actinic's tips for maximising sales online at christmas
Each year, Christmas seems to start earlier, so in order to be ready for what is often the most profitable time of year, you have to start fattening the goose even sooner. Here are ten tips about the special requirements of Yuletide retailing online, backed up by the experiences of site owners.
Prepare your marketing ideas early
Whatever marketing you are planning for your site in the run-up to Christmas, run some small-scale tests as soon as possible. Establish what works best, and refine it. And if search engines are important for traffic, then prepare, optimise and submit your Christmas pages now. Don’t wait, or you may be too late.
Keith Milsom at www.AnythingLefthanded.co.uk advises, “We plan ahead for promo emails to various customer groups as it takes a while to prepare them. We also boost our PR activity with a press release in September.”
Can you handle the extra traffic?
If there is anything worse that having no orders, it's the frustration of going out of stock, or having fulfilment problems and having to refund the money. Problems like this produce unhappy customers that won't be coming back.
An average ecommerce site sees a 30% rise in orders in November/December, so make sure that the business can cope with the increase. This includes web hosting and having extra staff to help with shipping.
Bill Stevenson of www.spicesofindia.co.uk advises ordering extra stock and advertising for temporary packing staff in September. “Last December visitors fell, but conversion rates went from 1% to around 3%. We ran out of many Christmas gift sets and could not get new stock in time. This year we have ordered enough to allow for a 5% conversion rate.”
Sort your deliveries
Make sure your logistics supplier can cope. Consider a courier for the peak period, or Special Delivery. Letting customers select delivery to their work address can avoid missed deliveries.
Robert Johnston of www.gentlemans-shop.com adds, “When we send a parcel the customer receives the tracking details by email and confirmation that the goods will arrive on the next business day. This has cut dramatically the ‘when will my parcel arrive’ calls.”
Anticipate last minute shoppers
Make clear the last day customers can order for Christmas delivery. Ideally, put this at the top and bottom of every web page. Once the deadline has passed, highlight this.
Use seasonal promotions
“Don't be a bah-humbug! Decorate your site and get into the Christmas spirit,” says James Auckland at www.lunaspas.com.
Find creative ways to mark the season. If this approach is good enough for Google, it’s good enough for us too. Put likely presents and links to gift packs on your home page, and stock Christmas-themed items. Offer gift wrapping too. But don’t forget to change the pages on Boxing Day.
Christmas specials may also enable you to start clearing slow moving stock even before December has passed.
Upsell to maximise the opportunity
Many gifts don't stand alone, they need other items to go with them – like batteries, for example. So explicitly offer related items with your products wherever relevant. You might also suggest, similar gifts to buy. And people buying presents can be susceptible to offers like 'buy two and get one free'.
Customers in a rush
Most online shoppers, and particularly Christmas ones, are in a hurry; so you need a search capability that can match both by category and by price range. Your ecommerce product must integrate the two: search engines may be fine for text-based searching, but they're very poor when you want a gift that costs less than £10 for, say, your eight-year-old niece.
Another help for rushed buyers is a gift-wrapping service. This also provides a great opportunity to increase margin.
Thank regulars
James Auckland again: “Thank your suppliers, as well as your regular customers, as they are an integral part of your team.” Good supplier relationships can really help when you have problems. You could also add a ‘present’ of a discount during January for suppliers and good customers.
Keep a sense of humour!
Robert Johnston once had an irate customer repeatedly phoning on Christmas Eve, “about the delivery of his father’s Christmas present. We had dispatched it two weeks earlier but he slammed the phone down accusing me of ’ruining his Christmas‘. Just as we closed, the same guy called to apologise. His sister had signed for the parcel and dad’s special present was already wrapped and under the tree.”
Advertise January sales
Make sure that you have planned your January sales ahead of time, including working out the appropriate delivery dates. It gives the ‘value shoppers’ a chance to clear all that dead stock for you.
So, Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, as the saying goes. And the one sure thing is that on the hyper-competitive net, someone else will be getting fat eating your lunch, if they’re better prepared than you. Why not get out and eat theirs instead?
