Why You Need Start Preparing Your Ecommerce Store for the Holiday Season NOW!
Posted by Anthony Latona | Posted in General, Marketing | Posted on 26-07-2010
Tags: Magento, Marketing
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You might think it's a bit preemptive to start planning for the Holidays now, but it's almost too late already. Think about it this way: if you want to make a bunch of changes to your e-commerce website such as an upgrade, a new design, or any new features you need a significant amount of time to get it done. You'll need to define the project, gather proposals from various service providers, go through contract negotiation, and then have the work completed. A fully custom design, implementation and customization can take a couple months, so don't delay any further and start thinking about the holiday season and how you're going to prepare for it.
Also you need to plan out your MARKETING! The last thing that you want to do is stay up all night on November, 23 trying to write email copy and change your AdWords ads to holiday specific text. Start planning now, and you'll definitely have a more profitable season with much less stress.
So that's the overview about why, but let's go over the direction as well as the specific things you can do to make your holiday season more successful. We'll go over checklists, specific ideas and tactics to make your store ready for the 2010 holidays.
Design Changes
You might want to change some of the main site graphics to seasonal, relevant images. If you have pictures of people within the design, make sure they're wearing coats, and you can throw some snowflakes in the header to make it feel like winter.
Sales
Of course you're going to have a holiday sale. But which works better, 10% off your order over $X or Free Shipping? Start testing now! Something as simple as the wording of a deal can effect your conversion rate drastically.
Gift Wrapping
You can offer gift wrapping as an upsell during checkout. If you're going to offer this option though, it's important to plan ahead and get this process worked out within your current procedures.
Delivery Schedules / Deadlines
You can create a sense of urgency if you put the proper messaging on your site. For instance, "Order before December 20th for Guaranteed Arrival before Christmas!" This short message, repeated throughout the website, could be the push that someone needs to get through the checkout.
Updated Returns Policy
When it comes to gifts, one of the main concerns that people have when buying online is possibly having to return the item. They might be afraid that the clothing won't fit properly or the item will arrive defective. Make sure that your return policy is easy to find and easy to understand.
Add Video to Product Descriptions
One of the main reasons that customers abandon product pages is because they didn't get a good enough "look" at the product. If you have a short video of someone reviewing the item or simply demonstrating it, it builds confidence with the potential customer and differentiates you from your competitors. Anything that you can do that will get someone to push "Add To Cart" is crucial.
Beef Up Customer Support
Make sure that you have enough staff to take calls, answer questions, and train them to sell! You should have multiple ways for visitors to contact you online via toll-free number, email, chat, twitter or even fax. It can't hurt to have the pathways to contact you because if someone wants to call you, they are very close to purchasing. On the other hand, you also want to have support for current/past customers because that is what sparks people to talk about their experiences. Think about how Zappos.com because so popular from having incredible customer service.
New Banner Ads
If you advertise with Banner Ads, you should start brainstorming some new designs. Also start thinking of new places to advertise, and new media buying strategies that can drive tons of traffic to your site.
New Adwords (PPC) Keywords / Ads
Don't wait until the last minute to add new keywords into your campaigns that are seasonally specific. Also, try testing out new Ad Copy that has holiday style to it. Add in a coupon code, mention a shipping deadline or another offer.
Gift Categories / Gift Guide
Organized your items into gift categories by person or price (Great Gifts for Mom, Dad, etc…). If you give visitors useful search options and filters, it lets them find what they want faster; speed is key during the holidays.
Affiliate Relations
If you have an affiliate program, get them excited about promoting your products. Show them landing pages, new items and sales that they can promote before they start. This allows super-affiliates to get banners made, plan media buys, start new PPC campaigns and test them out before it's too late.
New Products
Do some research and figure out what types of products in your industry are going to be the popular items of the season. If you're going to stock these items, remember there's significant work to do each time (ordering inventory, storage, photos, description, etc…). So start the research soon so you're prepared to launch them in the Fall.
Shipping Deals
Shipping is the #1 type of sale that you can offer your visitors. Having free shipping makes the ordering process seem more realistic and it makes the price seem more feasible (since there's no addition involved). Another great tactic is to have Free Shipping on orders above $X. You'll get a higher average order and happier clients.
Social Media
Start building your following now! Starting a Social Media campaign in November would be a waste of time; however if you have 5000 followers (on twitter for instance) by then you can turn it into a traffic generator, a communication/ support platform and more. Also remember, 200 happy, engaged followers is much better than 10,000 random people. Get your following organically and you'll be much better off.
Cart Abandonment Recapture
You can automate the recapturing of an abandoned cart by sending an email to the user with the previous cart contents.
Gift Receipts & Gift Messages
Have checkout options to add a note or gift receipt to the order. This way, there's proof of purchase but the price isn't in the box. It works especially well when offering gifts that are sent directly to the recipient.
Backup Server / Increased Bandwidth
If you're doing media buys and adding a huge budget to your AdWords account you might want to upgrade your web server to make sure that your site doesn't go down during periods of high traffic.
These are just a few of the things you can do to prepare your site for the holidays and increase your conversion rate. If you want a full report with over 50 site optimizations that you can use any time, holidays or not, opt in below and we'll send it right over!
This theme has a very simple, minimalist design that would be easy to adapt to most businesses that are selling a variety of products. 
There is one that stands out called Sigyn Pro which is a much darker and grungy theme. Very cool.
I like the look of this theme. The vibrant colors and the real “Home Depot” feel make it work for a store selling power tools. However, when you’re looking through and choosing a template, remember that anything that is a graphic and has anything specific in it will have to be redesigned. In this template, the “Free Shipping” graphic and 4 featured products will have to change if you don’t offer free shipping at that price level or have those products at those prices as well.
This furniture store template has a great color scheme and layout. I particularly like the effects and details used in the graphics. Again, be aware that these images are just examples and will most likely have to be customized to suit your products and offers. These are more generic than the Tool Store theme above but unless you’re selling very similar items, this is another example of a template that looks good, but is not “out-of-the-box”. It’s a great start though if you have a medium to high end furniture store.
This theme for a Men’s Fashion store is very slick and expensive looking. A lot of the look of this template relies on the product photos, so make sure you’re ready for that. However, the overall look and feel, and colors are a great start for an upscale online clothing store. 
The “Woman’s Store” theme looks great, with bright colors and a more generic design. Since TemplateMonster gives you the Photoshop files you can easily customize these graphics which are mostly text to suit your needs. 
I really like this theme! Regardless of what you’re selling, this is a cool design that uses excellent colors and transparency
Last one from TemplateMonster. I like the design effects on the background and right column graphics on this theme. I hope that TM gives you the fonts you need to change those graphics since they look great but will need an update. This is a very fun and inviting theme! 
Nice, Clean Design. Some social media elements on the homepage make it a bit more modern. The content slider at the top will need to be filled with product / sale features. Overall, the theme is nice, and generic enough to display nearly any product line. 
Dark theme, very cool. The effect on the background graphic brings it all together. Also, using CSS text-shadow on the right column filter titles as well as the category title adds a cool look to the catalog page. 
The “HelloGlam” template looks like a t-shirt store from the thumbnail but seems to have been repurposed to be a lingerie store (in the demo). In reality, it would work for any woman’s apparel store as the design is clean and very girly. 
The yarn theme has some cool graphic effects in the header and offers a great way to display artistic, organic or “green” items. 
The Antiqua theme is another one that has a nice graphic feel to it, epecially the lined paper drop down menus and neat textures throughout the template. Very cool for anything handmade! 
