Is your Wholesale Business & B2B eCommerce Site ready for Christmas and the New Year?

Christmas is just around the corner and your B2B eCommerce website is likely to see a huge increase in activity in the weeks ahead.

But is your wholesale business and your web shop up for the challenge?

Here’s our top 5 tips to get you in tip-top shape this holiday season and have your B2B eCommerce site working overtime so you don’t have to!

 

1. Make a plan

Start by creating a plan that includes a calendar to track sales and marketing plans, and outlines goals for the upcoming Christmas season. Having a plan in place well in advance will ensure you stay on track and don’t miss opportunities. The calendar should include dates for blog posts, emails, the launch of ad campaigns and email newsletters, as well as promotional strategies.

If you sell internationally, it is essential to consider global nuances for your holiday planning too.

 

2. Be sure to be well-stocked up

Look at your sales stats from previous years to determine which products do better than others around this time and also prepare to track this year’s sales to set a strategy in place for the next year.

You should also encourage your sales team to reach out to customers and see if they plan on placing special orders to avoid backorders and late shipments.

Getting shipments out early is extremely important. If your products don’t get shipped to your customers smoothly or on time, there will be a domino effect on your customer’s customer.  

 

3. Give your Website and Marketing Campaigns a Festive Theme.

The retail stores have the Christmas decorations and offers running from the day after Halloween if not before. The B2B marketplace tends to fall behind on this. Perhaps deeming it unimportant. But giving your web shop a bit of holiday makeover is a really nice touch. This can be as simple as adding a Christmas themed banner to the top of the site.

Having your marketing messages and offers themed in this way is a good idea too. Your customers are used to this experience in their personal shopping lives and with B2B eCommerce rapidly on the rise duplicating this is their working lives is a no brainer.

Tailoring customer offers to try increase orders over Christmas and the new year can help increase orders too. Extra discounts on orders or shipping for ordering larger than normal amounts for example, especially if orders are not as high as forecasted. You’ve got all this extra stock in the warehouse after all and you certainly don’t want it hanging around until next Christmas!

 

4. Personalise your messages & offer real value

The holidays are every business’ chance to target prospects with more marketing messages and emails than usual. But your email will most likely get lost in the masses of emails if it doesn’t offer its prospective a real value. That’s why personalisation is so important. If you customise emails according to the customer’s preferences, it is more likely to be read.

Keep in mind that your customers are busy with their own preparations, so keep the message short, concise and valuable. Make the bottom line clear and keep the calls-to-action simple.

It’s also a good idea to have an overall Christmas theme for all marketing communications as well as on your website itself.

 

5. Make sure your eCommerce site is Mobile-Friendly and up to speed

Your customers are increasingly using mobile devices to place orders. While it may be typically seen as a B2C activity, your B2B customers are just as likely to be accessing their account from a mobile phone as most of us are working from various locations and not just chained to the office.

Having your eCommerce website optimised for mobile-first and foremost means that it is viewable on the screen of all mobile devices and users are not having to scroll in to see the screen.

Prioritising speed on your web shop is also key as mobile internet connections tend to be slower and even those accessing the site from a desktop connection would make a quick exit if the speed is an issue.

Giving the convenience to customers to order when and where they want is key. And this will benefit your customers all year round not just in the holiday season.

A mobile ordering app might be a good investment on top of your existing mobile optimised Web Shop, if you have a high proportion of customers accessing your existing web shop from a mobile.

Ordering via an app rather than a mobile site can help drive even more users to order on the go. Check out the benefits of a customer ordering app in our recent blog.

 

It’s clear that whether you sell cleaning supplies, toys or electronics, having your B2B eCommerce website holiday-ready is essential. It’s then easy to apply the same strategy to the different holidays that affect your business throughout the year.

If you’d like to find out more about getting your existing B2B web shop ready for this or any other season or you are looking for the right fit for digital ordering for your wholesale business book a demo with Aphix Software today so we can help you Sell Smarter!