For retailers with strong ecommerce or high-street presences – as well as, of course, both – the drumbeat of the approaching Yuletide season is intensifying.
Certainly, if you want your own store to fare better in 2025 than it did last year in terms of sales and profits, you now need to be preparing with meaningful and well-informed actions. In other words, you shouldn’t be depending solely on spontaneity and guesswork.
This brings us onto the topic of the data that you should have accumulated during your Christmas 2024 campaign, presuming your business was active back then.
Now is the time to consider what your store’s Q4 2024 results are telling you
It was anticipated in the run-up to last year’s festive shopping season that total retail spending – encompassing online as well as in-store – would reach £88.29 billion in the UK, and £25.87 billion in Spain.
So, despite concerns having been voiced in recent years about a lingering cost-of-living crisis and strained wallets, there is evidently scope for e-tail shops around Europe to analyse their own results from 2024’s fourth quarter, to help them sell more this year.
Such aspects as your store’s last-Christmas sales trends, campaign performance, and operational mistakes should all be scrutinised, as you look to make better decisions this time around.
Here, then, are some tips to help you get the best from your festive-season 2024 data:
- Familiarise yourself with what sold well
Looking over last year’s data, you will almost certainly see behavioural patterns in terms of how customers responded to product launches, promotions, and changes to your site.
Be sure to review the weekly sales reports for the October-to-December period, and to segment shoppers on the basis of their location, device, and purchase date.
It isn’t only spikes in sales for certain categories, products, and campaigns that you should be paying attention to, but also any temporary slowdowns in sales, given that these could help you identify opportunities you missed last year.
Then, you will be able to apply what you have learned to the planning of your Christmas 2025 inventory and the scheduling of any promotional periods.
- Analyse the traffic your ecommerce store received
When you are picking out trends in your business’s online traffic from last year’s festive period, you will want to get an appreciation of the “big picture”.
For example, taken in isolation, it may seem highly notable and impressive if 90% of your sales during the season occurred on mobile. However, this may not be so significant if most of your site traffic was also on mobile.
Ultimately, not all forms of ecommerce website traffic will enjoy the same conversion rates. There might be certain sources of high-volume traffic that didn’t convert into paying customers quite so well for you last year, which could give you areas to focus on for improvement in 2025.
- Consider the support requests customers made
The enquiries that your store’s customers make to support staff can help shed light on those “friction points” that might worsen their all-round experience of your brand.
If, then, you can banish those glitches that arise in your store’s purchase flows, you should theoretically be able to help your store achieve more impressive Christmas-season profits in 2025.
When you scrutinise the volume of customer support requests by date and theme, you may notice certain trends.
It might be the case that certain marketing campaigns or discount offers caused more confusion and frustration than others. Or maybe shoppers were often unsure about the size of particular items in your store, which meant they felt the need to reach out to your team for clarification?
Whatever products or offers triggered high levels of customer support queries, you will want to know about them, so that you can modify or remove them from your store for Christmas 2025.
The Piranha Designs team is ready to help bolster your brand’s online presence
Whether you’re on the lookout for ecommerce or website design expertise, or perhaps require the knowhow of one of the most trusted system development companies in Gibraltar, the UK, or Spain, our experts would be pleased to advise, guide, and assist you.
To arrange a free no-obligation discussion about your project, please get in touch with us today.
