E-commerce: 3 ways to give your clients a competitive edge on 2022's biggest sale days

E-commerce has conquered the world with its many benefits and unique experiences

It continuously dazzles online consumers with product reviews and price comparisons, seamless buying processes, and a 24/7 “open” sign that makes virtual stores available to shoppers both day and night. E-commerce has flourished so greatly, in fact, that by the end of 2022, the industry is expected to make up 17% of all US retail sales.

While successful daily, the e-commerce industry still experiences spikes of revenue during the biggest sales days of the year: Labor Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day, all of which occur between September and December, rake in the revenue at exponential rates due to the holiday season that motivates their very existence.

This means that agencies and their e-commerce clients need to get a leg up on the competition and snag a piece of that $236bn revenue that’s projected to accumulate online during the 2022 holiday season. How should you go about granting your clients that competitive edge, you ask?

Make their websites accessible to everyone, regardless of ability. Online consumers, those with or without a disability, are shopping for Halloween costumes, back-to-school clothes, Christmas presents, and more. Prioritizing web accessibility will boost your clients’ virtual shops in three key areas that will allow them to profit immensely during the time of these online sales days.

1) Offer consumers a sleeker, faster checkout process

Web accessibility solutions that offer personalized profiles, such as accessWidget, can lead to an accessible user experience that creates a simpler and faster checkout process for online shoppers; especially those with disabilities. Seamless checkout processes have been shown to lead to higher rates of purchases and conversions on websites, as the UX allows consumers to quickly click through product or service selections and make fast purchases before the clock runs out on hot deals and bargains.

For online shoppers with disabilities specifically, better navigation is more than possible on an accessible website because assistive devices or technology are properly synced and compatible with the website in use. This allows an even higher percentage of the population (an added 25% to be exact) to contribute to your clients’ profit margin on these massive sales days.

2) Elevate the search ranking of your clients’ virtual shops

Web accessibility guidelines usually overlap with common SEO techniques; providing alt-text for images, descriptive links, and proper headline structure or hierarchy are all SEO practices that align with web accessibility aspects. Essentially, that means that accessible websites have improved SEO, which in turn, lifts their visibility or ranking on search engines.

Online consumers, with or without disabilities, are typically plugging in keywords to find virtual shops that sell the product or service they need. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this makes web accessibility a major competitive edge for your clients’ eCommerce websites because Google will place their shop at the top of the results list, just before any competitors in the market your clients wish to stand out in.

3) Boost consumer loyalty by practicing inclusivity

It’s been reported that 52% of all US consumers will assess a company’s values when making an online purchase. Plus, Millennials and Gen Z specifically, prefer to support brands that care about inclusivity. By adopting web accessibility as a key offering and making your clients’ websites accessible, you’ll both be promoting and practicing public inclusion, making a name for your clients’ brand or virtual shop in the process.

This newfound reputation is likely to garner a mass amount of attention and respect, resulting in loyal consumers from the disability community who spread the word of your efforts to their friends and family across the holiday season and during the biggest online sales day. Gaining traction during this time is crucial for conversion and making a profit.

As it turns out, web accessibility was the advantage all along

When online consumers, with or without disabilities, find a website with an inclusive and operable User experience, they’ll come back time and time again because they know your clients’ virtual shop will be a pleasant shopping adventure overall. With an inclusive reputation, a no-nonsense checkout process, and a search ranking higher than market competitors, your clients’ virtual shops and websites can be quite successful during these four, major, online sales days.