3 Golden Rules for Successful E-Commerce Sales!

As an e-merchant, a successful e-commerce sales season is very important. It allows you to reduce your stocks, gain new users and present your new collection. To succeed the seasonal sales with marketing, there’s no secret. You need to be prepared and to have thought of everything.

Rule 1: Be ready on the first day for your e-commerce seasonal sales

For the seasonal sales, the first day represents a period of high affluence. You, therefore, need to be ready before it starts! Preparing the launch of your e-commerce seasonal sales in advance is important and decisive for the duration of this period of rock-bottom prices.

77% of the French make purchases online or offline during the seasonal sales. Moreover, e-merchants benefit every year from an increase in household spending.  In 2016, there was a 40% increase of the purchases made on e-commerce websites during the sales! 

Rule 2: Pay attention to the loading time of your website

If you want successful seasonal sales, it is absolutely imperative that your website loads quickly. The loading time has an immediate impact on the turnover that you can get during the seasonal sales. Indeed, all the additional seconds for loading make you lose approximately 7% of the visitors. It is not only your website conversion rate which is affected, but also your brand image. Indeed, every additional second for loading represents a 16 point decrease in customer satisfaction.

57% of website users will leave a website if it has not loaded in less than three seconds. This means that if your images are too heavy, if the HTML, CSS or JS code is not optimized, your bounce rate will explode and your sales will drop. In addition to this, and among the 57% of potential customers that you have lost, 80% will never return to your website. An utter fiasco for your e-commerce seasonal sales!

Rule 3: Keep a close eye on your delivery times

It is not particularly pleasant when you are an e-merchant, but delivery costs are so important for optimizing your purchase funnel that everyone should think about it. Indeed, given that 90% of buyers consider that free delivery is a major criterion for purchasing online, it cannot be neglected.

The important thing with delivery costs, if they are not free, is to be very clear starting on the first page of the purchase funnel. This clarity will potentially avoid having 44% of your visitors, who have added products to their shopping cart, leave your online store after a bad surprise concerning the delivery fees.

And what if your delivery fees are not free or the available solutions are not interesting for the customer? It is a common scenario and you can expect to lose even more turnover because between 60 and 70% of your visitors will go elsewhere, to another website, in order to find either a solution that meets their expectations (often their availability to receive or pick up the delivered parcel) or free delivery.

Find all our key figures and our tips for successful seasonal sales on an infographic!