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The holiday season is the biggest consumer spending time of the whole year. And at the same time the period of the year with the highest online shopping traffic. It is high time to prepare yourself. We introduce you to the typical holiday consumers. And make sure your images are ready.

The four groups of holiday consumers

Knowing the customers is crucial, not only for target group oriented marketing. Based on distinct timing segments, holiday consumers can be divided into four groups (source: Holiday Retail Insights Report, Cardlytics).

Early Birds
They like it uncomplicated and want to have the shopping out of their minds as soon as possible. Early Birds just visit a few shops, looking for some good purchases and spend in average less than other groups. With only 15%, they are the smallest group. However, they should not be ignored, as this group is growing every year. In order to reach them, preparations for the holiday season must begin early.

Black Friday Warriors
This group is on the hunt for the best deals and prices. They are waiting for shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, the importance of such special shopping days is steadily decreasing. And accordingly, this group also shrinks continuously. They currently account for 22% of consumers. Nevertheless, on average they spend a lot of money during the holiday season. What shows, special actions remain important.

Last-Minute Shoppers
With 31% they are the second largest group. And it is growing every year. Last-Minute Shoppers wait with their holiday shopping until the final two weeks. But then they spend a lot of money, nearly 30% of the total expenditure during the season. Therefore, it is crucial to keep this group satisfied until the last minute.

Consistent Shoppers
With 32%, this is not only the biggest group of holiday consumer types. It is also the fastest growing. During the season they shop steadily and return to the shops again and again. Throughout the season, they account for almost half of all expenses! It is very important to keep this group engaged and motivated throughout the whole season.

It is all about timing and online

The holiday season starts earlier each year. According to statistics, the season already begins in mid-October. About a third of purchases are made just before Christmas. The first two weeks in December are extremely busy.

Especially in the e-commerce sector consumers nowadays can select from a virtually infinite number of shops. And the proportion of online shopping consumers is increasing steadily. Nearly half of all consumers plan to do their Christmas shopping online. The share that is spent online increases by an average of 3,6% during the holiday season, compared to the rest of the year. Almost 15,4% of all online purchases are made at the end of the season, one week before Christmas. Good prices, product diversity, constant availability and the increasing mobile optimisation of online shops convince consumers. Around the holiday season, the mobile share of online transactions grows to 24%.

We prepare your images for the holiday season

An online shop that keeps customers waiting? That should not happen. Speed and revenue are directly related in e-commerce. For more details about this, see our blog post “Speed matters, in every context!”. Therefore, you should make sure your online shop is running on full speed and is prepared for traffic spikes; by the way not only during the holiday season.

Especially for online shops, it is particularly important to optimising product images in a targeted manner. They are an essential part of the product presentation. And also make up the majority of the data volume. To show all product characteristics to your customers, one single product image is not enough. Additional product images increase sales, ensure a professional appearance and customer trust. The more product information customers have, the more likely they are to make a purchase decision. At the same time, the return rate is reduced. In order to cope with the amount of images and to keep loading times to a minimum, all images should be optimized for their use. This includes, among others: cutting and compressing all images properly, saving them in a suitable file format and preparing them for mobile use.

Finally, an efficient image workflow is also crucial. The faster your product images are in your online shop, the sooner and the more you sell. Especially during the holiday season, the demand for quickly available and high-quality product images is particularly high. By outsourcing your image editing process, you save a lot of time and money while increasing your image quality. Br24 stands for excellent service and highest quality, fast and reliable. Our specialised production team ensures that your images always impress and your performance is at full blast. With perfect image editing in the highest quality.

Br24 – We prepare your images for every season!