How to Win at Sales Season
20+ essential CX tips from Clarins, Avon and Pizza Hut to get your site prepped for the season.
Peak sales season: 17 CX tips to boost website ROI and sales
Peak sales season means more site traffic and potential revenue, plus fresh opportunities to convert first-time visitors into loyal lifetime customers. According to the 2022 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report, 51% of all retail traffic came from new users in 2021.
To maximize your peak season performance, you need to create an exceptional and memorable customer experience (CX). Taking steps to improve your site speed, search experience, product placement and checkout process during peak traffic periods will keep your customers happy and lead them to conversion. So, here are some quick cx optimizations to make ahead of peak sales season…
17 CX tips for peak sales season
Reducing page load speed
1. Cache more. Caching improves site performance and lessens the load placed on your original infrastructure, allowing your core resources to handle more dynamic transactions like checkout.
The probability of bounce increases by 32% when page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds (Google).
2. Use a CDN. Consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to offload most web traffic from your servers so they don’t get bogged down when there’s high demand.
3. Downsize JS files. A lot of JavaScript (JS) files on your pages can impact loading time. Pre-size your images for mobile and desktop and compress them to improve page load speed.
Leveraging and optimizing the search bar
4. Add filter options to the search bar. Allow searchers to filter results by department, feature, size and more directly in the search bar for faster, more relevant results.
5. Turn popular filters and search queries into CTAs. Add your most popular search filters as call-to-actions (CTAs) on your site to reduce the steps in the customer journey.
6. Pre-load search results. Add clickable, pre-loaded search results within the search bar to get users to product pages faster.
7. Use search data for recommendations. Use common search terms on Product Description Pages (PDPs) and Product Landing Pages (PLPs) to help searchers find what they are looking for.
Displaying the best content
8. Test early and often. Start testing new CTAs, product placements, hero banners, carousels and more to see what creates the most engagement and can be replicated during peak season.
9. Highlight revenue-generating products. Simplify your homepage and prioritize revenue-generating content in hero banners and above-the-fold sections.
10. Display UGC. Share user-generated content (UGC) to build trust and increase click rate, engagement and conversions.
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Maximizing your product placement
11. Allow add-to-basket options on PLPs. Let customers hover over items and “add to basket” while still on a PLP to simplify the customer journey.
12. Share product availability. Add messaging like “limited stock available” or “2 items left” to minimize frustration and create a sense of urgency.
13. Provide social proof. Go beyond sharing reviews at the bottom of PDPs and highlight top reviews and ratings above the fold to increase demand.
Improving checkout UX and reducing cart abandonment
14. Re-engage returning visitors. Reload visitors’ carts when they return to minimize the risk of them not finding what they originally selected, encouraging them to convert faster.
15. Make discounts simple, obvious and easy to add. Make it clear what discounts have been added or why their cart doesn’t qualify. Give discount code names that are easy to remember, like ‘BLACKFRIDAY’ instead of ‘BLKFRI2022.’
16. Combine checkout fields. Fewer form fields reduce the risk of abandonment so aim for 8-10 fields maximum. Combine ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ fields and include the option to select the default billing address as the shipping address too.
The average retail conversion rate jumped from 1.95% in 2020 to 2.5% in 2021—a 26% increase (Contentsquare).
17. Add descriptive validation messaging. If a customer missed a field or entered the wrong information, highlight the field where the error occurred and give descriptive, specific messages like ‘CVV number incorrect’ or ‘add zipcode.’
Want more UX tips to prepare for the peak sales season? Check out our three things to test before the busy sales season.
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