Each year in the run-up to the holiday season, retailers prepare themselves for the busiest time of the year. What used to be a few weeks of shopping has turned into months, with 40% of consumers starting their holiday shopping before Halloween. This means that retailers need to start preparing their holiday campaigns and promotions, and testing their infrastructure, months in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The stakes are high, as holiday sales often account for 30% of retailers’ annual revenue.
In our recent webinar, “It’s Time to Revisit Your E-Commerce Personalization Strategies,” Laura Saati, VP of customer success for Evergage’s retail practice, and Rachel Cram, senior manager of customer success, explored retail holiday strategies and lessons learned from the 2019 holiday season – discussing how e-commerce marketers can apply those takeaways year-round to reach (and exceed) their goals. In this post, we’ll take a look at a couple of particularly impactful examples, but be sure to check out the full webinar replay for more tips and inspiration.
Mobile Matters
One critical observation from 2019 holiday season data is that shoppers are increasingly using mobile devices not just to browse, but also to make their purchases. In fact, smartphones accounted for 84% of the holiday season’s e-commerce growth, and spending from smartphones exceeded $50 billion for the first time.
It’s also worth noting that, during the 2019 holiday season, 50% of mobile shoppers abandoned their carts, as opposed to 33% of desktop shoppers. For e-commerce companies, there’s a need to think of new and creative ways to make mobile shopping even easier and stickier, and curb comparison-shopping behaviors – while also effectively engaging and tracking consumers across all channels for a full picture of their interactions with your brand. (e.g., Did a customer start their research on your mobile app, and complete the purchase with you on their desktop or in-store?)
“Optimize for mobile” is a pretty broad charge. There are a variety of ways to do it, but how do you know where to start, and which techniques work well? In this example below, an Evergage customer implemented a simple-yet-effective bounce prevention message on mobile to keep shoppers from leaving the site. When the retailer’s mobile site senses abandonment-associated behaviors (in this case, a shopper highlighting text on a product page – indicative of comparison shopping), they then deploy a message that highlights a value proposition, offer or promotion to entice the shopper to stay.

The pop-up above – shown to shoppers who display comparison-shopping behaviors – highlights the item’s popularity
(54 people are viewing this item) and the company’s free-shipping policy to drive urgency.
Time is Money
Data shows that during the 2019 holiday weekend (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday), revenue-per-minute online increased by 30% on average, due to higher conversion rates, increased average order value (AOV), and the fact that shoppers spent less time browsing before making a purchase. This means that retailers have a vested interest in making their shopping experiences as streamlined, efficient and helpful as possible. In other words: show your customers what they’re looking for, and make it easy for them to add it to their carts.
This is where relevance comes into play in a major way. When shoppers are spending a limited amount of time on your site, it’s critical that any recommendations displayed are relevant at the 1-to-1 level – aligned to that person’s interests and preferences (in brands, categories, price-point, etc.). Here, an Evergage customer replicated the in-store “checkout aisle” experience by featuring smaller, less expensive items on the online checkout page (here, personalized for the shopper) to guide them to other items of interest and incrementally increase AOV.

Recommending lower-priced items at check-out – that are complementary to what’s in a shopper’s cart
and/or aligned to their previous purchases, interests and history – can help increase AOV.
Final Thoughts
We’ve been discussing the tactics above within the context of the holiday season. But there’s no reason to save these strategies for one or two months out of the whole year. They can – and should – be used to drive traffic, engagement and conversions all year long. In fact, the non-holiday months are the best time to test and tweak these experiences, so by the time the holiday season rolls around, they’ve been perfected and proven. Be sure to check out our webinar replay for more inspiration and ideas to use during the holiday season, or any time of year.
