Key e-commerce metrics from October include:

• Gifting sales are up 5% YoY after lagging behind 2021 numbers at the beginning of the year
• Beauty, women’s apparel and accessories, and food and grocery are all trending upward this year
• Total October Online YoY Sales: Gifting: +5%, Beauty: +17%, Women’s Apparel: +7%, Food: +15% 

Customers are starting their holiday shopping early, as well as preparing for holiday celebrations and get-togethers. We forecast continued growth, especially within the above categories, throughout the months of November and into December. Our 2022 holiday e-commerce sales forecast calendar, which helps marketers plan their day-by-day promotions, kicks off this week, on Sunday, November 13. Use our guide to plan your best promotions in anticipation of high sales days. 

“Online holiday sales have strengthened since the middle of October for many categories,” says Udayan Bose, Founder and CEO of NetElixir. “Consumer preference has shifted towards ‘value-shopping’. Also, consumers are in an always-on shopping mode, scouring for deals and prices that meet their personal value perceptions.”

How To Optimize Your Holiday Marketing Strategy

If you’re looking to put the finishing touches on your holiday strategy, our experts recently shared some last-minute holiday hacks. In terms of SEO, it’s important to build authority for your holiday pages. To retain your authority for holiday pages year after year, keep your URLs specific to each promotional campaign (i.e.example.com/black-friday-sales or example.com/cyber-monday-deals) and don’t change your URL for each year. Add specificity to your H1 tags. Use top of funnel pages to link to promotional pages and consider adding countdowns to your biggest sales or temporary 302 redirects to direct from your homepage directly to promotional pages.

For your content strategy, highlight your sales and deals with a sense of urgency; customers are driven by discounts and studies have found that customers are willing to share their personal information in exchange for a coupon. Label your deals clearly in your ads and be mindful of timing and out of stock items; nothing is more frustrating to a customer than clicking on an ad only to find that the deal expired or the item is no longer available. For your campaign strategy, optimize your RSAs and Performance Max campaigns to reach across the entire Google ecosystem. RSAs offer fifteen headers and four descriptions – use all the space you can to maximize your potential of reaching the right customer. Enhance your campaign performance with our Google Scripts, which allow you to automate certain aspects of your campaigns so you can focus on what’s important. 

Be sure you build your brand all year long by writing organic content that will help people find what they’re looking for. Even as we’re just getting into the 2022 holiday season, remember it’s not too early to think about your 2023 holiday season! 

NetElixir’s Holiday Forecast

Overall, our holiday growth forecast for the season remains at 7% YoY.

We have been accurately tracking holiday e-commerce sales forecasts for 10+ years. We leverage our proprietary AI-driven digital marketing technology, LXRInsights, to track and analyze real-time data of approximately 75 retail customers, ranging from small-to-mid sized businesses to enterprises. The team then utilized a proprietary forecasting model to convert the data into predictions. Data collection spanned seven e-commerce categories (including apparel, home furnishings, beauty, and more) that track mobile and desktop data, broken down by state, website orders and revenue, AOV, first purchase latency, and repeat purchase latency. 

Current forecasts are subject to change. We shared their full results, trend analysis, and more during a webinar. The webinar, titled Last-Minute Holiday Strategy & Resources for Retailers can be viewed here.

Sign up for our upcoming event, Cyber 5 Webinar: Results. Insights. Trends. to understand how the key online shopping metrics changed throughout this critical period.

Further Reading

• NetElixir’s Complete Guide to the 2022 Holiday Season
• Google’s Helpful Content Update: A Recap For Content Creators
• What’s Trending? The Importance of Trend Research in Your Marketing Strategy

The post New Insights Into the 2022 Holiday Season appeared first on NetElixir.

Deck the Halls Early with a Review of 2022 and a Web Refresh 

We can’t expect 2022’s holiday season to look exactly like 2021 – or 2020, or any pre-pandemic holiday season. But you can prepare your business for the unexpected by reviewing what challenges you faced last year and what tools and strategies might minimize disruption this year. While there has been an increase in first-time shoppers due to the pandemic, companies such as grocery stores that jumped on the online boom have found their margins challenged as the market shrunk. Businesses should innovate while staying focused on long-term sustainability and profitability.

E-commerce sales fluctuations have become the new norm, and in 2021 that meant that for the first time in over a decade, sales on Cyber Monday were less than those on Black Friday. We expect that customers will start their holiday shopping earlier, with planned, considered purchases that account for inflation and the supply chain slowdowns that continue to affect business. As patterns become harder to predict, the deprecation of third-party cookies means your business will need to find new ways to track customer behavior and report and analyze trends to notice fluctuations and react accordingly.

Has it been a while since your e-commerce site had a refresh? Whether your branding and content are out-of-date or your site could benefit from updated tech and a new e-commerce platform, now is a great time to think about user experience and web development and creating a frictionless journey for your customers. Consider supplementing your online presence by entering marketplaces like Amazon. Amazon and other marketplaces are likely to attract more holiday shoppers than DTC sites with discounts and early holiday deals.

Make Your Holiday (Customer) Lists and Check Them Twice with Google Analytics 4 and First-Party Data

If you haven’t already made the move to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), don’t wait any longer. Universal Analytics (UA) and Universal Analytics 360 properties will be fully phased out by October 1, 2023, and historical data for 2022, which is only held for 6 months, will be gone. By having GA4 up and running before the holidays, your business will be ready to track the important October, November, and December search-shop-buy behaviors that will inform your strategy not only this season but for years into the future. 

With third-party cookies disappearing, finding new ways to connect to customers and capture first-party data is critical to your business’s success. Use this time to create a loyalty program that will bring your customers closer to your brand and to find other ways to drive the customer recognition and connection that will encourage users to trust you with their data. Brands should consider investing in an  in-house insight labs or working with digital marketing partners to experiment with different strategies to reveal patterns and discover which strategic moves deliver the best outcomes.  

Create a Data-Informed Holiday Digital Marketing Strategy

With uncertainty a certain feature of holiday shopping this year, it’s never too early to plan for difficulties or opportunities that might arise. By taking the time to build out customer personas and develop SEO-optimized holiday content, when the unexpected happens (and it will!), you will have a back-up strategy that can be adapted to fit new circumstances and will avoid having to start from scratch. Save time and reduce holiday stress by designing contingency plans now, including messaging, for potential supply issues and other disruptions that might impact holiday buying and shipping in the months ahead.

Ready to Plan for Holiday Shopping? NetElixir is Here to Help.

At NetElixir, we are here for your business at every stage of your holiday planning. Whether your e-commerce site needs a facelift or an overhaul, whether you need help getting started with GA4 or a full-on support with track and reporting, we are here to support you as you prepare for the holiday shopping season. We’ll work with you on all your digital marketing strategy needs, from optimizing SEO to developing customer personas that help you reach your high-value customers and implementing the brand loyalty programs that will inform your content and campaign planning.

Additional Reading

• Our e-book: Preparing for a Cookieless World
• 2021 Holiday Readiness Resources

The post Christmas in May: Your Holiday Strategy in the Cookieless World appeared first on NetElixir.

NetElixir’s Latest Holiday Forecast

We have seen steady growth in online sales throughout October and the beginning of November. Within our own dataset of small- and medium-sized businesses, we have tracked the following sales growth across industries:

• September saw only a 3% YoY increase
• October 1st-15th saw a 15% YoY increase
• October 16th-31st saw a boom in sales, culminating in a 27% YoY increase
• November 1-8th so far has seen a 40% YoY increase

The online sales spike started around October 20th. Within the last week, we have seen that people are buying about 2% quicker than last year. Although that is a minute shift, it still speaks to the sense of urgency in shoppers. NetElixir is already seeing a 7-13% increase in AOV compared to last year. Customers are buying full-priced items, as they’d rather have their gifts now than risk not having anything. 

NetElixir’s Founder and CEO, Udayan Bose, says, “Gifting has become a means of freedom, almost, and a means of expression. We’re seeing people buying a lot more gifts right now, as a way to make up for the opportunities lost last year and missed celebrations. Gifting this year is almost like saying ‘I’m over with COVID, I’ve defeated COVID.’ People are buying more gifts to share with more people this year.”

In September, we predicted a 6-7% YoY growth in online sales for the holiday season. We made a conservative estimate based on subdued e-commerce growth in Q3 and a quiet back-to-school season. However, based on recent shifts in online shopping behavior, we are increasing our prediction to 12-13% YoY. This growth is on top of last year’s 33% increase from 2019.

Take a look at what we can expect for the upcoming week.

November 14 to 20, 2021 Online Sales Summary

The week of November 14th to 20th will start off with a projected 5-12% higher sales volume YoY, compared to the same days last year. The week will taper down slightly to more moderate growth of less than 5% YoY.

We saw a similar trend of more sales at the beginning of the week last year. Our FACES book breaks down the online shopping behavior of high-value customers across retail industries. In this year’s edition, we analyzed how consumer behavior evolved throughout the pandemic months. We track the customer journey of the high-value shoppers for nine retail e-commerce categories (B2B, Fashion and Jewelry, Home Furnishings, Baby Care, Pet Supplies, Beauty and Cosmetics, Gifting, Tactical Gear, DIY Tools, and Food and Gourmet). During the 2020 holiday season, starting in mid-November, six out of those nine high-value customers made most of their purchases on Mondays. 

In mid-November, ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we are predicting major deep discounts and promotions from big and small brands alike. Retailers should look to get creative with category-level and product-specific promotions in order to stand out from the competition. It’s crucial to use this time to generate brand awareness and drum up excitement about your upcoming deals. 

Induce Early Shopping Behavior

Last year, 26% of shoppers finished their holiday shopping by the first week of November. Whether that holds true this year remains to be seen, but there are plenty of customers who need inspiration for their holiday shopping.

This year, with expected supply chain issues and inventory shortages, customers are expected (and in fact, encouraged) to complete their shopping sooner rather than later. By mid-November, customers are still searching and generating ideas for their holiday wishlists, so ensure your products are featured at the top of everyone’s list. Use holiday content gift guides to highlight products specifically for your Black Friday and Thanksgiving promotions, to get customers excited for the upcoming deals. 

The pandemic introduced new online shoppers to the e-commerce landscape, as well as reshaped many customer personas. Understanding your customers’ needs and expectations will help you craft more targeted and engaging ads. Speaking directly to your customers’ behavior will help ensure you stand out from the competition and win the right customer for your brand.

Further Insights

Online shopping behavior is constantly and rapidly changing. It is important for marketers to be in the moment to respond to their customers’ behavior. NetElixir is continually aggregating and analyzing our real-time e-commerce data using our customer analytics tool, LXRInsights. Remaining agile and nimble to seize any opportunity to engage shoppers is crucial to having a winning holiday season. 

This year marks our 13th annual holiday forecast and our holiday e-commerce calendar is a cornerstone of the forecast. We’re becoming known as the company with the calendar, so be sure to download your calendar to stay on top of daily updates and seize every opportunity within your industry.

• Insights Into The 2021 Holiday Season
• Your 2021 SEO Strategy
• Designing Your 2021 Holiday Strategy

The post Week of November 14th: Holiday E-Commerce Calendar Breakdown appeared first on NetElixir.

2020 brought a swarm of new-to-online shoppers to the e-commerce landscape. They found your brand through the usual marketing channels, but did you make yourself memorable? Design is part of how you make your brand unforgettable and help ensure customers return to you again and again.

Importance of Consistent Branding

Your brand is the idea, image, and feelings that people have in mind when they think about you as a company. If your messaging about your company is not consistent across your different channels, it will confuse your customers. They won’t have a clear idea about what your company stands for — and will likely turn to a competitor whose values they can understand and relate to more. Consistent messaging makes it easy for people to make associations. Those associations help customers remember the brand and what it stands for because you are more than just your products. Your brand is your entire experience, from online search to purchase to delivery experience

With online sales expected to increase by 6% this holiday season, making your brand memorable is crucial to capturing customer interest. The pandemic created new shopper personas and these shoppers are looking for brands that they resonate with on a personal level. Your brand identity humanizes your company and helps you make a connection that can last throughout this holiday season and beyond.

How To Build a Brand Identity

When creating your visual brand identity, keep in mind font, color palette, and tone. Consistent fonts and colors will make your brand recognizable across platforms and provide a cohesive brand style guideline for any designs you create. In regards to tone, consider how you want customers to feel when they see any branded imagery, from ads to your website to your logo.

As a whole, consider your target audience and what might resonate with them. However, stay true to your brand’s personality and values, as an authentic brand presence is important in cultivating brand trust and loyalty. 

When designing creative assets to complement and promote your brand, start with identifying and understanding the marketing objective, target audience, and what motivates that target audience to make their decision. From a creative perspective, think about ways to connect with the target audience in an interesting or emotional way. Play on the range of human emotions, as appropriate within the scores of your goal, by making them laugh, entertaining them with something that makes them smile, or encouraging them to think or wonder more deeply about something. 

Take inspiration from wherever you can: movies, research, books, real life, music, art — really, from anywhere. Part of your brand identity is associations people make and if you can control some of those associations with pointed references or homages, then you have a better sense of what makes people relate to your brand. Once a marketer understands the objective and insights, we need to start putting ourselves in the target customer’s shoes and looking for things that will connect with them. You want to make your customers feel good, not just with the product they are purchasing, but with the brand they are supporting.

Tips for Developing Your Holiday Designs

When creating your ad graphics, keep in mind the following tips:

1. Consider negative/white space.
2. Balance your messaging hierarchy.
3. Keep your story, ad, and layout simple and focused. 

As digital ad spend rose nearly 15% in 2020, according to eMarketer, it is important to create branded and compelling imagery to make your graphics stand out. The best way to stand out is to consider what your competition is doing, and then do something different, making sure to stay true to your brand values and mission. As we know, gifting comes with a lot of emotion, so finding a way to connect emotionally with your customers is powerful, if executed properly. In these times of uncertainty, nostalgia in marketing is bringing people a sense of comfort and ease. Leverage the positive emotions inspired by the holiday season to connect with and captivate your audience.

To get a better sense of what makes your customers click, run some simple A/B tests in your designs. Try running variations of:

• Background color (i.e., lighter or darker shade)
• Price points (i.e., comparing a specific monetary amount like $50 off to a percentage of 10% off)
• Offer location (i.e., in-store, online, or mobile)
• CTA placement (i.e., middle or bottom of ad)
• Button color (i.e., fully colored in or just outlined)

Test results usually take about two to four weeks to complete, so running tests now can better inform your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Even a marginal improvement in ad CTR can improve your ROI and holiday sales. These insights will also help your post-holiday promotions. 

Customized Designs For Your Brand

Give your ads a little extra love this holiday season by employing NetElixir’s expert design team to save you time. During our limited-time offer, we’ll design branded ad graphics for Facebook and Display ads (with up to 5 size variations included). Our Holiday Design Pack is perfect for:

• Driving more conversions with visually compelling and branded ad imagery
• Repurposing an ad across platforms
• Freeing up your designers by letting our experts bring your ideas to life

We’ll share these assets in less than one week, so you can kick your holiday promotions into high gear. All NetElixir designs include free A/B testing so you can better understand what makes your customers click.

Further Reading

• Fall Trends to Capitalize On
• Your 2021 Holiday SEO Strategy
• 2021 Holiday Resources

The post Designing Your 2021 Holiday Strategy appeared first on NetElixir.

While the 2020 holiday season saw many new-to-online customers browsing e-commerce sites for their holiday gifts, this year brands need to keep those customers engaged to convert them into loyal shoppers. Online shopping behavior and trends are continuously evolving, but consumer sentiment remains largely the same as last year: customers are searching for deals, convenience, and optimal delivery choices. Consumers will return to brands that have their product availability status clear and updated, a site that is user-friendly and easy to navigate, gift ideas that are within budget, and more.

Convey all the necessary information your customers need easily and simply through holiday landing pages. 

Creating Holiday-Specific Landing Pages

Building out holiday landing pages for key shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday and other holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, and more is one of the cornerstones of optimizing your holiday SEO strategy. Create these pages well in advance of the days themselves to give the search engines time to crawl and rank your pages.

While your site will benefit from the high-volume keywords of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, be sure to showcase products and categories that your customers want. Add products that have historically been effective at drawing in new customers to engage holiday shoppers. Conduct thorough research into keywords and industry trends to optimize these landing pages, both in product descriptions and in products offered. NetElixir found that aspects of the 90s are trending again, so you can position your products as the must-haves of the season. 

However, be sure not to burden the webpage with too many deals and seemingly random products; you don’t want to confuse or overwhelm customers. Consider creating a separate page for each broader product category you plan to have discounts on. Repackage products into easy-to-navigate pages that are catered to specific demographics, popular hobbies, and the best deals — you don’t necessarily need to create whole new product offerings, but just tweak the messaging and description of products you have readily available. 

To determine how to best categorize your products, start with your customer personas and target audience. Based on this data, consider segmenting your products by:

• Gender, like “Best Gifts for Her”
• Profession, like “Best Gifts for Nurses”
• Price, like “Best Gifts Under $20”
• Hobby, like “Best Gifts for Car Lovers”

Be sure to keep your buyer personas and high-value customers in mind, however, so you’re not optimizing for customers who don’t convert on your website.

Create a schedule to continually launch new products or deals on your site to keep customers returning. Coincide these new releases with social posts, emails, and other marketing campaigns to get people to visit your website and talk about your brand. Not only do you create greater exposure for your site, but you organically boost your backlink strategy. 

This holiday season will be uncertain. Drive enthusiasm by starting early promotions and exclusive deals.

Creating Urgency In Your Holiday Promotions

Add a countdown timer to your landing page to let customers know when the deal is ending. Consider adding in lightning deals leading up to key shopping days throughout the season to encourage impulse buys and keep customers returning. Regular announcements via newsletters and social posts will remind your customers of the limited time they have left to buy.

Before your brand’s biggest holidays, plan out a promotional schedule such as:

• 45 days in advance: Leverage your website calendar, social media, and any emails or newsletters to start driving traffic and garnering interest. Be sure to link your holiday landing pages to your home page so it is prominently displayed.
• 7 days in advance: Begin highlighting key products or customer reviews for daily posts to draw customers to your site.
• 1 day in advance: Make your onsite countdown prominent to focus on your upcoming deals and drive home the sense of urgency as the deadline approaches.

5 Steps For A Successful Holiday SEO Strategy

1. Start sooner rather than later. 
2. Create landing pages specifically for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, as well as other holidays that fit your brand.
3. Identify relevant keywords for your niche and build out content around those keywords.
4. Coordinate your SEO strategy with your other marketing efforts for a seamless brand experience.
5. Track and measure success frequently to adjust your strategy accordingly.

According to Google’s research, 23% of people start their holiday search three to six months before the holidays. To succeed this holiday season, you want to get an early start on perfecting your holiday SEO strategy. This includes checking your site for any user experience issues that could affect performance and hurt your ranking. Make your products easily searchable and accessible through holiday-specific landing pages and blog posts. 

While last year brought its own host of problems, we learned a lot. Learn from last year’s trends, solutions, and wins to adapt the successes to your holiday strategy this year.

Boost Your Holiday SEO Strategy With NetElixir’s Specials

Reach more customers this holiday season with NetElixir’s SEO holiday solutions! Our packs help minimize risk and maximize conversions by ensuring your site is ready for the holiday rush. Our holiday packs help tell your brand story, build a bigger content basket, increase visibility, show off your brand’s unique style, and more!

 Our SEO Holiday Readiness Audit will get your site in the holiday spirit by offering:

• Keyword research specific to the holidays
• Micro-focus user experience audits for PDP and cart
• Holiday deal landing page creation or optimization
• Up to 25 pages optimized for H1s and minor on-page copy editing
• And more!

Request your SEO Holiday Readiness Audit now and browse our other Holiday Packs at https://stage.netelixir.com//services/holiday-specials/.

The post Your 2021 Holiday SEO Strategy appeared first on NetElixir.

Halloween 2020 – as every other holiday throughout this year has been – will be its own unique event. The parties may take a different aesthetic and location, but the spirit will be much the same; a consumer survey from NRF shows that:

• 58% of respondents still plan to celebrate Halloween
• 96% still plan to buy candy, 75% still plan to buy decorations, 65% still plan to buy costumes, and 40% still plan to buy greeting cards
• The top three celebration plans are: hand out candy, decorate the house, and dress up

Halloween Haunts 

The Gifting, Home Décor, and Pet Supplies retail categories should perform well this Halloween. An average of 18% of respondents in the survey above noted that they plan to dress up their pets for Halloween. Greeting cards and candy baskets could be a fun gift for consumers to share with loved ones if they can’t party in person – and cards are the only category projected to sell more this year compared to last year, according to a Bloomberg report. 

According to HubSpot, user-generated content is seen as more impactful than influencer-generated content and 79% of people say user-generated content highly influences their purchasing decisions. Consider hosting contests on social media for consumers to show off their pet’s costume, their own costume, their bowls of candy, home décor, and any other spooky product they bought from you. Don’t let Halloween be just one day of celebration, as this year deserves extra attention.

Google search results for Halloween costumes this year shows that Cobra Kai, Dungeon Master, and the Mandalorian are among the top most searched for costumes. Kids are searching for Supergirl and Hocus Pocus, while those with pets are looking for cat taco and pumpkin costumes. Promote popular costumes on your website, but remember to keep your product listing up-to-date with any stock outs.

While displaying your products and reaching your target audience is important, it is equally beneficial to showcase shipping estimates. If your store offers BOPIS or curbside options, be sure to clearly mark that in your advertising, especially as we get closer to Halloween night to capture last minute treats.

Halloween may be scary, but your eCommerce revenue goals should not be. 

More Holiday Insights

• Prime Day’s Impact on Non-Amazon Website Sales
• 6 Reasons to Have a Blog for Your Business 
• NetElixir’s 2020 Holiday Season ECommerce Forecast

The post Halloween 2020: Less Tricks and More Treats appeared first on NetElixir.

Earlier Holidays

SproutSocial reports that holiday searches on Pinterest are up 77% in April 2020 compared to April 2019. The survey continues that consumers across the globe want retailers and businesses to make the holidays extra special this year. Focus on messages of helpfulness and hopefulness, while meeting customer’s expectations to encourage customer loyalty. If you capture consumer’s attention earlier and with smaller celebrations and provide them with a memorable shopping experience, they should want to return to you for their bigger holiday needs. Ensure your social channels are optimized to best provide inspiration to searchers as they prepare for the holidays.

The December holiday season itself isn’t the only one starting earlier: Target announced its early release of Halloween decor. People want to celebrate Halloween this year, but celebrations for the spooky holiday, as with all other holidays, will have to get creative. There are opportunities for retailers to innovate celebrations and holiday goods. Retailers may find creating experiences helpful in building and sustaining brand loyalty throughout all the holidays. 

Celebrate Small Holidays and Occasions

Consumer confidence increased in June and increasing confidence leads to increasing optimism. This optimism leads people to celebrate and mark milestones they missed during the pandemic. Consumers want a reason to celebrate and expect retailers to be able to help them.

Survey data from Pinterest notes that in past years, 4 out of 10 Pinners said they cared about the smaller holidays like Friendsgiving or New Year’s brunch; this year, 7 out of 10 care. Market for these micro-holidays to be in consumer’s minds for the macro-holidays as well. Celebrate every small moment and holiday to champion togetherness and community. And who knows, this unpredictable and unprecedented year may be the start of  new celebrations and new traditions. The end of the year may spark a bigger observance of these smaller moments in the years to come and consumers will want to return to brands that made them feel cared for and not alone.

The post The Holiday Season Starts Now – Celebrate the Small Holidays like Friendsgiving appeared first on NetElixir.