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Who and what this guide is for
This document consists of 52 ideas to help you to prepare your e-commerce website for the coming Festive season.
Any retailer who has an online shop and wants to be ready for the Christmas market could use the suggestions in this guide. In fact, many of the suggestions could be used on the majority of website so the short answer is that it's for anyone and everyone.
If you have an e-commerce website (or indeed any website) and you want to get it in ship shape for Xmas then PoLR can help. Call us on 0141 221 0233 and let us help you get ready to grab your share of the Festive Internet sales.
A few e-commerce facts to begin.
In 2008 a Smith-Harmon report found that on average retailers began their Christmas email marketing on the 19th October (some as early as July) and it seems that preparing for Christmas is happening earlier and earlier each year.
With e-commerce the need to be ready for Christmas early is even more imperative as competition is from further afield and 24-7. Not to mention that you need to think about being ready for all the search engines to index your new products.
To get you thinking here's a few facts from 2009:
- Christmas Day 2008 sales figures reached an impressive £102 million (source IMRG)
- Christmas Day 2008's spending increased by 21% compared to that of 2007.
- That equated to 3.8 million users spending an average of £26.80 each.
And a few from 2010:
- On Christmas and Boxing day 2010, 86% of UK consumers looged onto the Internet, an increase of 10% on 2009 (source: eDigital Research)
- Christmas Day sales were up 29% on 2009 to £132m and Boxing Day sales reached £281m (source: IMRG)
- 41.3% of consumers expect to spend more online for Xmas shopping in 2011 than 2010 (source: IMRG)
So with this is mind how do you go about preparing your e-commerce website for the Christmas market and what can you do to set it apart from the other online shops out there?
Prepare your shop and give it some cheer
A Festive make over
Update your website with a Festive header and footer to inject some winter bling into an otherwise rainy season! Not only is it what's expected of a shop over Christmas, it also shouts out loud and clear to buyers that you are ready and open for Christmas purchases.
Festive Logo
When you're giving your site the Festive once over don't forget the logo. Yes it's cheesy adding a smattering of snow over the top or a Santa in the near vicinity but it's Christmas and nothing says Christmas like snow!
Check your website works!
Get someone to run through the buying process of your on-line store and check it over for ease of purchase to highlight anything that could hinder a buyer.
Make purchasing easy
Eliminate any barriers to a browser buying such as having to sign in before they see prices on your cart or having to register before they can place an order. If it involves extra steps you are making it harder (and less likely) for a browser to convert into a buyer.
Newsletter sign up
Newsletters are a great way to reach your customers with future offers, new releases etc. so if you don't have a newsletter option then consider getting one and if you do make sure there is an obvious way for a browser to sign up to it. If a browser signs up to your newsletter, even without buying, it will still let you contact them with tempting offers to encourage them back to your site at a later date.
Newsletter? Special offers more like!
Experiment with changing the wording of your 'Sign up to newsletter' to something more exciting such as 'Be the first to hear about our offers' or 'Sign up for Christmas Deals'. It's far more tempting than a plain old newsletter isn't it?
Cross selling
Get your cross selling sorted to ensure maximum exposure of related gifts and add-ons. Not only is it good for you it's great for customer service...think of it like this:
Selling toys + 'remember the batteries' cross selling reminder = happy and stress-free Christmas morning.
Boxing Day sales
If preparation for Christmas kicks off in October you need to be organised for the Boxing Day and January sales in advance too. Don't let these slip your mind in the run up to Xmas and have a few offers ready to promote come Christmas Day.
Give the customer something extra
Free shipping over Xmas
Consider giving an incentive to buy for example free shipping on orders over £50 during the festive period. With so many places offering free shipping it could be the difference between a sale and a bounce from your site particularly if prices are much the same.
Cater for late shoppers
There will always be shoppers who leave the shopping to the last possible minute. Consider a last minute pick up from store option for delivery to cater for anyone who's missed the posting dates.
Gift vouchers
Gift vouchers are a great way to capture shoppers who are just browsing. If they don't see the perfect present it lets them buy a voucher and leave the deciding up to the receiver. Also, gift
vouchers allow for serious last minute buying particularly if you send them out as e-vouchers – the purchasing could even be done in the car on the way over on Christmas Day. Not that I condone this sort of 'head in sand' behaviour but I have brothers, I know how these things work!
Gift Wrapping
Without offering gift wrapping you are asking anyone receiving a gift direct from you to:
- open the box and see the gift right away which will be annoying for anyone receiving the gift through a month early!
- have to put an unsightly box under their pretty Christmas tree!
Christmas Cards
When the buyer selects a gift, how about letting them send a Christmas card with a personalised message in the box too? It lets them kill two birds with one stone, kind of like the cards you get with Interflora (or I assume you would get...I wouldn't actually know...)
January Blues
Why not offer a January blues gift for the buyer with every purchase over £X. Giving the buyer a gift too gives them yet more incentive to buy and makes them feel you appreciate their custom. Maybe something like a pampering sachet of shampoo if your selling hair care products.
Give buyers a helping hand
Letter to 'Santa'
Present buying can be difficult so why not have a downloadable 'letter to Santa' for your browsers to print off, add product names into and leave lying around as a big fat hint! It may sound a little blunt but I know plenty of people who would welcome such a thing.
Gift Ideas
Lead your browsers to the most suitable products as quickly as possible with the addition of a few gift idea sections. For example:
- By gender (gifts for her, gifts for him etc)
- By price (stocking fillers, under £10.00 etc)
- By type (toys, perfume etc)
Q & A to find the perfect gift
Give your browsers a helping hand to find the ideal gift by using a flowchart idea to get them to a suitable group of products. Maybe try making it into a Flash 'game' to make it more engaging. It could really help a browser who was looking for a friend or relative that they were unsure of. For example, by answering a series of questions you could direct a clueless Aunt to the latest must-have items for teenage boys.
Bundle products together
Instead of selling one product why not try bundling them up with a complimentary product. For example, if you sell blenders then offer it as a bundle with a blender cooker book for a small discount. If your additional product adds just a few pounds to the order then it's almost a no-brainer for the browser to just take the bundle.
Internet Marketing
Be prepared ahead of schedule.
An SEO campaign can take several months to kick in so if you want to start advertising for Christmas then you need to begin your SEO campaign in August. Not a nice thought in August but it will mean you are giving the campaign a chance to be more effective than beginning it in November.
Google Base and other shopping channels
A great way of getting your products seen is through Google Base.
Submitting a feed is a great way of getting your products more visibility as Google sometimes displays its shopping results in the organic results.
These feeds last 30 days so will need to be submitted on a continual basis. An example of how to submit a simple feed is below: First of all you will need a Google account from which to post your
products. Go to http://www.google.co.uk/base/ and log in with your Google account Then you will need an xml feed of the products you have available to buy. Here is some information on creating your own data feed http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=59461&hl=en
If you have only a handful of products then you could put a feed together manually but if your range of products is in the hundreds you will need a way of exporting them from your cart to Google. There are a number of options to get this done and depending on your ecommerce software you may be able to generate this automatically.
* Tip: Google base will give you errors and stop reading your feed if you include un-encoded ampersands in your feed so ensure that you include the correct html for any & signs and quotations. Once you have your feed formatted log in to your Base account. The first time you log in you will be asked to set up the details of your site. Once you've set up the account details click on Data feeds / New Data Feed.
Select the country you wish to target, your product type and file feed type then click on register data feed. Then you can either set Google Base to upload your feed on the same date each
month or opt for the manual upload.
Remember to check your feed an hour after processing to make sure that no errors occurred. Your products will show up after 24 hours so don't expect to see them in Google's shopping section straight away.
It is also worth choosing your upload times wisely as your products will not be displaying while your new feed is processed.
Get chatting
Social media is a great tool and if you use it wisely you will be able to promote your offers on it quite successfully. Be wary of only advertising your goods though as the aim of social media is to be sociable and interact not sell to anyone and every you can at every available opportunity.
Have a look at some of the following and if they look targeted at your demographic then give them a whirl:
- Bebo
Special offers via social media
I follow one company on Twitter who appear to be very successful in their marketing of their shops products online. They engage others in conversation frequently and only occasionally push their products. What they do well though is that they offer discounts now and again that are picked up by others and 'Retweeted' (which means recommented by someone else) to give it more exposure. Why not try it yourself – '10% off all orders until midnight tonight' for example and see if you can get it retweeted. Oh, and remember there is no harm in blatantly asking 'please RT' at the end of the message!
Write a gift guide and publish it on article site
Writing a gift guide lets you promote your products and get some links back to your site in one fell swoop. You can also publish a version on your own site to help browsers that visit.
Instead of a straightforward gift guide you could make it into a guide for a particular gift. For example, say you sell fishing rods then a guide including information on permits, links to bait shops etc.
Set up a Squidoo lens with tips and tricks for your target market.
On the same vein as the fishing rod guide you could set up a Squidoo lens and try to become the ultimate lens for people to visit for information on that topic. The aim is to get visitors interested and then get them to visit your site for more information on products (and of course buy one).
Press Release
If you are doing any unusual marketing, events or gifts this Christmas then why not put a press release together and tell the world about it. Writing a great press release link.
Analytics
You need to know where people are coming from, how they are finding the site and how long they stay amongst a many other list of acts on your site. By installing analytics you can keep track of this and use the information to adjust your campaign, highlight popular products etc. Without analytics this is more of a guessing game. Sign up for it here.
Find out what's trending
Keep an eye on Google Trends to see what people are searching for then use this information (if it's relevant) to optimise your site. For example, a trending topic at the time of writing this is the ipad so if you sell them it could be worth adding them to the homepage of your site.
Other sites also display trends and popular topics such as Twitter so explore a few of these on a regular basis to keep informed.
Google trends : http://www.google.com/trends
Twitter trends : http://trendistic.com/
Add More Festive Content
Add new content based around your targeted keywords. Try focusing on the products that would make suitable presents or items for Christmas events. For example below is an example of a pimped-up cake stand description. Instead of simply saying 'Cake stand to hold 12 fairy cakes' try something like:
'Cake stand to hold 12 fairy cakes – great for Festive Parties or try filling with Mince pies for Christmas get-togethers'
Add festive keywords to your site
You want people to come to you for Christmas then you have to add some festive keywords to your website. Keep it natural though and don't just repeat the word Christmas over and over or you will do more harm than good!
Good Example :
'Cake stand to hold 12 fairy cakes – great for Festive Parties or try filling with Mince pies for Christmas get-togethers'
Going to upset Google big-time example :
'Christmas 2009 Christmas cake stand for Christmas cakes and Christmas things. Come to us for all your Christmas goods. Happy Christmas from the Christmas Fairy!'
Optimise and Optimise
Take the time to go through every item in your cart to make sure it's optimised correctly and make sure that every item you add in future is also optimised. Make sure your titles are all in and that you have a decent and unique (not copied from anywhere else) description.
Research Last Year
Go through your sales and analytics from as many Christmas seasons that you have records for. Sift through your analytics to try and spot keywords that you were getting found for last Winter then use that information to put together a keyword strategy. Pick out the best sellers from last year to give you an indication of which products to base promotions around.
Get blogging
If you have a blog start updating it more frequently with product reviews, competitions, articles – really anything that people may be looking for. Once again, you should be able to take a good guess at what people want by researching last years analytics and looking at the competition (as per the next item).
Check out the competition
Nothing beats a little research so Google your competition and see how they are conducting their Festive campaign. If they're offering free shipping and low prices then can you compete? Or are your prices much lower but with a tiny amount of postage (making you comparable)? What products are they pushing and what are they doing well/badly?
Optimise error pages
On the off chance that someone follows an old link and ends up on your error page you want to cater for them and not risk them bouncing back off your site. Let your visitor know they have reached the wrong page (obviously) but then add in some links to products, gift ideas or promotions to try and entice them into investigating further.
E-mail Marketing
Email special offers
In 2006 Threshers put out an email offering a discount of 40% on purchases. Whether it was a mistake (as they claimed) or not (as everyone blogged) this e-mail went crazy and was flying around in-boxes faster than you could pop a cork and gained Threshers huge amounts of publicity and custom.
While we're not suggesting your offer will go Global but even if just a few subscribers forward it on then you have potentially reached customers who may not have used your website otherwise.
Read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6198828.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article657569.ece
** Threshers have since repeated this offer so it can't have been all bad for them can it? **
12 Days of Xmas Email Offers
As Christmas gets closer you may have decided to start sending more reminder emails out. To save recipients getting upset with the increased frequency why not make it into a theme? For example, the 12 days of Christmas with a different offer being emailed to customers each day up until the last posting deadline.
Email specific landing pages
If you are sending out an email offer consider linking the offer to its own page within the website to give it maximum impact. If they have clicked on a particular offer then it's probably the one they are concerned with knowing more about so take away distractions of other products (don't remove menus etc. though as you want them to be able to navigate to other areas!)
Don't forget the sales
With the arrival of Christmas day you job is still not done. Prepare ahead for the Christmas sales and send out an email of offers on Christmas day or Christmas Eve. According to the IMRG a whopping
£132 million was spent online on Christmas day 2010 so it's worth the preparation to be a part of that!
Email reminder of sales on Xmas day
As Christmas is over think to Boxing Day and the Jan sales. Send out an email with offers for the New Year on Christmas day and try to be part of the £281 million we mentioned at the start!
Customer Service
Prepare stock levels
This is a fairly obvious one but ensure you have enough stock to cover demand. You don't want to let customers down with out of stock items and could harm your chances of them coming back
throughout the year.
Immediate responses
A facility such as chat on-line will let your potential customers contact you for immediate answers without waiting for a reply to an enquiry email. This means you may capture the buyer when they are in the mood to buy rather than several hours later when their mind may be on other things.
Shipping Deadlines
Ensure the customer is in no doubt over last shipping dates. Look on the Royal Mail website for last shipping dates to each country.
Meet Shipping Deadlines
While we're on the subject of shipping deadlines, it is imperative that you make sure these are achievable for you (after the time it will take to package up an item and get to the post office). Consider using the Royal Mail dates as a guide and bring your deadlines forward to give you time for an unforeseen problems.
Gift receipts
No one wants to send out a gift with a receipt included which is why most high street shops will provide gift receipts. If you email out your receipts you should be able to get round this but make sure you include something in the package to detail returns etc.
Keep the customers happy
It goes without saying really but make sure you up the customer service at this time. Everyone is stressed in the run up to Christmas so if you can make purchases as smooth as possible you will encourage repeat visits throughout the rest of the year. A buyer's not just for Christmas...(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
Thank You!
Send a follow up email thanking the customer for choosing your online store. Better yet, offer them something as a think you and to encourage them to become a loyal future customer. Maybe free
shipping on their next order or a small discount – just something to see them return in the New Year.
Instil the urgency
Countdown to Christmas on the site
Let your customers know how soon Christmas is with a countdown to Christmas on your website. Probably best not to install this in July but from the end of October you should be free from upsetting anyone with early Christmas joy!
Countdown to last posting date
Ditto for the countdown to Christmas but this time to the last posting date. You maybe don't want to put two countdowns on your site but this one informs the customer in no uncertain terms that they have a final date by which time they have to have ordered.
Urgent Email Call-to-actions
As you send out emails closer to the posting deadline, start to put in more urgent call-to-actions such as large buttons with 'Purchase now for guaranteed Xmas delivery' etc. and (as before) consider putting on a countdown!
Keep it Legal
How to return goods
Many people will be buying gifts well in advance so it's worth considering extending your return period over the Festive period. A lot of shops extend until the middle of Jan to give people time to open the gifts, get home from holidays and have time to return.
On-line selling regulations
If you run an e-commerce system over the Internet there are certain regulations you must adhere to. These regulations are in place to give a consumers confidence in the act of buying online (in lieu of face-offace contact) and to ensure that all traders have the same basic standards. These regulations are:
• Electronic Commerce Regulations (ECRs)
• Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000
The links above are comprehensive and hopefully you will have this all set up already if you are selling on-line.
Not had Enough Yet?
Our downloadable PDF has 52 ideas (and a few sneaky extras) to help you to prepare your e-commerce website for Christmas. Sign up to our Internet Marketing newsletter and you will be sent a link to download it.
Alternatively contact PoLR and we'll gladly help you out!