It’s never too early to start preparing for Christmas in ecommerce! That’s why Nosto is helping brands jingle all the way to success for their most lucrative peak season yet. Learn about winning strategies that you can count on to optimise the user experience, captivate your customers and maximise on the additional traffic that Q4 brings.

1. Christmas Unwrapped:
Get ready to smash peak
season
NOSTO MASTERCLASS

2. Julia Dawson
Agency Partner Manager
UK & Nordics
About me

3. Agenda
1. Why preparing for Q4 is important
2. Where to start?
3. The importance of merchandising
4. Optimising the onsite experience
5. Devising a post-peak gameplan
6. Q&A discussion

4. Source: “Strategy Insights: The 2022 Cyber 5 Report,” Digital
Commerce 360, 2022
Source: Adobe Analytics, 2023
$211.7B
spent by consumers
between Nov 1 and Dec 31
$11.3B
spent on Cyber Monday -
the biggest shopping day of 2022
The importance of Q4 for online businesses
+30%
Average increase in
online traffic during Q4

5. Where to start…

6. Get to know your audience ahead of time
Things to consider when creating
your segments:
• Where are they coming from?
• What pages are they visiting?
• What pages are they bouncing
from?
• What products are they
purchasing?

7. Weigh up your product catalogue
Things to consider when analysing
your products:
• What are your best sellers?
• What are you overstocked in?
• What were your
top-performing products last
year?
• What sort of uplift in sales did
you have last year?

8. The importance of
merchandising!

9. Implement a merchandising strategy
#1: Analyse where are customers discovering products
• Search
• Product Recommendations
• Category pages
#2: Acknowledge peak season trends
• Shoppers will almost exclusively be looking for discounts
• Your inventory status will change very quickly!
#3: Get Personal
• Understand what your customers are looking for, and push
relevant products to them.
#4: Merchandise for paid traffic
• Optimise the experience for paid channels—ensure that
products mirror the ad that lured them in.

10. Combat OOS inventory & increase conversions with Product
Variant Affinities and merchandising rules

11. Optimising the onsite
experience

12. Use shoppable gifting guides to understand customer intent
and aid product discoverability

13. Prove your value and amplify your social proof
1. Clearly highlight your USPs: make
them visible on your global site
header, homepage, and PDPs.
2. Drive urgency: leverage social proof
such as ‘X left in stock’, ‘X people
have this in their basket’’, ‘best
seller’ etc.
3. Build trust: Leveraging your own
customer’s content (UGC) in
addition to clear ratings and
reviews.

14. Maximise on traffic by incentivising customers to buy directly
from you

15. Encourage customers to increase AOV through clearly tiered
incentives

16. Devising a post-peak
gameplan

17. Make the most of the new
traffic!
1. Monitor the engagement of these
shoppers right from the moment they
purchase.
2. Segment customers into different groups
for retargeting.
3. Capture their attention through relevant
product recommendations via email.
4. Motivate them to come back to your
store through FOMO messaging.

18. To recap…
Get to know your
audience
Analyse your
products
Prioritise your
page optimisation
Merchandise your
store according to
your KPIs
Put your strategy
to the test
Keep your new
customers coming
back!

19. Scan the QR code below for
some useful Nosto links:
Thank you for listening!