2022 Holiday Online Trends in Shopping to Reach more parents

The holidays can be an exciting time for ecommerce retailers, particularly ones that cater to parents and their kids. To make the most of the holiday season it is essential to understand your customers and make the process simple for the customers.

Let's take a look at this year's trends for online shopping for parents, and explore how you can make use of the information to increase holiday sales.

Parents are increasingly shopping online in 2022

It's affecting holiday shopping across the board, so it's no surprise the fact that 74% parents said that it influences their shopping decision making. What do these numbers suggest for the 2022 holiday season?

Well, to start, parents are spending less on entertainment - 59% less on in-house entertainment, and 70% less for entertainment outside of the home.

But they're investing more in other categories:

• Food, drinks and grocery items (58 percent more)
• Health-related products (57% more)
• Fitness (52 percentage points more)
• Jewelry (50 more)
• Electronics (48% more)

For Christmas shopping, half of parents said that they'll spend the same amount as they did in years past, while 32% will be spending less, and 17% more. This is a rather mix of both. The majority (42 percent) will split spending between both in-person and online shopping.

Parents typically purchase $250-$999 worth of holiday gifts, but 40% spend over $1000, more than almost the entire population that responded.

How to be parents' favorite store for the holidays

That's right, they're many numbers. Which way can you implement this knowledge to your store online? Here are seven strategies you can take advantage of the trend of online shopping this holiday season:

1. Concentrate on the reviews, validation as well as social confirmation

Parents are becoming more and more cautious when it comes to the products they introduce to their kids, and they're spending less on entertainment in general. Your job is to convince them that your products should make it on their list of gifts that they will only receive.

A great way to do this is by showcasing reviews from satisfied customers all over the world you can. Highlight the reviews on your listings of products and landing pages. Display websites, magazines as well as publications featuring your product. Add your Instagram feed in your footer. Include high-quality images of your products that are used by children and parents.

For reviews to be collected, think about sending an review request request after your product is given to the client. With Klaviyo, you can schedule an email to go out a few days after the order arrives on customers doorsteps. This gives kids time to have fun with your toys and wear clothes or try your food. The email can also automatically contain a link to leave a review for the specific item they bought which makes it easier for busy moms and dads to give comments.

2. Educate your shoppers

Similar to this, take the time to truly educate parents about what makes your product ideal for their children. Do they come from nature? Do they help develop an ability? Will they keep kids extra warm in the winter months? Will they be able to make parents' lives easier?

Veer adds lots of extra details on their website including details on the technology, safety, warranties, and features of their wagons. They also pack in images and videos for parents to truly visualize what they have to offer.

There are many methods to accomplish this. Publish blog posts showing all the ways your children can benefit from your playthings. Make an ebook available with more information about the importance of cup and plates that are not toxic. Find answers to common questions on the FAQ page.

Give the shoppers all the details they require to make an informed purchase.

3. Make sure you are specific in your marketing campaigns

The data isn't simply useful when it comes to making product choices, it also guides marketing strategies so that you are able to connect with your customers at a high scale. One of the most powerful methods to achieve this is to segment - groups of contacts with certain traits that are similar.

If you're a retailer, let's say you offer various educational toys. You can tag those products based on the age range they're appropriate for, then make use of data from previous purchases to notify parents of kids who fall into that group. For instance, anyone with a one-year-old doesn't wish to have to comb through lists of video games, bike accessories, or dart boards - but parents of children aged 10 or more would appreciate that!

It's not just about old age either. You can segment your email lists based on the latest online shopping trends or by attributes like clothing size, type of allergen locations, type of allergen, or order size. The possibilities are infinite, which allows customers to reduce time, and address the specific requirements of each customer.

Check out this segmentation tutorial from Klaviyo for more ideas.

4. Reduce the complexity of buying

The holidays are particularly busy for parents, who admit it have enough on their plate! There are family pictures to capture, holiday parties to go to, Christmas plays to watch, gingerbread houses to make and light shows to enjoy baking food - the list goes on and on. If you make buying gifts as easy as it can be, you'll be much more likely to win their customers' business.

What can you do to accomplish this? Here are a few ideas:

5. Allow shoppers to find what they're looking for

If parents are unable to find the specific dimension, product, or category that they want to purchase, they'll go somewhere else. Start by making your navigation easy and clear. Limit yourself to just a handful of things in your menu. You can then add secondary pages below so users aren't overloaded with choices that do not fit their needs.

If you own more than one or two items you want to categorize them using data from internet buying trends. There is the option of including the same items in multiple categories to make things more efficient. For example, you might group books by genre, format, and an age range.

You can also add filters to your shop to assist customers in narrowing their options. Magna-Tiles has filters for brand and category price, item type color, interest, and brand.

Also, you can add the search bar in the footer or main menu - somewhere it's highly visible. You can use a tool like Jetpack Search to display hyper-relevant results, auto-correct spelling mistakes, and allow users to filter your websites based on categories dates, tags and more.

6. Take an omnichannel approach

Omnichannel strategies connect offline and online interactions, so customers can shop and engage easily across multiple platforms - in-store, on your website, through social media, etc. And since the majority of parents will split their shopping between physical stores and on the internet, this strategy is crucial than ever before.

There are many ways you can maximize the benefits of multichannel e-commerce. Some of them are:

• Offering top-notch support across the various channels.
• Unifying payments both online as well as off-line so that each purchase is linked to a single customer.
• Making it easy for shoppers to return products at any time, online or in stores.
• Utilizing a CRM system to collect the history and information around each customer.

7. Provide multiple purchasing options

In the holiday rush Do everything you can to reach customers at the place they are. There are many different kinds of payment methods. Many prefer paying with credit cards and others prefer to book their items through the web and then pay with cash when they pick the item up at your local store.

Start your Christmas marketing campaigns

If you're looking to connect with parents during the holiday season, you'll need to understand the latest trends in online shopping and be able to relate to parents' needs as thoroughly as you can. And Klaviyo are here to help.

It provides powerful tools that simplify the process of checkout. It also accepts a wide range of payment methods, making finding the best products easy.

Klaviyo takes care of marketing and helps you create highly personalized emails, automate your marketing efforts and gain insight into your customers.