The Countdown has Begun, Is Your Website Ready?

Posted on | December 1, 2007  
Writen by | Ian Griffith

Story by Ian Griffith on 12/1/2007
The holiday season is officially under way; as the newspaper ads of Black Friday helped fuel the frenzy at brick-and-mortar stores, so too email promotions found eager shoppers during their Cyber Monday lunch hour. With four solid weeks of shopping left in the year, here are some suggestions for giving your website a final push and some thoughts to ponder while packing all those shipments.

First, the short list of merchandizing suggestions:

• Free Shipping during the holidays is becoming a cost of doing business. Try limiting your shipping promotion to products that offer value to customers while being the most profitable for your store.
• By now your site promotions and email campaigns should be in top gear. If you are pushing sales be careful not to surrender too much profit to new customers. Look for ways to capture a larger share of your best customers' business.
• Email confirmations offer an opportunity to encourage repeat orders; try offering discount coupon as a “thank you for ordering”, or include a promotion for your Gift Certificates.
• Try more emails featuring New Products this season, in a recent study by Forrester Research these were shown to outperform emails touting Sales.
• Any features and functionality that will save time for busy shoppers should be brought front and center on your website.
• Plan last minutes promotions around shipper cut-off dates and play to the countdown.
• Use bold graphics to signal urgency such as Last Chance offers for shipping and discounts.

This holiday season is expected to cap a year with 18% growth in ecommerce sales, rising to $258 billion as online business now accounts for almost 10% of all retail sales. However, as Scott Silverman of Shop.org puts it “the idea that the growth of new online shoppers is slowing down is beginning to sink and retailers are beginning to make adjustments.”

Silverman sees this in terms of a shift of focus from customer acquisition to customer retention. Customers are becoming more comfortable shopping online; they are also starting to expect more from ecommerce.

As you plan for improvements on your website for the coming year, consider the following:

• Using product search as a marketing tactic on your website can greatly increase conversion rates. Unstructured Text Search that anticipates typos and provides Guided Navigation will make it easier for customers to find the best result among thousands of options.
• Email Campaigns become more important with the emphasis on customer retention; experiment with segmenting your customer list by using recency, frequency and monetary filters.
• Enhanced product detail is an area where an extra effort will set your store apart from the competition. While having somewhat generic information from wineries or suppliers is much better than nothing, a store that uploads its own tasting notes will stand out as adding value to consumers.

Come January, after the cleanup, it will be time for a break; you'll have earned it!

To learn more about how the Beverage Media can help you Sell Wine Online with a website for your store, contact Ian Griffith at 212 571-3232 x318….

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