5 Ways Business Digital Transformation Can Boost Holiday Sales
When January ushered in the excitement of a brand new decade, very few people could have predicted exactly how exciting the coming year would actually be. Each month has been seemingly more chaotic than the last, throwing personal lives into turmoil as businesses across the globe scrambled to adapt their models to suit the new environment. Now, with the holidays looming over us after an eventful several months, it’s around the time to look into capitalizing on humanity’s giving spirit.
With all the events of the year aside, businesses are looking forward to boosting sales and increasing their revenue during the holiday season. It’s the most lucrative time of the year, and hopefully it’ll make up ground for what was lost in the initial pandemic struggle. According to The Visa Back to Business Study - Holiday Edition, 88% of American consumers still plan to do Holiday shopping, with 52% of those doing their shopping online this year.
With a responsible number of the American populace still keeping themselves locked up tight indoors, digital transformation plays a huge role in ensuring businesses will be able to take advantage of this situation. To do that, they must have a clear digital plan to stay close to their customers, even while remote, ensuring that they’re providing the same level of attentive care as they would in person. The medium may be different, but the sentiment is the same: appeal to the customer, simplify interaction with your business, and pay attention to a digital-first strategy.
How Can Digital Transformation Boost Holiday Sales?
The biggest takeaway from the COVID-19 fallout has been how invaluable your company’s digital and remote presence is. Those who were already prepared for how quarantine would affect workflow by creating a supportive remote infrastructure for a completely digital approach adapted to the new changes faster than those left floundering and struggling to compensate for the sudden shift in safety requirements.
Companies must go digital in order to survive. Thinking digitally, especially with the holiday season around the corner, is essential in ensuring that holiday sales can make or break any growth possibilities the pandemic may have slowed down. According to Salesforce, global online holiday sales are predicted to grow 30% year-over-year. Companies offering online shopping options will grow digital revenue by an average of 90% compared to last holiday season.
Considering the circumstances, these numbers aren’t surprising. Even going forward after the coronavirus has been settled, the new normal will not be reflective of business operated pre-pandemic. In a world that was already shifting towards a digital-centric design, the advent of a virus that shut down most in-person interaction sent us hurtling towards an already imminent future. The digital approach to online shopping is convenient, now more than ever.
Facilitating the buying process delights customers, and highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have 3x the annual value compared to the average, moderately engaged customer.
Mobile App Development
With the population at large confined to their houses, a massive amount of consumers are spending more time online, either through a computer or their mobile devices. With 77% of Americans owning a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet, aspects of the selling process have changed to correspond with that demographic. Targeting the use of such devices through mobile applications can help reach and convert holiday shoppers across every stage in the funnel.
Developing such an application is a time-consuming, complex process to saddle your in-house team with. By relying on a mobile app development service partner, you can expedite the process and provide the required talent in a cost competitive manner. Getting a functional, intuitive app to market on as effective a time table as possible helps keep your business available and accessible for the holidays.
Chatbots for Better Engagement
Even though customers may prefer interacting with a flesh-and-blood person on the other side of the phone, the likelihood that you’re going to have the manpower required to address every instance of availability isn’t likely. There are simply too many customers to effectively partition a dedicated employee for their questions, concerns, and requests.
Implementing chatbots means that you’ll always have something available for the customer. No matter the type of industry, or if your company is B2C or B2B, chatbots can provide real-time availability, establishing convenient channels to address every consumer that comes knocking at your door. Being able to handle every single minor challenge through a chatbot, reserving real issues to be scaled to your employees, streamlines the support process across your entire organization.
Remote Visual Support for Faster Solutions
For businesses in the service industry, visualization is everything. Being able to provide visual guidance and support can help facilitate issue resolutions for customers. This type of visual support ranges from video recordings to live video conferencing, photo streaming, and so on. Providing demonstrable processes with leading examples and digital interaction plays heavily with offering comprehensive assistance for the customer.
Big Data for Data Collection
Big data has, with technological innovation, become a pivotal source for reliable customer information. By sourcing massive amounts of data and sifting through them for keen insights into how your customers interact with your business, where they spend their time, what they focus on, and so on, your teams can accurately determine how to best cater to the customers’ online experience.
Despite fielding so much data at a time, big data provides the ability to compile relevant data and use it to look at consumers as individuals. You can study their behavior from the first touchpoint all the way through the buying journey, all of which is distilled into those actionable insights. The better informed your teams are about what makes your online presence palatable to the consumer, the better your ongoing decisions regarding optimization will be.
Voice Shopping
This technology is not new, but smart speakers and voice-assisted shopping are taking more relevance now that consumers are staying indoors. This stems from a convenience standpoint, but extends into providing meaningful action for disabled clients for whom your site may not be well designed for. Creating avenues for all your potential customers to easily interact with your business both reflects well on your standing and broadens your consumer base.
Prepare to Pivot - Again
You did it once, you can do it again. Learning from your previous experience earlier in the year when the pandemic first hit, you must always be ready to shift with the winds of change as they blow on through. Companies that survived and even thrived across 2020 are the ones that were able to adapt quickly, removing blockers and implementing digital transformation in order to enhance customer service, improve their own processes, or reduce costs.
Now, with the holiday season and even beyond that, your company may be called on to make similar changes like that again. Your business models may need to be tweaked again in order to meet customer expectations. Those businesses that can make it through the last months of the year have bigger opportunities of emerging in an even stronger position once the pandemic subsides.
Essentially, stay on your toes and get ready to move with whatever comes next. It could be a foreseen occurrence or something out of left field, which is why keeping your knees bent and attention focused will help you thrive the same way you did months ago.
Conclusion
Digital innovation through transformation is a baseline necessity for ensuring that your company sales this holiday season are as sizable as possible. For many of us, the early months of 2020 presented unique challenges in meeting quotas and ROI. The holiday season presents an opportunity to make back those lost numbers, but only if you accommodate your business model to effectively align with the digital landscape.
Digital transformation offers organizations an opportunity to engage modern buyers during the pandemic, delivering according to their expectations of a seamless customer experience regardless of remote or in-person shopping. Implementing this type of innovative process is a specialty of iTexico, an Improving company, and we’ll help your company grow, thrive, and succeed every step of the way. If you’re interested in learning more about what iTexico, an Improving company can do for you, visit us at our contact page.
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