ISVs have the opportunity to help their clients make the most of that Q4 income to finish the year strong. The period from October until the end of December intensifies the challenges your clients face throughout the year. Merchants spend more effort to manage employee schedules to accommodate holiday hours and increased demand, while often struggling with inventory visibility and preventing out-of-stock merchandise. Additionally, merchants must allocate resources to handle a spike in gift card sales, and loyalty program participation, and adapt to holiday shopping trends to make the most of the season.
To be a valued problem solver for your clients, ensure you thoroughly understand the retail landscape this year and are ready to provide the solutions your clients need.
Holiday shopping trends to watch in 2023
1Sales growth is low
eMarketer is predicting 4.5% growth in retail sales year over year. Therefore, your clients need to capture every opportunity for revenue. A good gift card and loyalty program combined with a reliable customer relationship management (CRM) solution can increase their capability to engage shoppers and incentivize them to buy. Show them how your solution can help them effectively segment their customer list and target groups of customers with deals and reward incentives to increase sales.
2Online shopping continues
In the past few years, consumers have made holiday purchases on ecommerce sites a part of their routines. Adobe Analytics reports that online holiday shopping reached an all-time high in Q4 2022 at $211.7 billion. Your clients should expect more online traffic during the holiday shopping season than at other times of the year and provide ecommerce customers with fast, convenient experiences. A hosted payments page can help merchants new to ecommerce quickly enable payments and offer the quick, easy checkout experiences consumers demand.
3Consumers head to stores
Although consumers have increased digital engagements with merchants, they still browse and shop in brick-and-mortar stores. Almost half (42%) of consumers say Christmas shopping is easier because they can shop both in person and online. Your clients need an omnichannel payments solution that allows them to process transactions on any channel and enables them to offer their customers a seamless transition from online to in-person commerce.
4BOPIS drives in-store sales
Buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) is an omnichannel process with real benefits. Salesforce reports that stores offering this service grow revenue 7 times faster than those that don’t. Some of that revenue comes from BOPIS customers purchasing additional items when they arrive at the store. Salesforce cites stores offering BOPIS will add $28 billion globally from those incremental revenues. Give your clients the tech tools, including mobile point of sale (POS), for smooth ordering, fulfillment, and pickup processes and for easily managing in-store returns of online orders.
5Buy now, pay later (BNPL) stretches budgets
BNPL has become a popular option for high-value purchases. It allows consumers to split payments into three interest-free installments for a small fee. Shoppers, particularly those from younger generations, looking for ways to make large holiday purchases more affordable may turn to this option. Statista reports more than 46% of Gen Z and about 40% of millennials use this payment method.
6Social media influences purchases
Social media has a bigger influence on customer shopping behavior than ever. Traffic referrals from social media have grown by 27% this year, and Salesforce predicts it will drive 10 times more online shopping visits than traditional marketing. You can help your clients capture sales on these platforms with embedded payment links, allowing shoppers to purchase directly from social media ads or posts.
Focus on Choice and Convenience
Although merchants have adapted their operations to accommodate rapidly evolving consumer behaviors over the past few years, they’re still perfecting their omnichannel operations. Furthermore, some brick-and-mortar retailers are just beginning to ramp up their online business.
ISVs can advance their businesses with solutions that help merchants improve customer experiences and business operations on all channels and across channels. Omnichannel payments are a key component of solutions that deliver the experiences customers demand and allow merchants to manage their entire businesses centrally.
As you offer solutions designed to align with holiday shopping trends and consumer behaviors all year long, make the right payment platform a key part of your strategy.
