Credit: Rob Laughter via UnSplash
AUTHOR
Source: www.retaildive.com, October 2019

Even though it’s October, the holiday season is already in full swing. The importance of retail’s performance in the coming months can determine a company’s trajectory in a year where the industry has taken some big punches.  Retailers have closed nearly 7,300 stores thus far, more than any other full year, according to research from accounting and consulting firm BDO. Retail Dive also recently discovered that 28 retailers are facing bankruptcy in the next year.

The stakes are high.

It means that retailers need to streamline backend operations, enhance both online and offline experiences and think creatively about promotions. “The market is changing so dramatically, that just going back to your playbook and doing what you did last year is unlikely to have the same results,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of brand consulting firm Metaforce and marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Here are six ways retailers can stand out in the 2019 holiday season.

Highlighting promotions

Regardless of if it is online or at a physical store, people are looking for deals this season. Highlighting savings might be the best way retailers can position themselves in the coming months.

“Promote sales, promote sales, promote sales,” said Sucharita Kodali, principal analyst of e-business and channel strategy at Forrester. “It’s the number one thing that shoppers look for during the holidays.”

Retailers have been responding by spending money on digital and social media ads, according to a new study by Kantar. (Amazon in particular boosted ad spend by 84% from 2017 to 2018.) Last year, The Home Depot spent the most on holiday ads prior to Thanksgiving and J.C. Penney spent the most during the week of Thanksgiving, per the report.

Yet, the 2018 holiday season showed that price cutting is starting earlier and lasting longer, thereby teaching shoppers to wait for those deals prior to purchase. The best way to get people to engage early is by offering calculated deals that are more targeted. “The strategy of breaking that down in daily deals and certain merchandise categories, merchandising on specific days, is a smart strategy,” Ed Kennedy, senior director of commerce at e-commerce solutions platform Episerver, told Retail Dive last holiday season.

Getting websites ready for increased traffic

One of the biggest friction points with Black Friday is online traffic. While e-commerce has continued to increase during Black Friday through Cyber Monday, retailers found that their sites may not be able to absorb a dramatic increase in users.

In 2017, Macy’s and Lowe’s websites were impacted by technical glitches on Black Friday, online Gap shoppers felt a dramatic slowdown when it came to checkout and H&M had a full outage on Thanksgiving Day. Last year, J. Crew experienced a technical glitch for most of Black Friday (and on and off in the days following) and Lowe’s went dark for a period of time, causing some shoppers to fill orders at rival The Home Depot.

Yet, the problems with keeping websites up and running continue to persist, even outside of the holiday season. Target recently experienced an outage on its registers, mobile app and website, and a recent study by LogicMonitor revealed that 96% of global IT decision makers reported at least one outage in the last three years. The ability to provide a seamless online experience for an increased user base may determine who has a successful fourth quarter.