Ways to Prepare your eCommerce Infrastructure for the Peak Season
The digital world is no longer the same. As peak season looms, many eCommerce businesses are trying to prepare themselves for the massive rise in their customer orders. At the time when this holiday season is about to hit another record-setting number of sales for online retailers, ensuring the seamless performance of your digital storefront becomes critically important. It doesn’t matter whether you’re new to eCommerce this year or a seasoned expert, you need rigorous eCommerce infrastructure to leverage this opportunity.
The eCommerce business is expected to be at its highest this year, especially around Christmas. According to Adobe Analytics, online holiday season sales saw a 3.5% year-over-year increase, reaching $211.7 billion.
In this article, we will share six ways to help you stay strong and well-prepared during this peak season.
Six Ways to Stay Ahead During Peak Season
Perform Traffic and Order Volume Analysis:
Data-driven decision-making plays a crucial role in creating a strong foundation for your eCommerce strategy. Analyzing historical trends of your website traffic and order volume based on data gathered year-over-year will help you set and meet the right expectations of your customers during the holiday season. With the true power of data, it will become much easier for your businesses to find the expected traffic load on the site and typical peak sales hours to deliver a great customer experience.
Test Your IT Infrastructure:
Every eCommerce business requires an infrastructure to support its customers and operations. Meeting an unexpected rise in the demand for your business offerings will require a strong eCommerce infrastructure during the holiday season. Testing site performance for loading speed, UI/UX, and server in advance will enable your operations to run efficiently. Typically, testing your eCommerce infrastructure will expose several deficiencies but it’s very important for you to have a robust process in place that documents these failures and communicates them within your organization for rectification.
Capture Consumers across Platforms:
In this fast-evolving digital world, the customer’s path to purchase is complex and fragmented. Over time, mobile usage has grown significantly, and according to a study conducted last holiday season, 85% of Gen Z used a phone or tablet for shopping during the holiday season compared to 87% of millennials. As the eCommerce peak season is approaching, it’s worth thinking mobile-first strategy for engaging with your customers. To be a successful brand, make the most of the various social platform features to draw your target audience into an outstanding shopping experience.
Secure your Site and Customer Data:
Today, cybercrime and online fraud are at an all-time high and it’s critically important for eCommerce businesses to stay updated on the latest version of their eCommerce platform. In case you are not using the latest version, then also you can safeguard your eCommerce peak season performance by using security patches to keep up with the latest security trends. Make sure you are using HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), promoting good password hygiene, and maintaining a security-focused mindset in order to protect your customers’ sensitive data.
Personalize your Online Shopping Experience:
Personalization is increasingly important for eCommerce stores seeking to, not only engage shoppers but also to increase repeat purchases, drive sales, and increase conversions. During your peak season, using intelligent product-detail page recommendations and the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to deliver a personalized online shopping experience can boost your sales and revenue exponentially. Data indicates that 75% of shoppers are willing to pay extra for tailored online shopping experiences during the holiday season.
Plan your Advertising and Marketing Strategy:
It’s very important for eCommerce businesses to keep experimenting with their messaging, promotional campaigns, and offers to ensure they are engaging and capturing the right target audiences. The start of the eCommerce peak season is definitely not the right to experiment with your advertising and marketing strategies. To enhance the effectiveness and be more confident about your marketing communication strategy, eCommerce businesses must test their strategies proactively when things are quieter to build well-targeted and customized peak season campaigns and promotions.
Top Five Critical Challenges of Managing Peak Season
For this forthcoming holiday season, emerging and established eCommerce brands can encounter some critical peak season challenges. The right holiday season strategy in place will help eCommerce businesses thrive even during uncertain times. To manage the upcoming massive growth of eCommerce demand and increased customer expectation, peak season forerunners must have strategies to overcome the following challenges:
Conclusion
As the peak season approaches, many things remain in flux for multiple online stores. Between preparing for customer demand and combating supply chain challenges, eCommerce businesses need to have a strong plan in place to deliver a seamless customer experience during this peak season.
Stay ahead and stand out from the crowd this peak season with the best eCommerce practices and services powered by Sigma Infosolutions!
