Be Prepared For Holiday Shopping!

Every year…right around this time…I feel the need to remind my clients (especially the Ecommerce ones) that the holiday season is just around the corner. The notion that anyone would need a reminder might seem silly; however, this is a HUGE opportunity to capitalize on the potential up-tick in site traffic. We want to turn these visitors into shoppers and ultimately buyers; make that repeat buyers.  Now that we have identified the goal, how do we make it happen? Is there a secret recipe? Not really, although there are a variety of proven tactics that should be taken into serious consideration:

• Support the demand for your product or service. You can achieve this by increasing your budgets (daily/weekly/monthly). Traffic will no doubt spike during the holidays and you will want to cover your bases by ensuring that your ads remain active.
• Plan ahead with inventory. Pay close attention to your online orders; be prepared to restock whenever necessary. Utilize an analytics tool to determine which keywords are leading to the most sales.
• Be smart with pricing. Price has always been a factor, but even more so with today’s economy. Take the time to do some comparison shopping and analysis of what your competition is offering. You do not have to “give away the farm”, but you ought to be competitive.
• Offer Free Shipping. This is a critical piece of the puzzle. I strongly encourage retailers to take advantage of this incentive to boost sales. According to ComScore, “The percentage of online sales transactions that included free shipping increased to 42 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from 31 percent in the first quarter of 2008”.
• Utilize the most compelling Landing Pages. Send your traffic to an offer driven page that is relevant to the keywords that have been searched on. All your buyers should need to think about is entering in their credit card information.
• Offer Gift Wrap. This is especially attractive for shoppers who are shipping gifts to another state. This is a surefire way to provide that extra convenience.

Happy Holidays!