As the festivities knock on our doors, it’s time to indulge in some planning for your festive season sale.
Now we bet your plans have already started to take shape, but are you anxious?
Are you wondering if you have all the right resources? If you have all the plans in the right place?
Do not worry! With this ultimate guide, StoreHippo brings a well-drafted plan to orchestrate a successful festive sale on your multi vendor marketplace.
Before we start with the planning, let us check out some holiday season sale trends and stats for 2023:
- 18-20% increase in online gross merchandise value (GMV) expected during the festive month
- 81 % of consumers intend to shop online during this festive season
- 50% of consumers are willing to increase their spending this festive period compared to last year
- 87% of consumers in metros and 86% across tier-2 cities prefer to shop online this festive period
- 77% of consumers affirmed that online festive shopping events enhance the convenience of their online shopping experience with options like faster delivery
- 76% of Indian consumers purchase luxury and authentic beauty brands during festive season sale
- 76% of consumers wait for online festive shopping events to purchase smartphones
- 41% of families reported an increase in spending on essentials, like personal care and household items
Source: Economic Times
The data explicitly mentions how Indian customers wait all year long to buy everything from luxury to household needs. As the customers are excited and willing to spend more this festive season, are you ready to boost your sales and keep your cash counter ringing?
Table of Contents
How to plan a bumper festive season sale for your multi vendor marketplace
How about we start planning your bumper festive season sale with some battle-tested tips to lure-in flocks of customers on your marketplace?
Decide the dates
Wondering when to plan for the sale on your marketplace? Still riding the horns of dilemma? Well, statistics reveal TIME is very crucial when planning mega festive sales. The best time to go live with your sale should be in tandem with your competitor's sale time. Yes, digital-age customers tend to go through multiple platforms and explore their options before making a choice.
Looking at the top ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, we have always seen them announcing their sale dates just a few days apart, mostly colliding. Wonder why? Just to capitalize on the buying frenzy and to acquire each other's customers. Also, having sales on the same days as your competitor automatically leads to pricing comparison, and in a price-sensitive market, the lesser-priced brand wins hands down.
Set clear goals for your brand
As you chart out your festive season sale plan, have you aligned your goals? Are you planning to create a brand name? Which customer segment are you targeting? Have you done a thorough market research? Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to outperform your competitors during the festive season to carve a niche for your brand?
As you build an online store and run festive sales, a fool-proof plan with clear goals is a must. If you have not thought it through, drop everything you are doing and invest your time in setting clear goals for your festive season sale. Focus on what your customers need and how you are going to attract more and more buyers to your marketplace platform.
Prepare your vendors
Your vendors are the soul and life of your business. As you plan to roll out a festive season sale, prepare your vendors for the inevitable shopping rush you are going to face. 44% of the people participating in e-commerce festive sales this year plan to spend more compared to the previous year.
With such forecasts, you are going to see enormous orders flowing in. Ensure your vendors do not run out of stock during these peak shopping days, so prepare your inventory well. Ask your vendors about the discounts they are offering, if they are bundling products for increased promotion, how they are handling faster shipping etc. These are the nuances that matter the most to your customers.
A top ecommerce platform like yours needs an end-to-end vendor management system that allows you to handle the business operations seamlessly. StoreHippo’s comprehensive vendor management solutions offer a unique seller page to the vendors that helps them get undivided customer attention. The vendors can also seamlessly manage their orders, returns, delivery, inventory etc with the separate vendor dashboard offered by StoreHippo. You can also set up vendor-specific discounts and shipping charges that promote the bestselling products or vendors.
Prepare engaging store design
Well, as you match the festive mood of your buyers, you get their undivided attention. Deck up your multi vendor marketplace with festive themes and prepare engaging store designs. 50% of the customers believe website design to be crucial for overall brand image. As you keep your customers hinged to your marketplace, with multilingual content, personalized offers, etc. they tend to buy beyond their budgets.
Wondering how to jazz up your website? You can use bright festive colors, related icons, and symbols to tune in with the festive mood.
StoreHippo comes with a built-in design themes library that enables you to create custom-made designs to engage with your customers and convert them into loyal customers. With the drag-and-drop feature, even novice sellers can create professional-looking website designs and themes. You can completely customize your website in accordance with the holiday season sale within minutes without the need for any coding. The multilingual support from StoreHippo also enables you to offer your customers a touch of localization, as they can now shop in their local language. StoreHippo offers features like automatic translation to up to 100+ languages (including Right to Left languages like Arabic) to help you reach your target audience even from the far-off corners of the country.
Segmented offerings via multi store
Customers do not like to be disturbed when they are on a shopping spree. As buyers look for their products online, they want the undivided attention of the brand and expect personalized offerings. When you build multiple stores for your customers, you are able to offer your customers their desired store set up and gain their undivided attention.This is the tried and trusted way to boost your festive season sale. You can create multiple unique storefronts based on location, product category, audience segments etc, or simply create a new store for the festive season.
StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions offer features that help you manage multiple stores with a single dashboard. You can easily allocate products, deals, discounts, shipping, payments etc to different sub-stores using a single database. You can also create a store-specific festive catalog and apply price override features seamlessly.
Multi level discounts
The whole idea behind organizing a festive sale for your retail enterprise brand is to offer never-like-before discounts to your customers. Well, as this is the time to nudge your buyers into buying bigger ticket sizes, offering multi-level personalized discounts can do the trick. Customers tend to buy more at discounted prices, especially during festive seasons, giving you a window to make the most of the opportunity.
StoreHippo helps you create dynamic conversion-oriented pages for different audience segments and offers personalized discounts to your customers. With the powerful in-built discount engine and other promotional tools, you can create multi-level discounts for your customers during the festivities. You can also offer personalized coupon codes and create dynamic conversion-oriented pages for your multi vendor marketplace. StoreHippo also enables you to recover abandoned carts with real-time personalized email and push notifications.
Multi channel engagement
There’s no customer who would finalize a purchase without interacting with the brand on at least 4-5 channels. And since it is the festive season, customers are cautious enough to explore various different brands before going right in with your retail enterprise brand. How do you convince your customers to buy from you? Engage with them on multiple platforms and different channels. Take your brand and the offer where your customers are, on the mobile, on social media, and on every channel they visit to keep reminding them of your offer. As a majority of orders are happening on mobile phones, make sure not to miss interacting with your customers on their smartphones.
StoreHippo is the top ecommerce platform that comes with an inbuilt mobile app builder. You can seamlessly build Android and iOS mobile apps right from your dashboard without any additional costs and with no coding required. As you build an online store with StoreHippo, you create PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices and with poor internet connectivity. With StoreHippo’s omnichannel solutions, you can maximize your reach during the holiday season and boost your profits. You can easily strategize product-market-channel mixes for faster growth and better audience engagement during the festive season sale.
Easy payment options
Every customer values their money and time. A lengthy or complicated payment process can be frustrating for customers and they might drop their purchase. The festive season is all about quick purchases, quick payments, and quick deliveries. And statistics suggest that each customer uses at least 2 digital wallets as an online payment method. You can use digital payment methods to facilitate your buyers and eventually boost your profits this festive season when you create an online store for your customers.
StoreHippo helps you scale up your business with a host of digital payment solutions. StoreHippo comes with 60+ pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways to offer your customers ease of shopping and paying. As your customers choose their own method of payment, they look forward to repeat purchases as well. With StoreHippo, you can also implement multiple payment gateways based on the location or device of the buyers and support transactions in multiple currencies.
Faster shipping
Customers during the festive season focus more on quick deliveries and would likely become loyal customers if the retail enterprise brand offered quick deliveries. Are you offering quick deliveries to your customers? Well, if not, it is time to channel the resources in the right direction. The festive season is categorically the time you should gear up your supply chain and win customer trust by offering faster and better delivery services.
StoreHippo helps you streamline your supply chain by offering automated logistics solutions. StoreHippo comes with 30+ pre-integrated logistics solutions so you choose and integrate with the solution of your choice. You can use the integrated and discounted services of our logistics partners or add any shipping partner of your choice. You can also deploy your own fleet of delivery boys to ensure faster and quicker hyperlocal ecommerce deliveries, either long-term or especially for the holiday season sale.
Multi-channel support
With such a rush of orders flowing in, it is natural for you to miss out on a few customer care requests. But, is that fine? Certainly not. 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service experiences. We bet you don't want to leave your customers hanging with their grievances and queries. A brand that listens is a brand people come back to, especially during festive seasons.
Wondering how to make your customers feel heard and listened to on your multi vendor marketplace?
- With multi-channel ecommerce customer support you can assist your customers at different steps of the buying process
- With a personal touch to the support services through live chat or customer care, you can offer personalized customer support
- You can create a FAQ or help center, as your customers might want to know details about any item or deal offered at your store
- With a strong social media presence you can connect with your customers on multiple platforms in real-time
- Draft a feedback mailer asking your customers about their experience during the festive season sale
StoreHippo helps you connect seamlessly with the best live chat software and chatbots. You can also integrate with the best CRM software to answer a variety of customer queries from multiple platforms. StoreHippo offers seamless integrations with different social platforms that enable brands to connect with their customers at multiple touchpoints.
Conclusion
The festivities come with great opportunities for retail enterprise brands to cash in on the happy moods of their customers. All you need to do is chalk out a marketing strategy keeping your customers at the core. Well, a happy customer is key to increased sales, and as you throw in some offers and discounts, you are all set to take off.
StoreHippo is the top ecommerce platform builder that comes with multiple enterprise-grade features to help you carve a niche for your business. You can plan out various discounts and deals on your multi vendor marketplace for the festive season sale, manage your inventory, ramp up your shipping details, and ensure the smooth functioning of the site before orders start pouring in.
Excited to plan out your holiday season sale? Explore the futuristic features of StoreHippo by starting your 14-day free trial now.
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