The peak season is beginning earlier and lasting longer than ever before. In fact, last year 23% of holiday sales occurred during the last two weeks of the year which equates to a 11% year-over-year increase. This holiday shopping surge is expected to continue for 2022.
The question is, is your company ready? Let's take a look at some of the key findings from last year to understand how companies prepared.
Key Points
Merchants have stated that they started their planning 1-2 months before Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) events, while large to medium-sized businesses ($1M+) started planning 3-4 months in advance.
Where do merchants tend to focus first? On average, most merchants prioritized pricing and promotions strategy, followed by marketing strategy and ecommerce platform planning.
What methods of marketing are dominant for merchants? Smaller businesses ($20K-$100K) tend to focus on using social media in their BFCM strategy while larger businesses ($1M+) rely much more on analytics to drive strategy.
Sales Plan Challenges
As a holiday season approaches there are many aspects of your business you need to consider. Each of those considerations come with their own unique challenges. When planning sales and pricing promotions for BFCM, merchants need to determine what their sale prices are going to be. It's not simply dropping the prices on select products; it's understanding your market, your customer trends, and your competitors.
What are the most popular products right now?
What products are going to be the highest in demand?
What are our competitors planning as well?
Market research and understanding analytics associated with your ecommerce will help you determine these things.
The holiday shopping season is for merchants, one of the most anticipated times of the year as companies hope to finish their year strong. As holiday shopping extends for customers it's important to have your ecommerce site ready - that includes SEO and marketing strategies, and understanding what will work for your company.
To understand the opportunity to capitalize on online shopping, let's look at some interesting statistics from 2021.
Early bird shopping which we consider to be online sales that occurred during the first week of November, increased by 16% last year.
Worldwide, shopping grew by 18% in the two weeks leading up to December 25th, and by 16% during Boxing Week, the biggest digital growth across the entire season.
Overall, 14.1% of all retail purchases are completed online. This is expected to rise another 5% by the end of 2022.
With today's market, many shoppers will have inflation on their mind continuing into the 2022 holiday season. Even though this is expected to result in fewer online purchases per person, online sales overall are expected to grow.
Resources
In summary, moving into this holiday shopping season it's important to prepare your store for upcoming events, sales, and promotions. Here are some helpful resources to assist your strategy and prepare your store.
Hit the ground running with this 27-Point BFCM checklist.
Learn how to lean into the potential of customer first-party data during the upcoming holiday season.
Remain competitive while while increasing profit margins by offering various shipping options.
And read more about ecommerce trends in 2022.
Learn More
Able Sense is an award-winning design and development agency and a Shopify Plus Services Partner. We work with select clients who value our focus on research, strategy, and content, as well as our dedication to user experience.
Our in-house team can help you manage the growth and optimization of your new ecommerce site this holiday season.
Contact Us to start a conversation about your site and how we can help you.
Able Sense is an innovative ecommerce studio specializing in Shopify Plus strategies and custom implementations for businesses around the globe.