12 Tips for Making Christmas a Season of Online Good Cheer
Friday, 01 October 2010 00:00
For many stores, Christmas provides the biggest profit opportunity of the year. When it comes to preparing for the Christmas season online, the early bird catches the worm. Before you know it, the rush to service orders has replaced any consideration of how to optimise sales. Here are a few seasonal tips from Actinic and some online merchants.
Prepare marketing ideas early
Whatever your Christmas marketing plans, run some early small-scale tests. Establish what works, and refine it. If search engines matter to you, optimise for them in plenty of time. To do this draw on results from the previous year, also looking at the searches that were conducted on your own site, particularly those that returned no results.
Keith Milsom at www.AnythingLeft-handed.co.uk advises, “We plan ahead for promotion emails to various customer groups as they take a while to prepare. We also boost PR with a press release in September.”
Ensure you can you handle the extra traffic
If there is anything worse than having no orders, it's having more than you can handle. This just produces dissatisfied customers.
The average etailer gets 30% more orders in November/December. Make sure your web site can cope with the increase. Unfortunately, this is where over-economising on hosting may reveals its flaws.
Get stock levels right
Richard Cooper of www.polishedblisss.co.uk advises to “plan and manage your stock levels wisely.” There is little point in succeeding with marketing initiatives if you run out of stock and the January sales can always be used to clear excess stock. Mike Taylor at www.dream-racer.com advises that “developing good relationships with suppliers” pays off dividends at Christmas when you need the help.
Sort your logistics
Make sure your logistics supplier can cope. To avoid missed deliveries and redelivery charges, let customers select delivery to their work address or direct to the recipient.
Talk to your customers
Robert Johnston of www.gentlemans-shop.com has purchased a Blackberry to process the additional emails pre-Christmas. He comments that “a quick response to customer’s email always leads to a sale as it proves you want and value their custom.”
Seasonal promotions
Find creative ways to mark the season. Put gift ideas on your home page, and stock Christmas-themed items. Remember to change the pages on Boxing Day and maybe start promoting your January sale.
Cater for last minute shoppers
Cite a final ordering date for Christmas delivery on every page - highlight when the deadline has passed. You’ll need different dates for home and overseas orders.
Drop existing customers a reminder email, e.g. that they must order by end of tomorrow for delivery outside Europe.
Customers in a rush
Most online shoppers are in a hurry, particularly at Christmas. Help them out with a search capability that can match by category and price. Text-based searching is no help when you want a gift for less than £10 for your eight-year-old niece.
Another aid for rushed buyers is a gift-wrapping service as Christianne James of www.4little1s.com suggests, “For a small charge, have the item wrapped up in Christmas wrapping paper with a bow. Offer the option to have a Christmas card with it as well.”
Up-sell to maximise the opportunity
Where gifts need additional items such as batteries, ensure they can be ordered together. Suggest similar gifts, and incentivise extra purchases with offers like 'buy two and get one free'.
Stop pay per click when you are maxxed out
If your web site is getting overloaded, or you have reached your maximum ability to fulfil orders or your cut off point on Christmas deliveries has passed, remember to cut back on pay-per-click advertising. There’s no point in spending money on traffic that won’t deliver any profit.
Keep calm and carry on
Robert Johnston had a- customer complaining about his parcel not arriving. “We knew from our records that the order had been signed for, but the caller didn't know the person. I Googled the name and there was a company director listed at the property next door so having got her number via bt.com, I rang to confirm she had the parcel. We were then able to call our unhappy customer and the neighbour brought the parcel round. We then of course became the best shop in the whole world. The moral of this story is to "keep calm and carry on", a bit of detective work can usually solve any problem and even the angriest of customers can be won over.”
Give yourself a break
Finally, book a well-earned rest for February, following the hopefully equally busy January sales. You will probably need it. Just beware of tour-operators trying to up-sell you to something more expensive!
Written by Chris Barling, CEO of ecommerce and EPOS supplier, Actinic. Originally published on The Start Up Donut.