In this interview, moderator Keith Jelinek, co-leader of our Performance Improvement Advisory Practice, continues Ankura's five-part series dedicated to helping retailers excel in the crucial fourth quarter. This segment features Sara Bakacs, who shares expert strategies for marketers and retailers to implement now, ensuring a successful and profitable holiday season.
Keith: Black Friday, the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, is imminent. Retailers have spent months planning for this pivotal period. They, and consumers alike, have had to weather a storm of challenges: geopolitical tensions, inflation, supply chain disruptions, increasing labor costs, economic uncertainty, shifting consumer confidence, and to top it off, a presidential election cycle.
The final two months of the year can be a make-or-break period for businesses. By fine-tuning strategies and tactics, companies can improve their chances of ending the year in the black. This year, with a shortened selling season, these adjustments are even more critical.
As final preparations are underway, our retail expert team has prepared a holiday readiness checklist spanning across five key functional areas: supply chain, marketing, store operations and labor planning, digital commerce, as well as inventory replenishment and allocation.
Blending years of retail experience with shopper feedback from our recent consumer holiday survey, we are excited to share our holiday checklist, which provides a fresh perspective on what is most important to your customers this holiday period.
Today, in part four of our series on the holiday shopping season, Sara Bakacs, a Senior Associate with expertise in the digital arena joins us to discuss key holiday strategies to drive e-commerce success.
Let's get the conversation started …
Keith: Sara, thanks for joining us today. As we look at the holiday season, from a retailer's perspective, a lot rides on the success of e-commerce. We are catering now to a customer that wants to shop anywhere, anytime, 24/7. They want to use their desktop. They want to use their mobile apps. They want to be engaged when and where they want. And understanding that this is a shorter selling season, what are some tactics that should be utilized to improve conversion and drive a higher UPT for this holiday season?
Sara: That is an important question. Retailers are facing the shortest selling season we’ve seen in five years. We’re only 27 days between the big holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, so at this point it’s critical to drive conversion as early as possible. So first, on the side of e-commerce, it’s about making sure the website journey is simple and engaging. The customer these days has the expectation of a simple checkout and affordable two-day delivery. For retailers, how do you compete with that? How do you make your website as competitive as possible and keep the customer on site? Some tactics could be sticky buttons that are always visible on site, like your search bar and cart, to make it as efficient as possible for the customer to check out. Another could be adding badges and callouts for sale or new items, creating that sense of urgency. Additionally, I think it’s critically important to make sure the customer knows the fulfillment methods for every item. Particularly, ship from stores and DCs, or pick up in store. How can the customer get their item by the time they need it?
On the topic of driving a higher UPT, it’s about creating and increasing awareness for additional products. The customer might not be aware of all the items you’re trying to sell. So, recommend complementary cross-sell and upsell items. These are items they’ve recently viewed, could be on their wish list, items they could have purchased in the past, or items that go hand in hand with those in their cart. It’s important to make this merchandise as incentivizing as possible. So, whether you’re adding promotion, making it BOGO or a limited-time deal, find ways to entice the customer to buy this item and drive unit velocity as early as possible.
Keith: Those are great points. You talked about two important factors. There’s the customer buying it to have it shipped to their home or they want to buy it and pick it up in the store. Both of these come with some critical deadlines to ensure that the customer has it there when they want it before the holidays. What are some realy important key dates that should be established now and how should these be managed and messaged out to the consumer?
Sara: Determining the key dates is really about internal versus external dates of the reach, and learnings to be aware of. Internally, this could mean working with your DC to ensure reliability for the customer. Understanding your lead times, ensuring your delivery confidence, even adding a buffer day if needed to make sure the product is either in store or in the customer’s home when it needs to be. We learned from our holiday survey that online shoppers who are shopping earlier this year indicated they’re doing so to avoid shipping delays more so than getting a better deal. The customer is really aware of any existing COVID concerns for shipping delays and supply chain disruptions. So, make sure the customer can get their product before the key dates. Another factor is working with stores to remove items on site that aren’t eligible to be shipped from stores. That way, customers can no longer see it online, they can no longer order it and consequently have it arrive after the holiday, which would be a disappointment.
Externally, the customer must know the dates they need to order by. Saying order by “X date” for standard delivery, order by “X date” for expedited or next day delivery, ensures that the customer is aware of these deadlines and getting excited by the urgency. Even after these dates have passed, when you’re facing December 20th or 23rd, it's important to leverage e-commerce to drive traffic to the store and utilize the website as an asset. So, pushing omnichannel, incentivizing either e-gift cards or just driving traffic to purchase more items in-store, I think is going to be crucial, particularly facing this short selling timeframe.
Keith: This is very helpful, Sara. Thank you so much. You’ve helped us to break down some of the critical elements around e-commerce and how to think about maximizing sales for this holiday in what looks to be a pretty significant holiday season with some customers who are more optimistic than they’ve been in the last couple of years. Retailers will be vying for everybody’s wallet and trying to capture those purchases.
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Keith: We appreciate you joining us today and hope you will find our holiday checklist of benefit. Along with the experiences shared from our team, as a reminder, you'll find a link to our checklist at the bottom of the page, and you can download it for your use.
Our Ankura performance improvement team has a proven track record of executing strategic plans to achieve sustainable performance improvement and targeted operating results to help maximize EBITDA, cash flow, and shareholder value. Our expertise extends to all critical aspects of the retail enterprise. We work alongside clients to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Ankura leverages its vast internal resources to assemble the perfect team for each client's unique challenges, guaranteeing optimal outcomes for complex problems.
Let us know if we can be helpful to you, and happy holidays.
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To assist retailers in preparing for this crucial holiday sales period, Ankura’s Performance Improvement team has developed the 2024 Holiday Readiness Checklist. This checklist outlines key focus areas to ensure your organization is aligned and ready to deliver on the essential drivers of sales success in the coming weeks. By adhering to the provided guidelines, retailers will be well-prepared to delight shoppers and gain a competitive edge.
Click here to access the 2024 Holiday Readiness Checklist.
© Copyright 2024. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC., its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.
