18-Step Year End Sales Checklist for Online Businesses

Have your eCommerce business going? Don’t forget to plan ahead for your Year End Sales (YES) and maximise your revenue! Follow our comprehensive 18-step checklist below:

1. Stay one step ahead of the game.
   1. Start planning as early as November to capture customers during their research stage
   2. Customers anticipate the year end sales and are already researching deals by early November.
       
2. Observe the competition
   1. Familiarise yourself with industry trends, consumer behaviours and what makes them buy; free delivery, coupons / discounts, customer reviews, loyalty points, easy checkout.
       
3. Plan and create attractive Y.E.S offers
   1. Be more adventurous with your promotions. Some attractive offers that have shown positive results are further markdowns, selling below cost for selected items and creating artificial scarcity.
       
4. Automate Y.E.S offers in your POS for faster checkout
   1. With Maxis Cloud POS, you can easily configure year end promotional campaigns in the backend, and seamlessly sync it with the POS in all outlets - ensuring operational efficiency as frontliners no longer need to manually key in promos or discounts during checkout.
       
5. Create a Plan B for shipping and customer support
   1. Manage inventory levels using integrated warehouse management systems between various sales channels (online & offline), market your free shipping offers or flat rate shipping discounts.
       
6. Prepare for increased traffic to your web store
   1. Ensure that your server load capacity can handle Y.E.S traffic volume and work closely with your Web Maintenance and Warehouse teams.
       
7. Continuously test your site
   1. It is also important that your webstore is mobile optimised and automated triggers are effectively in place.
       
8. Ensure that your tracking pixels are installed so you can:
   1. Start planning as early as November to capture customers during their research stage
   2. Retarget past visitors, customers
       
9. Remarket to your holiday sales traffic
   
   
10. Consider enabling live chat
    1. Enhance the user experience and provide support to your customers throughout their journey.

11. Plan your digital marketing campaigns
    1. Partner with your Digital Marketing team to create enticing banners, hero images and ad copies to advertise your online and offline promotions via social media, eDM etc.
        
12. Build up the hype and create some noise around your upcoming sale
    1. Launch teaser images or videos on Facebook and Instagram and send an eDM to your database to create some buzz.
        
13. Launch your email marketing campaigns
    1. Announce your Y.E.S offers
    2. Send a final reminder before the sale ends
    3. Share exclusive offers for email subscribers / loyal customers
    4. Tease your upcoming promotions
        
14. Monitor customer behaviour and create cart abandonment emails

15. Set up Google Analytics
    1. Learn and understand your customer’s shopping behaviour so you are better equipped to match their shopping desires at the right place and time, with the right messaging.
        
16. Analyse your Y.E.S results
    1. Work with your Insights & Analytics Team to set up heatmaps or advanced user traffic tracking.
        
17. Convert Y.E.S customers into year-round customers
    1. Capture customer information via reporting dashboard and CRM module in your in-store POS, to send a post-sale email and retarget customers at a later stage.
        
18. Reflect on last year’s Y.E.S so you can optimise the effectiveness of this year’s Y.E.S