How to score with your web shop during the holidays

Increase in online and hybrid shopping

Online shops have achieved impressive increases in sales. Remarkably, these sales continued to increase month on month, even when traditional retailers extended their opening hours.

The proximity of physical shops is an important factor, contributing to this upward trend because traditional retailers don’t just promote brand awareness, they also boost consumer confidence. Proximity therefore plays an important role in the competition with the big players in the online retail market.

For instance, 59% of consumers like to visit physical shops to touch and see products, even if they plan to buy online — which is more than last year. An increasing number of consumers are willing to shop online and even prefer an online experience to a traditional, bricks and mortar shop.

What does the future hold for traditional retail? They're still alive and kicking, but it's important to combine the power of online and offline shopping. Providing an exceptional shopping experience — by any means necessary — is still the key to sales success.

Preparing for the holiday season

Everyone knows that the holiday season starts with Black Friday and ends with Christmas. Therefore, it's never too early to start strategic planning for your webshop. Last year, by mid-October, for instance, we saw that as many as 20% of consumers had already completed their end-of-year purchases.

So you certainly don't want to miss out on seasonal promotional opportunities or holiday deals, when your competitors may have already started their preparations.

That's why the most important part of the retailer’s holiday season is a successful campaign. We've got some tips to help you grow your company's sales exponentially.

Gain the trust of your buyers

Online shoppers love easy shipping. More than half of Belgian and Dutch consumers prefer shops that offer free shipping.

One way to spotlight these benefits is to add annotations in Google Search and Performance Max results — both in free and paid offers. By using annotations such as "Free delivery during Black Friday" or "Get it before 25 December", you can persuade customers to buy from you.

Another way to give buyers more confidence in their purchases is to offer extended return periods for the holidays with annotations such as "90 days free returns" or "Free returns until 31 January".

Showcase your products

Every day, hundreds of millions of people shop and browse products using Google. Not a lot of people know this, but you've been able to showcase your products for free using the Google Shopping tab for a few years now. All you have to do is sync your full product range in Google Merchant Center and enable the "Within Google's platforms" option.

Do you still want to be visible above the standard search results? Then of course, you have to approach this as an advertiser and pay to feature your products at the top of the page. Shopping campaigns, which are best set up within a Performance Max strategy, are becoming increasingly important, as most people navigate from the top search results.

Goodbye Smart Shopping, hello Performance Max

In 2022 Google introduced a new type of campaign: Performance Max. Using Google's advanced AI technologies, Performance Max offers advertisers significant increase in reach. This is done through keyword-less targeting in Search and boosting additional conversions across Google platforms, such as YouTube, Display, Maps, Gmail, and Discover.

And that's not all. Advertisers who switched to Performance Max achieved an average increase of more than 18% in conversions at the same cost per conversion last year. Clearly, engaging Google's AI-driven tools during the holiday season is more important than ever.

Connect with shoppers in the physical world

It is business as usual in traditional retail. Yet, we see hybrid shopping increasing its market share. The number of "Open now near me" searches continues to rise. So there are different ways to respond to this:

Is your physical shop open? Then make sure customers can find you online easily. Post more information about your shop and the products you offer. After all, with a comprehensive company profile, you create a sense of confidence and familiarity with your customers.

Remember, a lot of your customers are constantly switching between online and offline shopping. Google offers several ways to measure the impact of online ads on your physical shop; measuring shop visits and shop sales. It's interesting to add this data to your Smart Bidding strategy so that you can see which campaigns, keywords, and devices give you the most shop visits.

Prepare for the shopping rush with these useful tools

Every year, planning your marketing campaigns for the holidays is a challenge. That's why Google offers some tools that will make your life a lot easier.

Check out the best-sellers report in Google Merchant Center to determine which new brands and/or products are best to stock for the holidays. What's more, the report also tells you the price range of a product, so you can see at a glance whether your competitors are outperforming you or not.

In addition, the Performance Max insights page can help you analyse data relevant to your products or services. This data comes from Google's entire ecosystem, based on search trends, demand forecasts, and consumer interests.

Google also gives you instantly actionable recommendations that can improve your campaigns. Once again, Google's AI proves how important it is to switch to automated solutions.

Google is not the only path to consumers

Consumers are everywhere, on all kinds of platforms. For instance, consumers still spend a lot of time on social media, so having a presence there is also a good idea.

During the holiday season, consumers are bombarded with ads and messages from an array of advertisers. So it is important to be present there, too.

If you only use one platform to target your consumers, while your competitor is on different platforms, your brand might slip out of the retail picture. And that is ultimately what it's all about: standing out in the crowd.

The ultimate end-of-year guide

Cyber week and the end-of-year are approaching fast. There's still a lot of great opportunities to boost your sales. This guide, will help you fine-tune your communication and advertising strategy so that you can grab your target audience's attention and keep it. We will teach you how to sell through external platforms and marketplaces like Bol.com and Amazon, and how to roll out the digital red carpet for your customers.

Download our end-of-year guide

Robbe De Vos

Digital marketer - iO

As a member of the original Google generation, Robbe finds himself on the front row every time the world's most important algorithm starts a new chapter. As a critical user but just as good as a digital marketer. In both roles, however, privacy is something he holds in high regard - as is ethical, sustainable data.