How to boost your online sales this Christmas

We know that these days B2B buyers expect the same levels of customer service and convenience as consumers; this means that there are opportunities to apply consumer marketing to B2B customers. There are a number of key ecommerce days over the festive period, traditionally used by retailers, which firms in the distributive trades can adopt to their advantage.

The main ecommerce shopping days are:

• Black Friday - Started in the US, and was originally a day for bricks and mortar shopping, with retailers offering huge pre-Christmas bargains. However in 2015, after scenes of chaos in some stores in previous years, consumers went online instead, spending £1.1 billion online, which was 36% more than in 2014, making Black Friday the most important ecommerce day of the year.

• Cyber Monday – Three days after Black Friday, Cyber Monday was the day originally set aside for online promotions. However, last year, it was only the second most important ecommerce day, with UK online sales up by 31% on 2014. But a 31% uplift is not to be sneezed at and it remains to be seen how customers will behave in 2016.

• Small Business Saturday – Another day originally designed for bricks and mortar businesses, Small Business Saturday has become another important ecommerce day. In the UK, consumers spent £623m with small businesses and the hashtag #SmallBizSatUK reached more than 25 million people.

And don’t forget Christmas Day and Boxing Day. In the UK, in 2015, ecommerce sales were up 8% and 22% respectively on the same days in 2014. After all, a B2B ecommerce solution means that whilst your business or your customers’ are closed over the holiday period, you can still trade. B2B buyers are online and shopping during this time so they may as well be buying from you.

Making the best of seasonal trading opportunities is dependent on having the right B2B ecommerce platform, one that ensures:

• Your customers can see live, accurate stock availability and full product information.
• You can tailor specific offers to individual customer accounts
• Your financial systems are fully integrated so customers’ accounts are automatically updated
• Your customers can access their account details, together with personalised offers and discounts, and order at any time.
• You can easily link to your customer database or CRM system to manage seasonal communications and targeted campaigns

Find out how our K8 Multi Channel Ecommerce Software can help you.

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