Optimising Your E-commerce Strategy: A Q1 Checklist for Success
Set yourself up for success in the opening quarter of the year with our comprehensive Q1 Checklist. Now is the perfect opportunity to scrutinise and sharpen your digital marketing strategies, ensuring a solid foundation that keeps you one step ahead of the competition.
Our checklist key to elevating your brand's digital presence, encompassing meticulous analysis and planning, website optimisation, CRM, social media, content, SEO, and more.
ANALYSIS & PLANNING
Site Metrics: Define your key performance indicators (KPIs) specific to each channel and create benchmarks to measure success.
Sessions
Users
Revenue
AOV
Conversion rate
CPA
Know your numbers: Conduct a deep-dive and analysis on what happened last Q1 looking at all channels:
What key launches did you have?
When did you launch promotions? What were the results?
What worked well and what didn’t?
Are you going to anniversary your activity and if not have you planned enough new activations or launches to support this?
If you are going for growth
What does each channel need to do to achieve this?
What contingencies do you have in place if you are behind your numbers?
Have you got more you can get out of existing channels?
Are there any new channel opportunities you can explore such as launching an affiliate program, running DM or investing in emerging markets?
Competitive Analysis: Review your competitors' to gain insights into market trends and potential gaps in your approach thinking about their offering, pricing, content and channel strategy. Do this by making sure you follow them ons social, sign up to their database, actively visit their websites to see what they are talking about and get served ads.
Customer Surveys: Consider conducting surveys or feedback sessions with customers to understand their expectations and preferences for the upcoming season.
New & Existing customers (remember Pareto principle famously states that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers):
Do you have a plan for new Vs. returning customers?
Identify and leverage your best customers
Think about referrals for your customers
Stock Management: The most important one and it still shocks us how many brands haven’t connected targets with stock. Ensure you have the right level of stock to meet demand, especially if you plan to run promotions or launch new products. Have you look at what your targets are and what stock you will have in?
WEBSITE
Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure your website is optimised for mobile devices, as a significant portion of traffic and sales comes from mobile users.
Site Speed: check this and if there are issues try to fix asap.
Website user journey & purchase path: Review your website from a user journey perspective on both desktop & mobile - go through all pages and put a test order through too.
Top & Bottom Landing Pages: Review your GA4 to see what your top pages are and which pages you're seeing the worst performance and drop off from - optimise these where possible
User heatmapping: If you don't have Hotjar or something similar already add it and use it.
Content: Audit your website content & remove outdated or irrelevant information as well as making sure all links are working properly and going to the correct pages
Navigation: Review your website's navigation & make sure it is clear & easy to use and that everything is linking to the correct place.
Product Page: As Google’s Search Generative Experience continues to roll out further, product pages are becoming ever more important, so make sure your merchandising teams are on board and making every individual SKU really shine.
CTA’s: Evaluate your website's calls-to-action & ensure they are clear, prominent & effective.
Images & Videos: Optimise your website's images & media files for faster loading times.
Shipping & Returns: Review your shipping & returns pages - do you have the correct and relevant up to date info on there now that Q4 and Xmas trading is over?
Forms & Popups: Test your website forms and popups & ensure they are working properly and the data you are collecting is going to the right place.
Integrations & Apps: Check for any broken or outdated integrations with third-party tools or platforms & fix or update them.
Activities: Valentine’s Day / Mothers Day / Spring
CRM & EMAIL
Email flows: Are your images, copy and outbound links up to date & reflective of the new season post Xmas & your new collections? Review your flows including:
Welcome series
Abandoned basket
Post-purchase
Win-back strategy
Sign up strategy: First party data is what it’s all about:
Are you maximising sign up opportunities?
Is your pop up working, is it too quick to fire, is it enticing enough to make you want to sign up?
Are there any other key pages where you can try and get visitors to sign up?
Segmentation: Segment your email lists based on customer behaviour, demographics, and purchase history to tailor your messaging. Your database will have hopefully seen an uplift during Q4 so you will have new people to target.
A/B Testing: Continuously test different email subject lines, content, and CTAs to optimise open rates and conversions.
SOCIAL
Update Your Profiles: Review your social media profiles & update them as necessary, including profile pictures, descriptions & links.
Content Calendar: Develop a content calendar for your social media channels, aligning it with your Q1 promotions and themes.
Influencer Partnerships: Explore collaborations with relevant influencers to expand your reach and credibility.
Brand Partnerships & Competitions: Think how you can grow your followers at this time of year through brand partnerships or multi brand giveaways and get these done early so you can then target these new followers through the key buying times
Broken Links: If you change your password remember to think where else you might have your social feed such as your website and this will suddenly break.
CONTENT & PROMOTIONS
Content Strategy: Review your content strategy. What are you planning to talk about in Q1. Are your target demographic going to care about this? Is it going to educate & inspire? Will it help you show up more in search results, build your brand authority & drive more traffic and engagement?
Content Distribution: Plan how you will distribute your content across different channels, such as blog posts, videos, social media, and email newsletters.
User-Generated Content: Encourage customers to create and share content related to your products or brand.
SEO
Continue to optimise your content for search engines to improve organic visibility as you would at any other time of year
Site Architecture : Ensure your site architecture has an evergreen structure to handle key holiday and sale dates, rather than "rebuilding" these pages every year - for example keep your Christms Sale page live at /christmas-sale with an off-season message rather than rebuilding each year as /christmas-sale-2022 then /christmas-sale-2023 etc, as this helps preserve equity and (like a fine wine) your more mature URL will rank better over time when it matters
Content Planning: Make sure your onsite content planning is aligned with PR drives / seasonal messaging. Keeping themes and messaging consistent makes it easier for users (and search engines) to understand what your business is about.
Meta Data: Adjust your meta data to reflect seasonal messaging on key pages, if required/appropriate; in the same way you might temporarily adjust your ad copy for Christmas or Black Friday messaging, do the same for your site’s titles and meta descriptions to encourage search engines to display your custom messaging and boost your clickthrough rate.
SUMMARY
Having a strong plan, being flexible, and maintaining a positive mindset are crucial for success. The e-commerce world is fiercely competitive and moves at a rapid speed, so it's essential to define clear KPIs, set measurable goals, review your market, competitor landscape and audiences wants and needs. Auditing your digital channels is equally crucial. By using this checklist and approach you can ensure you set yourself up for success in Q1 and beyond!
