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2018 Magento Holiday Commerce Outlook

Christian Sharrow-Blaum • July 31, 2018

A few days ago, Magento released their annual Holiday Commerce Outlook. The Magento Holiday Commerce Outlook is a comprehensive guide to digital preparation and optimization for the all-important holiday season. While December feels far away, retailers need to be planning their promotions and campaigns now if they want to maximize their late-season sales.

As a leader in the digital commerce solutions industry, LYONSCG contributed considerably to this year’s Magento Holiday Commerce Outlook. Here are some highlights:

 

Optimizing the Buying Experience

Today’s shoppers predominantly care about one thing: their customer experience. Beyond products and pricing, winning retailers are the ones who are able to engage and delight customers across touchpoints from their first moment of awareness to post-purchase service.

So, what makes a good experience? Identifying customer touchpoints and aligning communications and messaging across these channels to active campaigns. From email to desktop to in-store experiences, messaging needs to resonate and draw upon data to remain relevant to the shopper.

Consequently, this means the retailers NEED to have a smooth, responsive, and consistent mobile experience. Modern consumers live on their phones and use them extensively in their shopping journey, so ensuring this channel is optimized should be a high priority this holiday season.

 

Fulfilling the Journey

Fulfillment is today’s digital commerce battleground. Customers increasingly expect features such as fast shipping, free delivery, and real-time package tracking, and they will shop with the companies that address these expectations.

We’ve found – especially around the holidays – that it is beneficial for retailers to essentially over-communicate their fulfillment capabilities and windows. By “over-communicate,” we’re referring to multiple information touchpoints throughout the online ordering process as well as robust email communications along every step of the fulfillment process. The craziness of the holiday season disrupts even the most advanced fulfillment processes, and clear and constant communication goes a long way towards keeping shoppers informed and customer service requests down.

Secondly, the holidays offer a unique opportunity for retailers to gain market share and compete with Amazon by offering expedited delivery. There’s a reason Amazon owns almost half of the digital holiday season, and retailers offering an enhanced user experience combined with fast and free shipping will find themselves optimally positioned moving forward.

 

Data Driven Decisions

Building an exceptional shopping experience is only possible when retailers actually know and understand their customers. How else can they deliver the right content to the right place at the right time? The ability to collect customer data across multiple touchpoints throughout the year will serve brands exceptionally well when it comes to personalizing the holiday shopping experience.

One massive opportunity in November and December is self-gifting. According to NRF, more than 7 in 10 holiday shoppers treated themselves last holiday season. Ensuring offers and content are personalized to the things these customers interact with is a smart way to drive increased sales and bigger orders.

On the back-end, smart retailers are rolling out multi-variate prospect groupings and lifecycle personalization to take their customer journeys to the next level. These tactics leverage data to not just drive product recommendations but also understand behavior characteristics create campaigns, communications, and offered geared towards specific conversion-driving activity. For example, customer group X responds favorably to softer, informative, nurturing content before converting, whereas customer group Y responds more favorably to aggressive offers and promotions.

 

The eBook

Every year, Magento puts together input from the best and brightest in eCommerce, and we are so honored to once again be included in the piece. All 20 pages of the Magento Holiday Commerce Outlook contain tips, tricks, and insights to make your holiday season a successful one, so download the guide, reach out to LYONSCG, and start realizing your digital goals.


Christian Sharrow-Blaum

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Christian Sharrow-Blaum

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