer recommendations.
2. Create buyer personas to better understand your customers and improve marketing.
3. Decrease cart abandonment by identifying points of friction and improving your conversion rates.
4. Personalize the customer experience to encourage consumer loyalty.

Do you have any questions about big data for small ecommerce businesses? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn!

Credit cards and other similar payment methods are used for the majority of online transactions. While they're way more convenient and efficient than cash, they're also vulnerable to chargeback fraud.

As a business, chargeback fraud can cost you a lot of money.

Fortunately, there are a few measures you can take to protect yourself against fraudsters. The best thing is these measures are relatively simple to set up, so they’re an option for businesses of all sizes.

In this article, we’ll discuss what chargeback fraud is and how it can hurt your business. Then we'll look at some ways you can prevent it. Let’s get started!

What Chargeback Fraud Is (And How It Can Hurt Your Business)

Sometimes referred to as “friendly fraud”, Chargeback fraud is when a customer purchases a product or service with their own credit card, then issues a chargeback request with their credit card provider.

The customer receives a refund, and the business gets a fee.

In most cases, Friendly fraud is the result of legitimate shoppers forgetting they've made a purchase, hence the “friendly” part of the name. But there's nothing friendly about intentional chargebacks.

Some fraudsters see chargebacks as a way of making some easy cash at the expense of big banks. However, businesses can also be victims of this crime. Chargeback fees can cost businesses up to three times the original transaction value, adding to what is often an already long list of expenses.

Regardless of the intent, though, chargebacks can hurt your business big time.

According to an article by CNBC, friendly fraud is on the rise and will become an even bigger problem for businesses in the near future. Therefore, it's vital that you prepare to deal with it and implement some ways to avoid it.

How to Prevent Chargeback Fraud (3 Tips)

To help you reduce the frequency of friendly fraud within your business, we’ve put together three key ways to prevent it.

1. Remind Customers About Recurring Payments

Recurring payments occur when a customer gives a business permission to automatically charge them for a repeat purchase.

This is a common model for membership and subscription businesses because it saves both time and money. The customer only needs to make one order, and then transactions can be processed automatically whenever necessary.

It's common for customers to agree to recurring payments but forget about the agreement after a while. This can lead to them issuing chargeback requests.

One way to avoid this problem is by sending customers automated reminders about upcoming recurring payments. This can help them remember agreeing to the purchase when they see the charge to their credit card.

REMINDERS

2. Use Clear Transaction Descriptions

Transaction descriptions are what the customer sees on their credit card statement. It's important to make sure that these descriptions are clear so that the customer can easily recall making the purchase.

First, let’s take a look at how not to write a transaction description. Avoid using long strings of digits like invoice references or order numbers. Not only do these types of descriptions look a bit suspicious, but they can also confuse the customer and make it very difficult to tell where the purchase came from.

Ideally, a good transaction description should include three pieces of information:

1. Your business name. This can help the reader connect the description with your business.
2. Your website or physical address. This can give the customer an idea of where they were when they bought the item.
3. Your contact details. This can give the customer a way to follow up the charge.

However, most of the time you'll be limited to a small number of characters. Use them wisely.

When writing descriptions, think about what you would want to see as a consumer. If your current layout confuses you, it'll probably confuse the customer even more, so try to simplify it a bit.

3. Use Credit Card Verification

Credit card verification, also known as authentication, is the process a merchant takes to ensure that a purchase is being made by the card owner.

Verification is an effective way to reduce the chances of a buyer either putting the incorrect number in or using a stolen card. Both of these scenarios are likely to result in credit card companies receiving refund requests.

Fortunately, our Buy Now Plus service operates on top of Stripe, which is one of the largest and most secure online payment systems.

Stripe has a variety of security measures in place. This includes chargeback protection, verification checks, and other anti-fraud features.

With Buy Now Plus and Stripe, you can accept credit card payments from anywhere, whether you're selling on social media or through email marketing. You can also rest assured that your business is protected against fraud.

Conclusion

Chargeback fraud is a major problem for a lot of businesses. However, there are a few key measures you can take to protect yourself.

These practices are affordable and relatively simple, so you may find them fairly straightforward to implement.

In this article, we covered three ways to prevent friendly fraud:

1. Remind customers about recurring payments. This can help prevent chargeback fraud, which occurs when a customer disputes a purchase because they forgot they agreed to it.
2. Use clear transaction descriptions. By doing this, you help reduce the chances of a customer misunderstanding what they are buying.
3. Implement credit card verification. This prevents users from using someone else’s credit card and can also assist you if you are faced with a hefty fee.

Do you have any questions about chargeback fraud? Let us know in the comments section below!

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