Holiday Season Checklist for Gift Giving on Your eCommerce Platform

As we have recently learned from the shopping habits of Prime Day, we appear to be more generous in terms of how much we’re spending on each other, as gift giving has increased.

Holiday season is, of course, the time of giving, yet this year is gearing up to be the most generous we’ve seen in a while. So knowing this, how can you set up shop that is fully prepared and optimized your online customer experience, and help them give the greatest gifts of all: love and friendship – and whatever you’re selling.

So let’s take a look at the following checklist to help you prepare for the holiday season.

Of course, if you’re on a powerful ecommerce platform like Salesforce Commerce Cloud then everything on this checklist is possible – although not necessarily easy, because some things are simply complex. If you’re on a lower-tier platform like Shopify or WooCommerce then some things on this list will be possible, some will be more complicated, and others will just be impossible.

• Prepare now

This year’s holiday season has already started, and there’s a long way to go. From early one, we’ve seen gift-giving an important aspect of this year. So prepare now for gift-giving capabilities, because we’re set up for an intense period of ecommerce, and a lot of competition for customers finding easy and ideal gift-giving capabilities from sites.

• Spatially distance traffic

Not due to concerns related to any virtual spreading of viruses, but more concerns over traffic and high volume of sales in short periods of time. To relieve any possible strain on your distribution systems, provide deals and discounts to your customers on different days. 

This is something that provides deep personalization for your customers, and something that only big ecommerce platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud can do through its management of customer details and geolocation capabilities – so you could provide deals depending on the state and the week or month (the Midwest gets deals on week one; the east coast on week two, and west coast on week three, for example). 

• Flaunt what you got

Plan to focus your customers on your healthier levels of stock so that you don’t reach worrying levels of goods. Play to your strength and push the goods that are well stocked. At the same time, place less emphasis on special items that you’re likely to have in short supply.

• Enable gift cards

Perhaps the very best item to sell – at least from a logistical perspective – is the gift card. Extremely convenient, requires no shipping or challenges to inventory, make sure that you are open to gift cards, and implement your site for them to be easily visible to find and buy. And if gift card sales seem low, offer incentives, such as if a customer orders a gift card, you’ll top it up with an extra $X amount.

• Keep the secret safe

For most, normal people, gifts tend to be surprises. So don’t ruin it. If customers are buying something to be delivered directly to the receiver, provide them with an easy and simple experience – have an option to remove price tags? Wrap it up to hide the contents? Enable a specific date of delivery so that they won’t receive a package too early?

• Add value

Add that extra touch – the ribbon on the box so to speak – by providing options to add personalized messaging, an option of gift wrapping, unique handwritten cards, personal photos, etc.

• Clarify delivery promises

Having said that, if you are anticipating heavy traffic and sales, adjust shipping expectations, because it’s better to underpromise and overachieve. Don’t stick your head out of the parapet and promise the world in under 24 hours. But this will depend on your logistical setup and capabilities.

• Strengthen fraud protection

Since the pandemic emerged and online shopping skyrocketed, we have seen an increase in ecommerce fraud. Ensure the checks and balances that make up your system are fully fortified as possible.

So there you have it. A concise checklist for the holiday season! 

PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud dev shops. Contact us to see how we can work together.