Home
Blogs

Prepare Your Online Shoe Store for the 2025 Holiday Season: 7 Pro Tips

21st June 2024
7 mins

Are you planning on making your online shoe store the go-to store for your customers this holiday season? Do you want to ramp up your shoe sales online? Or are you looking to create brand awareness about your online shoe store?

Whatever it is, you’re in the right place!

The holiday season is an excuse for families to spend time together, for shoppers to purchase gifts for their loved ones, and for online shoe companies to make the most of their online shoe store visitors.

Here we present 7 best ideas to help you prepare well for the 2024 holiday season.

What did we learn from the 2023 holiday season?

The holiday season is the most active time of the year for both shoppers and online store owners.

If you wonder how much Americans love the gift-giving season, American customers spend more during the holidays than at any other time of the year.

The holiday season is when you pull up your sleeves and put on your brand’s best foot forward.

Before we discuss how to prepare your online shoe store for the holiday season, let’s first understand what online shoe sales in 2023 taught us -

  • Footwear showed significant improvements in cart abandonment rates during Q4 2023, with footwear experiencing a reduced cart abandonment rate at 62.5%.
  • According to Adobe Analytics, footwear sales growth from November 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023, was up by 4.9% compared to the same period in 2022. This growth was part of the overall increase in online holiday sales, which reached a record $222.1 billion.​  
  • In 2023, footwear sales YoY (Year-on-Year) during the first ten days of November (1st November to 10th November) saw a significant rise, mirroring the trend of increased early holiday shopping driven by aggressive discounting and promotional events like Cyber Week​ (Digital Commerce 360)​​​.
  • Finance Online states that 30% of people planned to buy shoes during the holiday season in 2023, indicating a slight increase in consumer interest in purchasing footwear as part of their holiday shopping​ (Digital Commerce 360)​​​.

This data highlights the continued growth and adaptation of the online footwear market, driven by strategic discounting and an increasing shift toward mobile shopping during the holiday season.

Let’s discuss the 7 best tips you can adopt to prepare your online shoe store for the holiday season in 2024.

7 best tips to prepare your online shoe store for this holiday season

7 best tips for online shoe store for holiday season


1. Create your own visual identity

Your brand’s visual identity is the first determinant to help your customers distinguish your brand from your competitors. According to KissMetrics, 52% of consumers did not return to a business due to lousy branding and overall design.

The brand loyalty created by shoe brands like Nike, Adidas, and Reebok proves that the effort to develop your brand’s visual identity is worth it.

Allocate a graphic design team to create your branding board, website design, brand logo, and other visual elements.

Your customers should be able to distinguish your brand from your competitors no matter where they come across your brand online.

2. Use optimized images for quick loading time

Optimize the images you use for your website.

High-quality images boost your SEO and improve your online shoe store’s loading speed and overall user experience.

Different websites have different guidelines as to what size works best according to the site.

According to Jeff Bullas -

  • 60% of customers consider or contact a business when an image appears in local search results.
  • Regarding an eCommerce site, 67% of customers say the quality of a product image is crucial when purchasing a product.
  • For an eCommerce store, the quality of a product’s image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%), and ratings and reviews (53%) to customers.

Ensure the images on your landing page are clear and optimized and do not hinder your landing page’s loading time.

Here’s a useful tip - Dresma leverages power of Gen AI to help businesses of all sizes to create conversion worthy content for their brands regardless of where you are hosting your online shop. This includes creating images for Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and more.

It can also help you create images for your social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

how to get your store holiday ready for free?

3. Create attention-grabbing landing pages

Your online store’s landing page is the first page your customers will come in contact with when they visit your website.

Your landing page should be optimized and have clear information about your product.

The more information about your product you put on your landing page, the better. Having thorough information about your product will keep your customers well informed about the same - thus building trust.

Have clear Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons. Having clear CTA buttons like “Add to cart” or “Buy Now” tell your customer what exactly will happen once they click on a certain button.

4. Use social media to find your target audience

Social media doesn’t only include Facebook and Instagram. Along with your marketing team, brainstorm where your ideal audience is most likely spending their time.

Think about where your audience is and the type of content they are consuming, and double down on making the most of the social media platform.

Most social media platforms allow businesses to run paid advertisements on their platforms by targeting a specific audience.

Depending on your choice of social media platform and budget, you can invest in paid advertising to get in front of your audience. Let your organic and paid marketing efforts go hand in hand.

Warming up to your target audience through social media is the most organic way of getting your message out to your audience.

Create content that will help bridge the gap between what your target audience is looking for and the products you are offering.

5. Explore multi-channel selling

Omnichannel or multi-channel selling includes creating a touch point with your audience via different channels.

Multi-channel selling platforms include selling through -

  • Mobile applications
  • Social media
  • Online Stores (Websites and marketplaces)

Nike, for example, besides selling shoes on its website, sells shoes on -

  • Marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay
  • Instagram and Facebook
  • The Nike App

Nike uses these platforms to warm up the audience and create a touch point at different stages in the audience’s journey to becoming Nike’s paying customers.
Regardless of where you choose to sell over the internet, ensure you keep up with the consistency of customer experience and branding across all channels.

how to get you ecommerce store holiday ready?

6. Figure out your niche

Are the shoes you sell only for formal occasions?

Do you sell shoes only for men?

Or are your shoes tailor-made for a sportsperson?

Figure out who you want to serve.

Niching down helps you -

  • Specialize in selling shoes to a specific audience
  • Deeply understand your target audience’s pain points, thus allowing you to serve them better

Figuring out your niche beforehand saves you cost and efforts put into marketing your product early on.

Knowing who you want to serve also helps you understand the causes you wish to stand for.

7. Use holiday-centric lifestyle photos

how to get lifestyle photography for shoe store for free

Adding high-quality product images to your online store helps grab your customer’s attention and build trust and loyalty.

At the same time, a low-quality product image is a huge turn-off for your customers.

Adding holiday-themed images to your website gets your customers in the mood to purchase from you for the festive season.

Make the most of visitors coming onto your website by decorating your website and product images according to the holiday theme.

Adding holiday-themed images to your online shoe store not only prettifies your store but also builds credibility and trust among your customers.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to design a presentable online shoe store for the holiday season, it is time for you to implement these seven points to ramp up your shoe sales online.

Dresma helps online shoe companies create holiday-themed eCommerce content for their websites and social media platforms by giving them the option to choose from thousands of free image backgrounds to help them stand apart from their competition.

how to prepare your shoe store for holiday season

Frequently asked questions

How do you attract customers to buy shoes during the holiday season?
1. Sell your shoes through multi-channel platforms 2. Market your brand’s unique selling point 3. Use paid advertising along with organic marketing 4. Run offers for a limited time 5. Create offer bundles 6. Offer freebies through giveaways on social media 7. Use influencer marketing
How can I improve my online shoe business?
Your online shoe store should have a unique visual identity, excellent brand values, straightforward language, and customer testimonials to increase credibility.
How do I market a new shoe brand?
1. Tell your brand story 2. Take advantage of visual social networks like Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn 3. Use Facebook Advertising to reach more online shoppers 4. Make the best use of SEO 5. Create content to educate your customers about your product and unique selling point 6. Create a feeling of inclusivity
How do I take good pictures of shoes to sell?
Avoid clutter - be creative, yet keep your product images minimal and clean 2. Use the best lighting 3. Invest in an excellent camera 4. Take your product shots from different angles 5. Edit your product images before hitting publish
What is the best form of marketing for a holiday?
Brand storytelling is the most effective marketing strategy for the holiday season and otherwise. Through storytelling, you familiarize your customers with your brand’s story, values, vision, and goal, thus building brand loyalty.
Join our newsletter
We’ll send you an informative newsletter once a week
We care about your data in our privacy policy
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
FOLLOW US