Are you seeing a lot of ‘Great India Festival’ or ‘Big Billion Fashion Festival’ around you?
Well, that means the festive season shopping in India is all set to kick in. With Diwali around the corner, followed by Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year, the festive season in India is here to stay for the next two months.
As an e-retailer (whether small or medium), this is your time to grow your revenue exponentially. According to Statista, the festive season merchandise value (GMV) crossed ₹900 million in 2023 and is expected to grow by a minimum of 20% this year.
In a country with a population of 140 billion and an increasing shoppers each year, missing out on this opportunity is a risk you don’t want to take.
However, discounts and offers alone are not enough! You must ensure your eCommerce store is prepared to execute the discount campaigns and accommodate the expected sales volume.
This article will explain three things you must do to prepare for the festive season shopping in 2024. Let’s go!
Content Index
3 Things to Do Before the Festive Season Shopping 2024 Kicks In
While there are multiple things to perform during the festive shopping season, here are the top three that small and medium eCommerce stores must prioritise:
- Ramp up your website for festive offers and discounts
- Streamline your checkout process with a payment router
- Set up your email marketing campaign
Let’s discuss each in detail:
Ramp up your website for festive offers and discounts
Here’s a quick checklist to get your website ready for the festive season shopping:
Optimise your website for mobile shoppers
91% of Indian online shoppers use mobile. The first step while ramping up your eCommerce website should be to optimise your store for mobile shoppers. This involves creating responsive product pages, optimising page load-time, enabling seamless mobile payment, and adjusting font and CTA sizes to create a frictionless mobile shopping experience.
Get ready to handle traffic hikes
Find a reliable hosting service provider that won’t collapse during festive traffic hikes. It will allow you to publish your files online without any hassle. Ensure that all tools are set up in place, such as plugins, server space, etc., and prioritise page loading speed to ensure shoppers have a smooth experience.
Strengthen your website’s security
The festive season is not only about shoppers visiting your store to complete their purchases. It is also about hackers attempting to access your site’s sensitive information. Therefore, learn more about online payment security, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and other security threats, and invest in a security solution to protect your store’s security.
Put up the offers and celebration banners
While your website layout can stay the same, there should be some personalisations for all the potential shoppers. This would include creating celebration banners and discount offers on the home page and respective product pages. The banners can change depending on the festival type.
Watch how Amazon does it 👇
There are different store banners, the 20% cashback offer is directly communicated, and products are categorised according to the offer types.
Create holiday-focused product pages
Create holiday-focused product pages the following:
- Special product categories include Diwali offers, Black Friday offers, Christmas offers, and Gifts for wife, mom, dad, sibling, etc.
- Highlight special offers on each product page
- Offer free shipping during the festive shopping season, along with the discounts
- Provide personalised product recommendations to boost conversions
- Highlight customer reviews and ratings on the product pages to build trust
Revamp customer support
Your customer support team should be prepared to handle many complaints, queries, and return requests. To prepare them for the volume, ramp up your support team and set realistic expectations. Opt for customer support software that automates repetitive queries and allows support executives to focus on complex queries.
Integrate 24/7 live chat software into your website and revamp the FAQs so customers can resolve most queries self-serve.
Streamline your checkout process
During the festive season in India, shoppers are always in a hurry to place an order before their desired item goes out of stock. The last thing they want to see on their screen is ‘your payment was unsuccessful’ or ‘Payment failed’ and similar messages. The checkout process should be streamlined so the shoppers can enjoy fast checkout and complete their purchases as soon as possible.
Here are a few things to do to ensure a streamlined checkout process:
- Enable guest checkout: Help first-time shoppers to complete checkout without signing up. Make their lives easier by enabling guest checkout, and if they are happy with the experience, they will return to shop
- Simplify the checkout process: Opt for a checkout that offers additional convenience to your shoppers with personalisation and adapts to shoppers coming from mobile or desktop browsers
- Opt for a payment router: A multi-PSP payment router works as middleware between your eCommerce store and the payment gateways. A single integration with your eCommerce platform helps you build redundancies in payment processing without adding technical or operational workload.
There is a high volume of payments during the festive season. Suppose you provide a 15% cash-back discount on credit card transactions. With the intelligent payment router in the picture, this offer can be configured on the router’s dashboard and applied to any payment service provider without manually configuring multiple aggregators.
Therefore, if an aggregator has a technical issue, the customer can still avail the offer through other aggregators.
Set up your email marketing campaign
As the festive season approaches, it’s time to craft your email marketing campaign that will resonate with Indian shoppers.
Here are key steps to set up a successful campaign:
- Start early: Begin planning your campaign at least 1-2 months before major holidays like Diwali or Christmas. This gives you time to refine your strategy and build anticipation
- Segment your list: Divide your subscribers based on purchase history, location, or engagement level. This allows for more personalised and relevant messaging
- Create a content calendar: Plan your email sends, including teaser emails, main promotional messages, and last-minute reminders. Include some “off days” to avoid overwhelming your subscribers
- Design festive templates: Develop email templates incorporating festive motifs and colours relevant to Indian celebrations. Test these templates across devices before the season begins
- Craft compelling subject lines: Keep them short (around four words), and consider using emojis to stand out in crowded inboxes. Test different variations to see what resonates with your audience
- Personalise content: Use subscriber data to tailor messages, such as recommending products based on past purchases or location-specific offers.
- Include clear CTAs: Make your call-to-action buttons prominent and use action-oriented language like “Shop Now” or “Claim Your Offer”
- Set up automated flows: Create email series for cart abandonment, welcome messages, and post-purchase follow-ups to engage customers throughout their journey
Remember, the goal is to provide value to your subscribers while driving sales. Balance promotional content with helpful information like gift guides, styling tips, or festive recipes to keep your audience engaged throughout the season.
Here’s a quick example from Flipkart that includes a clickable subject line and communicates the offer.
Conclusion
Out of the three things to do before festive season shopping in India, if we had to prioritise one, we would suggest streamlining your checkout process first. Your store can still run without the custom festive preps and email marketing initiatives. However, if the payment process is not set up correctly, many abandoned shopping carts and frustrated customers will be expected.
If you are looking for a payment solution that streamlines your checkout process, we suggest Nimbbl.
Here’s how Nimbbl can create a frictionless checkout experience for your online shoppers:
Fast checkout: With the Nimbbl fast checkout solution, you must provide your contact number to identify the eligible payment methods. Shoppers can complete a checkout within seconds without an OTP or UPI ID. Nimbbl’s eligibility flow increases SRT by 5 to 7%
Payment router: Nimbbl multi-PSP payment router integrates with your eCommerce platform to define your payment flows and help customers navigate through checkout to manage large transaction volumes easily.
Plugins: The Nimbbl payment gateway offers integrations with all major eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Wix, WordPress, and WooCommerce. This integration lets you experience all Nimbbl features within the same dashboard.
To experience Nimbbl firsthand:
