You made it through Christmas. Whew. Pat yourself on the back. But now it’s time to get back to work.

Here are some things you can do to capitalize on your holiday success as well as put yourself in a good position for 2015.

Counter drop in revenue with lead capture form

In Q1, conversion rate and site traffic drop significantly. This means it’s imperative to maximize results from your traffic. One way to do this is by adding a lead/email capture form to your site. You’ve seen these before—it’s the lightbox/window that greets you upon arrival to a store. The retailer asks for your email address, and in return, you get a discount. When configuring the form, set it to first time visitors only; incentivize those new shoppers to become customers.

Lead capture forms work. We’ve seen retailers capture anywhere between 3% – 20% of their traffic. That’s instant, incremental revenue. You can’t afford to not add a lead capture form. In addition, you’ll build your email list. You can nurture these new customers and get them primed for your next busy season.

Segment Your Email List

Personalization is more important than ever. Shoppers expect you to cater specifically to them as individuals, not as part of a group. So segment your lists to get as personal as possible. One approach is to use RFM analysis for segmenting lists. R (recency), F (frequency) and M (monetary) allow you to put customers in buckets. You can quickly identify your best customers, those which are most likely to churn, and those who haven’t purchased from you in a long time. Then cater your email messaging to each bucket.

Also, if you sell consumable products (ink & toner, for example), put those customers into a specific list. Determine the average reorder period for that product, then set up specific automated email campaigns to drip out along a specified timeline. Sometimes reminding a customer is all it takes to get them to re-order.

Customer feedback

You want to learn what you did well over the holidays. But more importantly, you need to understand shortcomings so you can get better.

A customer with an okay-to-good experience doesn’t refer you to friends and family. A customer with a great experience does. The easiest way to collect feedback is through a survey. Sure, only a fraction of customers will fill it out, but you’ll find nuggets of information that never occurred to you. You can use the insights to make improvements to your store, as well as…

A/B test new messaging

Launching a new shipping program in 2015? Don’t like the performance of your paid search ads? Whatever the reason, Q1 is the perfect time to test new messaging across both paid and non-paid channels. You’re pitching a smaller, tougher audience, so if you can convert well this time of year, imagine your results for the rest of the year. Get your messaging tight now, and it will pay dividends down the road.

Create new content

Ugh, content. For an eCommerce company, content is hard to write. And it’s easy to put off creating content. But now is the time to double down on content creation. It’s a slow time of the year, so you should be able to put more time and resources toward content projects. Make your content unique and interesting. Every store has a personality. Put yours into everything you do on your site.

Not only will interesting content help your online casino conversion rate, it can help with SEO. Compelling content that improves user experience can only help you in the search engine rankings. In addition to the basics such as product descriptions, work on helpful items such as product guides and articles. When you give shoppers more information, two things happen: 1, they stay on the site longer, and 2, they will reward you for helping them.

About the Author:
Sean Godier is head of marketing for Spring Metrics and eCommerce consultant. Spring Metrics is a SaaS company which helps internet retailers drive more revenue, capture email addresses and expand their social presence. Sean is a 15+ year eCommerce veteran, heading up eCommerce for companies such as Yahoo! and Business Supply (acquired by Staples).