5 Steps For Businesses To Prepare For Valentine’s Day
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, so too comes the opportunity for retailers to capitalise on the annual buying holiday.
According to Finder, approximately £1.37 billion was spent in the UK on Valentine’s Day in 2022 and around 40 million Brits celebrated Valentine’s Day in 2021 (Source: Finder.com). Clearly, this is a crucial season for eCommerce stores.
James Khoury, an eCommerce expert and CEO of fulfilment provider Zendbox, has shared his top tips on how to properly prepare your business for Valentine’s Day in order to drive traffic and increase sales.
1. Next Day Delivery
“Research shows that the 10th of February is when most Brits are searching for ‘Valentine’s Day gifts’ on Google (Source: Google Trends). Given how last minute this is, we can presume many consumers are scrambling for last minute gifts, so speedy delivery is essential.”
“Offering a next day delivery option should be promoted throughout all points of the buying process as it reassures consumers that if they were to place an order, it would arrive on time. Better still, offering free next day delivery will further entice customers to buy – no one likes to be stuck with an unexpected, costly delivery free once they reach checkout.”
2. Going Mobile
“Before every buying season, every element of your eCommerce store should be analysed to uncover areas where users may be put off from visiting or buying from your store, and a website which has poor user experience for mobile users can severely impact sales.”
“In 2022, 56% of Brits were predominantly shopping for gifts online (Source: Statista). What’s more, towards the end of 2022, 72% of retail website traffic in the UK were via smartphone and were used to make 67% of online purchases (Source: Statista). Therefore, it’s more than likely that users will be shopping for Valentine’s Day gifts via their phones.”
“Conduct a full website audit to ensure that your website is fully optimised for mobile users, both technically and from a design perspective.”
3. Early Promotions
“Despite a significant number of last-minute buyers, there are still consumers who begin searching for a gift weeks before Valentine’s Day itself (Source: Google Trends). Whether you’re running onsite promotions, social media campaigns or online ads, it would be wise to launch promotions around three/four weeks before Valentine’s Day to match users’ intent.”
“For the best insights for your business, use Google Analytics to find out when your website receives the most traffic to provide you with a strong timeframe to push promotions most heavily, when users are actively searching for gifts.”
4. Payment Strategies
“Introducing a ‘buy now, pay later’ payment strategy can encourage consumers to buy promptly due to the appeal of paying for the item in smaller instalments over a long period of time.”
“Research suggests that Gen-Z spend the most money on Valentine’s Day (Source: Finder), and with two in five Gen-Z users using BNPL schemes (Source: Forbes) now could be the optimum time to set up the payment strategy.”
Social Media
“January can be a quiet time for many retailers, however the post-Christmas lull could be the perfect opportunity to rethink marketing efforts ahead of Valentine’s Day to ensure you’re getting your product in front of the right consumers.”
“Almost a quarter of British marketers believe that social media is the most successful channel for marketing (Source: Cybercrew), which is a fantastic marketing avenue to explore, particularly for eCommerce businesses with a smaller marketing budget.”
“Bear in mind that research has shown that male shoppers spend more on Valentine’s Day than female shoppers (Source: Balancing Everything), which should be considered within your marketing efforts.”
If you’re looking for an award-winning 3PL solution that takes care of the entire eCommerce fulfilment process for your business, then check out Zendbox’s services here.
