Preparing for Christmas 2008 - eCorner eCommerce

Message from discussion Preparing for Christmas 2008
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Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:28:17 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Preparing for Christmas 2008
From: eCorner Group Manager <debrincat.j...@gmail.com>
To: eCorner eCommerce <ecorner-ecommerce@googlegroups.com>
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When the Christmas decoration start appearing in the supermarkets and
department stores you know the Christmas buying season is well
underway. But are you ready to take advantage of the huge opportunity
that Christmas brings to online stores?

How will Christmas 2008 be different?

If we think about the second question first then it may help us to set
expectations for the Christmas period. The one think that dominates
Christmas and the holiday season this year is the global financial
crisis. Speculation on what might happen over the next few months is
best left to experts. How it will affect the business of selling
online is something we have to determine.

There are two guarantees; Christmas will happen, and people will still
spend up on gifts and food for the holiday season.

Every year Christmas is the dominant retail sales period in Australia
and New Zealand if not worldwide. Worldwide trends have been
favourable for online shopping and the latest report from Nielsens can
provide some new confidence for online sellers. The trend is for more
people to buy online being driven by many factors and this is unlikely
to slow.
This year;

=84=AB	more people will buy online,
=84=AB	consumers will look for bargains more so than in the past,
=84=AB	comparison shopping will be the norm,
=84=AB	buyers will look for added value and special offers,

Buying online for Christmas starts as early as September but the real
peak happens in the first week of December. This year we will see a
later start and a longer buying period. The after Christmas, New Years
sales, will still be important to sell off overstocked items at
bargain prices.

To be ready for Christmas you have to think of a number of issues:

1.	Is your online store ready? It is no use waiting until December to
set up the store as you just won't make it in time.

2.	Do you have the products to sell? Getting the stock can be tricky
the closer you get to Christmas so you need to know what you will need
now.

3.	When is my delivery cut off date for Christmas? It is no use
selling to a customer who expects pre Christmas delivery if you cannot
get the product delivered on time. So you need to tell your buyers
what they can expect if they buy on the 24th December.

4.	Do you have a safe checkout process setup like PayPal Express now
the leading Australian payment method according to Nielsen Research or
eWAY one of Australia=A1=A6s leading payment providers? Consumers will be
more careful this Christmas and look for security when buying online.

5.	Add an SSL certificate to your webstore like a COMODO Instant SSL
(www.comodo.com), these add to buyer confidence.

6.	Think about promotions? You can setup special Google AdWords
Campaigns just for Christmas and help drive Christmas traffic to your
store. Go talk to your SEM partner like Hot Goanna
(www.hotgoanna.com.au).

7.	Use the Price Comparison portals like www.getprice.com.au to
promote your products and special offers and drive qualified traffic
to your webstore.

8.	Are you offering Christmas specials? You can put up products that
have special pre-Christmas offers such as free delivery. This can help
you get higher conversions.

9.	Add Christmas keywords? Make sure that you add the Christmas
keywords to you Meta-keywords with plenty of time to get crawled by
the search engines before Christmas. Also make sure that you add
Christmas Gift category names and description text to match up with
you keywords.

10.	Products are all important and you might think of price ranges for
gifts so that you fit everyone=A1=A6s budgets.

11.	People buying gifts want ideas so give them some. Set up special
categories like "Gifts for him", Gifts for Mum", "Gifts for the dog",
"Take a chance gifts" and so on. Be inventive as you need to stand out
in a crowd.

12.	Don't forget that Google might take weeks to crawl and index your
new content so allow plenty of time and don't wait till the last
minute.

13.	Gift wrapping and gift cards can be easily added in the shopping
basket so you might want to think about offering free gift wrapping
and free gift delivery.

14.	You can have multiple shipping addresses so your buyers can ship
directly to an alternative address. Offer this service and make sure
you get the gift there on time.

15.	Free shipping at Christmas, or anytime, can be a great incentive
to buy online. If you are selling a product online you can structure
an average shipping price into your costs. Then allow free shipping by
Australia Post.

16.	You can time the shipping and delivery so that as you get closer
to Christmas shipping is no longer free but maybe at a premium to
ensure delivery.

17.	Give your store a Christmas theme. It is easy to setup a new style
and change the colours and banners for Christmas. You can even start
doing that right now and make that the live style later in the year.
Set up a count down to Christmas - it can be a easy as a little added
text to your home page.

18.	After Christmas is a great time for specials and people on
vacation like to shop around for bargains. So don't think everything
stops on December 25th. The smart store operators will be ready with
the Boxing Day and New Years specials campaigns come December 26th.

Bottom line is Christmas is the most important retail selling time and
online selling time in the year and you need to be prepared to take
advantage. Your online store needs to be complete and setup for
Christmas as soon as September or by October at the latest and you
need to start Christmas promotions early and not wait until a week
before Christmas.

Start to promote for Christmas only when you are ready and you store
is complete. Remember you don't need thousands of products just a few
of the products that sell. Focus on quality and provide good content
(descriptions, images etc) and the products will sell at Christmas.

2008 will be tough in many ways but Christmas will offer a short
period of time where online sales will be up and you need to be ready
to sell online.