8 Things All E-Commerce Owners Should Do in the Last Month of 2023

End of the year is the right time to review your e-Commerce business, its achievements and the success of its marketing and sales strategies. This will help you set goals and objectives for the next year and also plan strategies to achieve these goals.

Once you have managed to clearly define your objectives and strategies, putting together an effective action plan of action for 2015 will be a piece of cake.

Here’s a quick summary of some steps that you ‘must’ certainly take before the year ends. What you are essentially doing is ensuring your eCommerce business hits the ground running in 2015.

1. Get Ready to Ring in the New Year

The New Year is bearing down upon us. So, it’s time you started thinking of boosting your eCommerce sales in 2015 by planning your strategy in 2014.

Set crystal clear business goals for your eCommerce store that will help it reach new heights in 2015! Keep a hawk eye on the hot new happenings in the eCommerce industry. Think how they can help your business and implement their use if you can think the deliverables are well worth the effort.

Also plan your New Year marketing and advertising campaigns and determine your inventory needs in the last month itself.

2. Review Your Business Website

Does your website look outdated? Is it slow to load? If your eCommerce site looks old and outdated, visitors will abandon it and move to your competitor’s site. This is why you need to ensure your site is designed keeping in the mind the latest trends in design and functionality.

2014 was the year of responsive design. If your eCommerce website is not working on mobile devices, you have already lost a big opportunity to increase your revenue. A large section of your target audience is shopping for products using their smartphones and tablets and if you don’t have a mobile friendly online presence, you are missing out on converting them into your customers.

But, it’s not too late. Embrace responsive design for your site before the year ends to attract your mobile audience in the new year.

3. Offer Personalized Experiences

The global eCommerce market is becoming increasingly competitive. Many eCommerce stores are launched every day.

What can you do differently in order to get noticed in this sea of eCommerce stores?

One of the ways to win the battle for consumer perception is to offer personalized experiences. Studies show that offering customized personal experiences to visitors will help your site increase conversion rates and build a loyal following of customers.

So, before the year ends, invest in technology that will help you do business from the customer’s perspective. There are quite a few tools available that help personalize the shopping experience by using customer preferences and order history details.

4. Revamp Social Media Strategies

In 2015, social media marketing tactics will further entrench themselves into the marketing arsenal of online retailers. Ecommerce owners have been using social media channels for connecting with consumers, gaining insights into target audience preferences, marketing and branding. This will continue next year as well.

New social media channels may spring up and gain in popularity, but it’s important that you don’t spread your brand presence too thin on social media. Only pick those channels that are likely to be used by your target audience.

Start planning a collection of social media campaigns that will help improve sales and boost your business’s bottom line. Leverage paid social ads like Facebook Ads and Promoted Tweets to market your products or services to your target audience.

Certain social tactics that had been working in 2014 will not work next year. So, it’s important that you reimagine and rework your social media strategy by getting rid of the deadwood and reenergizing it with tactics that you know will deliver rich dividends.

5. Leverage Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is getting more popular by the day, because people are spending an increasing amount of time on their mobile devices. Now is the right time to get into mobile advertising, before it gets saturated by your competitors.

In 2015, eCommerce store owners will need to spend their dollars on mobile ads if they want to gain traction. So, start working out a budget for your mobile ad spend and begin work on your advertising strategy without wasting time.

6. Develop Mobile Apps not just Responsive Websites

Mobile shopping is growing at the rate of knots. The prime aim of your mobile based site should be to provide quick browsing and painless purchasing to your mobile audience. But in 2015, simply having a responsive website is not going to be enough.

To skyrocket your conversions and sales in 2015, set aside some dollars for investing in a mobile app for your eCommerce store.

7. Launch an Email Marketing Campaign

Before the New Year, launch an email marketing campaign. Send a thank you email to all your customers, social followers.

One way of increasing the deliverability of your email is by adding a personal note from the CEO. You can even add extra spice to the email by offering them a discount coupon for some future purchase. This will help retain customers and may also turn them into brand evangelists.

8. Leverage Analytics to Know What Works

Before the year is out, review your business’s performance in 2014. You have the online history of your customers and subscribers in your hands; that’s a lot of valuable data. Take advantage of it using tools like Google Analytics, Radian6 or Beevolve to see what worked or what didn’t when it came to customer acquisition and retention.

Also review your paid advertising performance, email marketing campaigns, and your social media effectiveness. Which channels contributed to traffic? Which contributed to revenue? Where do you see growth and attrition?

These are the questions you must ask.

Once you have analyzed all data and worked out an answer to these questions, start creating a solid plan for 2015.

Over to You!

Embracing these steps will ensure a prosperous new year for your eCommerce business.

Are there any other steps that you think you should adopt in the last month of 2014? Do let u know.

Happy selling in 2015!