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Online Holiday Sales Expected To Soar

We’ve all seen it. How could we miss it? The popular “Christmas Countdown” email has been circulating (and tormenting us) since August. This little ditty is literally a live countdown to Christmas, complete with the exact number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until the Jolly Old Elf arrives. The counter keeps tick, tick, ticking while the bewildered recipient watches helplessly as the seconds dwindle like the sands of time. Children love it, parents hate it and ebusinesses who are a “tad behind” in their holiday planning are terrified by it.

The pumpkins have been tossed and the holiday shopping season has begun in earnest. And this year is positioned to be the best ever for holiday sales, according to a recent survey released by JupiterResearch. Their research indicates that online holiday sales will escalate to $32 billion this year, an increase of 18 percent over last year’s holiday spending.  A record 114 million users will go online to do all or part of their holiday shopping.

And the online shopping season will start earlier this year. A survey of consumers and multi channel merchants by Shop.org and Shopzilla

shows that more than one third of online consumers will start their holiday shopping by Halloween. More than 60% of retailers will start holiday promotions by early November, and most plan to increase email and search marketing over last year as part of that strategy. Specifically 60% say they will boost emails to their house lists for the holidays and 23% say they will increase prospecting emails.

To help lure shoppers to their sites, an increasing number of retailers will offer shipping promotions, according to Los Angeles-based Bizrate. The shipping promotions will range from free shipping with or without conditions to discounted shipping. Two years ago, only 64 percent of online retailers offered free shipping, while this year 83 percent will offer this perk. Retailers report that three-fourths of online shoppers surveyed cited free shipping offers as major factors in their decisions to shop online.

And what, exactly, will they be buying? “Apparel and consumer electronics are consistently among the most popular gifts purchased online during the holidays, resulting in the largest share of online revenue,” said Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst for Nielson/Net Ratings.

Given this year’s optimistic outlook for online holiday shopping, what you can you do to make sure your ebusiness is ready to meet the needs of these enthusiastic spenders? Here are some thoughts:

• Be objective. Look at your website through your customer’s eyes. Make sure it’s easy to use and your product descriptions are clearly written and easy to understand. Make sure there is no “dated” copy on your site. Nobody wants to read about Labor Day sales in December.
• Get organized. Online shoppers have a vast array of choices on where to spend their money. Nobody wants to shop in a store that is filled with clutter. It’s just too confusing and time consuming. Make sure your products are logically organized and very easy to find.
• Be festive but not tacky. It’s crucial to decorate your ebusiness site in much the same as you would a brick and mortar store. You want to be festive without being distracting. Talk to your web host about the best way to accomplish this. Some web sites have links to holiday specialty items to keep the site from become too “busy” and cluttered.
• Don’t let security concerns become the “Grinch” that steals Christmas from your ebusiness and your customers. According a recent survey conducted by the Business Software Alliance, online security will be a major concern for holiday shoppers. Make sure you communicate early and often about the steps you are taking to protect their personal and financial information. Make sure they know that you have a means for encrypting credit card numbers and other private information, so that it cannot be intercepted while traveling from your customer’s computer to yours. Talk to your web host about the best and safest way to make this happen.
• Update your keywords to include holiday phrases. Your web host can show you how to mix seasonal messages with your company’s name to maximize your site’s success on search engines.
• Offer gift certificates. For the past four holiday seasons gift certificates have been among the top selling products for online retail stores.
• Get into the giving spirit. Face it. We’re very blessed and it’s the right thing to do to spread the joy around. During the holiday season, let your customers know that you will contribute a small percentage of your holiday sales to a worthwhile cause, like a food bank or a local children’s charity. This makes everybody’s holiday brighter.

Don’t deceive yourself into believing that the holiday shopping season ends on Christmas Eve. Everybody loves an after Christmas sale! Statistics show that there is a post holiday peak that occurs the week after December 25. People go online to spend money they received for Christmas, redeem gift certificates or take advantage of after Christmas sales. So the holiday shopping season doesn’t “officially” end until the first week in January.

This is going to be the biggest online shopping holiday season in the history of the web. Play your cards right and your site can make history . . . and money!