The Road to Holiday Readiness: Preparing for Peak Performance and Value Delivery
By Meagan White, CMO, KIBO
Companies deploying AI shopping agents are likely to see 30% more conversions and 40% faster order fulfillment.
— Meagan White, CMO, KIBO
Experts project a 7% to 9% increase in 2025 holiday eCommerce sales compared to 2024. However, weak confidence and selective spending are causing consumers to be cautious and value-focused when it comes to their holiday budgets.
For eCommerce businesses, higher costs for goods, shipping, and labor are eroding profit and creating pressure to improve efficiencies for pricing and fulfillment. Moreover, consumers are shopping earlier and blending online and offline channels, demanding faster fulfillment and better promotions.
Historical benchmarks indicate 19% of annual profits are attributable to the holiday season. However, 2025 will be challenged by tighter margins, selective consumer sentiment, and slower sales growth. Although analysts project the holiday season will still account for 18-20% of annual profits, results hinge on how effectively businesses control costs, manage inventory, and generate value.
Overall, success will depend on how well retailers address the realities of the business environment, and the practical steps they take to remain competitive.
Plan Early and Test Thoroughly
During the holiday season, performance testing helps verify your site can handle increased traffic combined with key features (e.g., real-time inventory and promotions/discount engines).
Start with basic testing, which entails monitoring how well your system can handle the maximum number of shoppers for several hours (e.g., simulate a busy day). Next, perform stress testing, which involves pushing beyond normal confines (e.g., triple the expected shopper limit) to identify breaking points and understand behavior under extreme pressure. Finally, run a soak test analysis — this requires a long-duration test (24-48 hours) to simulate a major holiday event (e.g., Black Friday to Cyber Monday) to reveal performance issues under sustained high load. P
Optimize Conversion Readiness
Enhanced site search helps users locate items quickly, reducing frustration and saving time during the busy holiday season.
When your order management system provides instant and accurate visibility into stock levels on the product pages (and even better at a location nearest them), your customers only see what’s available — messaging that supports urgency (e.g., Hurry! Only 4 in stock near you!) drives incremental conversion.
With 75% of adults surveyed saying in-store product availability is an important feature, connecting in-store inventory data directly to search results in real time and allowing your customers to filter products by availability and fulfillment options is key.
Leverage Shopper Agents
AI-enabled shopper agents can guide customers through the gift selection process, providing an upgraded shopping experience that a static website can’t match.
A shopper agent can ask customers about their budget, preferences, and the recipient’s interests to select products from your assortment — they can also provide detailed specifications, instructions, and side-by-side comparisons.
Instead of navigating FAQs or waiting for live chat agents, customers get immediate responses about shipping times, product compatibility, and return policies. AI-enabled shopper agents can handle order modifications (e.g., updated shipping information or changing an item) and provide delivery dates.
And it could lead to greater business results — companies deploying AI shopping agents may see 30% more conversions and 40% faster order fulfillment.
Streamline Order Routing
Build Post-Purchase Loyalty
Consider a Flexible Architecture in the Future
Intelligent order routing assigns orders to the optimal fulfillment location based on numerous factors.
The technology can find the locations closest to the customer to save transit time and shipping costs, provide accurate delivery dates, and add special attributes to filter products, locations, and customers.
Strategic routing capabilities and predefined daily stock limits provide the flexibility you need to balance your order load. This helps prevent warehouse overwhelm and facilitates efficient handling of large volume and multi-item orders, creating flexibility and reliability during peak periods.
Returns are unavoidable, so an efficient process is essential. A platform that manages returns and reverse logistics ensures returned inventory is handled correctly, preventing displaced items while maintaining accurate stock levels.
Customizable tools allow you to specify quantity limits and which items are returnable, and support multiple return types (e.g., refund, replacement, appeasement etc) as well as execute refund management.
Leveraging a composable, modular architecture allows you to create seamless shopping experiences across channels, from traditional web storefronts to mobile apps and voice-activated devices.
MACH-based technology which stands for “modular, API-first, composable, and headless” offers companies benefits around being able to easily customize specific business requirements and integrate with existing and future technologies, offering faster development time and more flexibility.
Measure, Learn, and Evolve
Start with where you were last year by analyzing data from the previous holiday season to surface patterns and areas of improvement. Reporting and analytics dashboards can provide detailed insights into everything from return rates by product category and sales performance by channel. Use these reports to make data-driven decisions and adjust your strategy for improvement over last year.
The holidays are a high-stakes, high-reward period for eCommerce businesses. By focusing on platform performance, you can meet and exceed customer expectations and overall business performance.
Meagan White, CMO at KIBO, leads global marketing, sales development, and revenue operations teams for the company. With more than a decade’s experience in the software industry and deep expertise in eCommerce and marketing technology solutions, she’s been instrumental in accelerating KIBO’s growth and demand generation initiatives.
Prior to her role at KIBO, Meagan held several leadership positions, including VP of Marketing at MoEngage, Director of Marketing at Localystics, and Director of Marketing Programs and Demand Generation at Acquia. Throughout her career, she has built and applied her business acumen to digital marketing, product marketing, demand generation, and communications.
Meagan has publicly shared her insights on software and eCommerce in numerous capacities, including participating in an IHL group discussion about integrating AI, machine learning, and composable commerce to enhance customer experiences. Commenting on a retail survey about inventory and fulfillment challenges, she explained the strategic imperative of real-time visibility for retailers during peak season; she was also quoted in E-Commerce Times, discussing AI’s role in bridging gaps between online and offline retail transactions. A Community Council Member for The Mach Alliance, Meagan advocates for open and accessible technology ecosystems. She has received numerous awards, including Changemaker of the Year at MoEngage, CMO Award and Circle of Excellence at Acquia, and Standing Ovation Award and President’s Club at Intralinks.