How to Increase Online Shopping Sales This Holiday Season

By most accounts, 2008 is a good season for online retail. Some of the stats depend on the type of products sold. Video game sales are up dramatically, while clothing and toys are down. But on average, online sales is expected to grow some 10 percent over last year in the U.S., this according to eMarketer, who provides stats on such things.

Here’s a graph they published on iab.net:

Another 2008 holiday sales study by Forrester Research projects a 12 percent spike online, compared to just two percent for bricks and mortar spaces. This all sounds lovely for our eCommerce efforts. But financial industry stats are one thing.

You know better than anyone whether the 2008 season is silly or sad when it comes to your online sales. To help out, just in time for the holidays, here are seven ways to maximize your online sales potential this season. If your sales are lagging, implementing these techniques can help you join this trend of better than 10 percent growth over 2007.

1. Make the shopping experience hassle free

Increased traffic with the holiday season is a perfect time to update your Web site. You want to ensure that your shoppers experience a site that is easy to navigate and user-friendly. Some ideas to make things a bit friendlier: large, clear images to showcase products; improved search functions, with options like best-selling, and featured items; video tutorials explaining how to use and why to buy those big ticket items; detailed FAQs; product reviews.

If you use Interspire Shopping Cart, be sure to take advantage of all elements that the software has to offer. There are some powerful options that will positively affect sales, available with the tick of box. For instance discount coupon codes and the flexible banner promotions system, as well as free shipping (which you can limit to selected cities/states/countries).

Using these simple options with help your visitors find the products they want most and encourage them to buy. So too, set up categories and provide the option to easily view popular brands or to shop based on a price range.

Security can also play a role in the hassle-free experience. This may no longer be a priority consideration for online shoppers visiting brand name retailers, but it’s always a buying concern at smaller online stores. Be sure to beef up security on all customer checkout pages. How? Grab yourself an SSL certificate from Verisign.

Basically, hassle-free is a promise that’s not always so hassle-free to keep. When investigating your site for potential issues, be sure to double check things like how error messages appear, or the experience of the final checkout. If a visitor needs to register or sign in, how does this affect the current sale? Inspect every link and consider it from your shoppers’ perspective.

2. Consider the design, look and feel of the shopping experience

Design is paramount. Packaging sells, and it’s tightly woven into the hassle-free experience mentioned above. Your site may boast phenomenal backend functionality, but without the nice site design, you’re going to lose sales.

This can be due to buyer frustration with an outdated, clunky system, or their concerns about credibility. Just as important, the store design affects the perceived value of your products. As retailers, it’s the constant consideration, to amp the perceived value.

All other things being equal, shoppers will buy the product that’s wrapped with service as well as ambiance. Online, this is all about the design and how it connects to the usability of the site.

Design is a special consideration during the holiday season when more people are searching online for gift ideas. If you’re losing traffic or if you have a high bounce-rate, you might consider a design face lift. Update your product pictures and be sure they showcase and amplify the perceived value.

Showing images of people using the products is also proven effective to increase sales. So too, visitors want to see pictures of people or a design that they can relate to, based on the demographics for the product.

If your site design is already topnotch and user feedback has been as positive as the sales results, you might consider temporary holiday artwork. Dressing up the site with seasonal bling and marginalia can also improve your sales odds.

3. Increase the frequency of your email campaigns

With email being inexpensive and extremely effective, it’s okay to increase the number of emails you send out during the holiday season. This will meet customer expectations, and while you can’t avoid some folks on your list viewing your emails as annoying, many of your customers will appreciate an email that includes a coupon code or promo offer.

Obviously the best-case scenario for these emails is to segment your list based on customers shopping experience and history. You can send out personalized emails with special offers depending on the customers’ demographics or loyalty or status as repeat customer.

One good way is to load up plenty of emails to launch over the next month with the help of an autoresponder. It’s easy to share coupon codes with prospects and customers via email too.

4. Up sell, cross sell, and suggest some more

The largest online retailer in the world, Amazon.com, has proven the power of online suggestive selling. “People who purchased this item also purchased…” It’s extraordinarily powerful and can improve sales figures immediately. Including the suggestive selling features again at the end of the sales process, after your shopper has committed to the larger sale, is truly simple and ingenious. As a shopper, I already have my credit card in hand, I’ve already committed to the sale. Now: “Would you like fries with that?”

5. Offer incentives such as free shipping

Sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the macro business view; in this case, to keep in mind why so many people are shopping online. What are the driving factors? Simplicity and savings are high on the list. Online browsing is the ideal scenario for frugal shoppers, to perform quick price-comparisons.

According to the 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla, 80 percent of online retailers are offering free shipping this holiday season, usually connected to some sort of disclaimer. This might be a minimum purchase order or a sale deadline.

Whether or not you provide free shipping, be sure your fulfillment and shipping information is clear, concise, and user-friendly. Provide price comparisons for different delivery options and provide tracking numbers.

6. Showcase community connections

There are a handful of social shopping sites like Etsy and Kaboodle that have proven the trend. People like to reach for their wallets, especially when encouraged to do so by like-minded individuals or online friends. It just feels better when you know someone else took the plunge and they are using the product.

A quote from Time Magazine online: “In fact, brands are noticing that online communities have more buying persuasion power than store sales clerks. And they're forming more partnerships with social sites now that traffic numbers are at an all-time high. In October 2007, Kaboodle had nearly 3 million unique monthly visitors. By October 2008, it tripled that number to 10.8 million and also logged its highest numbers for revenue, traffic and registered users.”

Keeping this in mind, it can be extraordinarily effective to inject some of that Web 2.0 community flavor into the shopping experience of your site. Some ideas: include customer reviews; allow commenting and rating of products; showcase a customer service pro as a personal connection in case of shopping questions or concerns; create a members’ only section with special discounts or other valuable offers.

7. Increase ad promos and the presence of gift giving, gift cards, and good deals

As mentioned above, regarding the macro-view: why are people turning to the Internet in droves for shopping? It begins with hunting for gift ideas and ends with finding bargains. While everyone wants to save money on gas this year in particle in the U.S., we all want to avoid the long shopping lines, the stress of frantic shoppers, the parking problems, the crowded stores, and so on.

With the increase of Web traffic and folks on search engines, this is a good time to consider increasing your online ad budget. It’s always a challenge for marketing decisions, to find the right mix and balance.

Many online retailers are feeling the crunch, cutting inventories and staff to reduce costs. Nonetheless, attracting folks to your store and then retaining them with gift cards and great offers is a surefire method for ROI.

Final thoughts

Of course it’s easy to throw out numerous suggestions with a simple looking holiday wish list. It’s quite another thing to implement all these changes quickly and efficiently in time for your holiday shoppers. If you our online wholesale source china wholesale, many of these suggestions are quick and simple to initiate. I hope they work for you.

Happy Holidays!