With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, consumers will be on the hunt for unique products to gift important women in their lives. With uncertain market conditions looming in the background, shoppers are more discerning than ever with their money and are searching for the best deals. This means visiting multiple eCommerce sites and comparison shopping before making a final purchase decision.
Consumers spend almost $32 billion on Mother’s Day. To become a destination ahead of this important holiday, you must deliver online shopping experiences that are not only convenient but also enable shoppers to create deep connections with their loved ones.
According to NRF’s historical data, shoppers’ top considerations when buying Mother’s Day gifts are the following:
- Is it unique? (46%)
- Will it create a special memory? (41%)
- Will it be convenient for me to find? (24%)
- Is the price right? (17%)
With these criteria in mind, you can craft buying journeys that align with what shoppers are looking for. From your website to your marketing and social channels, here are the creative online shopping experiences your customers will love this Mother’s Day:
1. Create Thematic Inspiration Galleries With Mother’s Day Gift Ideas
Mother’s Day is a celebration for all kinds of moms with different personality types, career paths, and hobbies. To enable shoppers to discover the perfect present, create inspiration galleries that allow them to explore gift ideas based on themes or personas. For example, gifts for the “Boss Babe Mom” or the “Grandma Who Loves to Cook.”
The key to creating effective inspiration galleries at scale is using smart merchandising rules to dynamically group products according to select attributes (think flowing skirts for the Boho Mom collection). This keeps the galleries accurate and updated with new items from relevant categories.
2. Opt for Visual Search to Make Shopping Faster and Easier
Shopping for gifts can be overwhelming and time-consuming, especially when consumers have a lot of choices. For shoppers whose top consideration when buying Mother’s Day gifts is convenience, your site must provide a flawless navigation experience.
Visual AI can improve the shopping experience as it enables customers to connect with the perfect gifts easily and quickly: With visual search, shoppers can simply upload an image of their mother’s favorite vase and find similar items. This gives them the confidence of knowing they’re buying something that aligns closely with her taste, even when they’re not 100% sure of what they’re looking for.
As shoppers explore product listings on the results page, they should be able to narrow down the items according to their key criteria. A price filter is a no-brainer, but in addition to that, you’ll want to enable them to sort by their mom’s favorite colors or her preferred jewelry style, for example. If your product tags are detailed and robust, you can use them to automatically create a great filter and faceted search experience.
3. Create Journeys Based on Mothers’ Unique Interests and Preferences
Provide your customers with alternate ways to navigate your eCommerce site, find inspiration, and narrow down the right products. For example, if shoppers have an idea of their moms’ taste or style, they can explore thematic collections you set up on the homepage.
When they click on one item that grabs their attention, the product detail page (PDP) can inspire them further with relevant product suggestions found in recommendation carousels. This makes the shopping journey more personalized and intentional. And by making every image shoppable, you can increase engagement among customers and boost conversion.
4. Inspire Connections With Community Engagement
Mother’s Day is a personal event that reaffirms emotional connections with the people that matter most to your customers. Your brand should work to deliver meaningful experiences that shoppers can relate to. For example, you can ask customers to share a favorite photo with their mom or an item that most reminds them of her. This makes for an emotional and engaging Instagram campaign and also creates user-generated content (UGC) you can share on your site to inspire new gift shoppers and showcase your brand values.
5. Experiment With Innovative Personalization Tactics
Nothing beats the power of personalizing the online shopping experience. By choosing a personalization solution that focuses on your shoppers’ in-session behaviors, you can use each shopper’s context to help recommend the ideal gift and build a stronger relationship between your customers and their loved ones, and between your customers and your brand.
Another way to personalize the Mother’s Day online shopping experience is by creating quizzes to help shoppers pin down what they’re looking for and which types of products their mothers would like. In this way, you can collect the data you need to make spot-on recommendations and help shoppers refine their searches and understanding of what to buy.
6. Look Ahead of Mother’s Day
Shopping doesn’t end on Mother’s Day. Like any other major gift-giving holiday, this is an opportunity to create customer experiences that will win over shoppers in the long term.
For shoppers who do manage to find the perfect gift, consider offering them a discount if they join your loyalty program on checkout. This way, you can stay in touch and send over relevant discounts and product recommendations.
For those who don’t find something immediately, suggest they join your email list, so you can draw them back with new gift ideas in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day.
Consumers might be more cautious with their spending given the current market conditions. Still, making moms of all types feel special will remain a priority this coming Mother’s Day. With these tactics, you can be the brand that connects shoppers with the products and experiences that will delight the moms in their lives.