13 Tips to Prepare for the Holiday Rush

October 25th, 2008

Getting eCommerce Ready…

When it comes to eCommerce, it’s not too early to start thinking about how you are going to prepare for the holiday season. You don’t want to put everything about your whole business and everything you offer on your home page. Have landing pages for separate items. When you give  people too many choices, they become paralized and will leave without buying. Showcase your number one items or best sellers or the one, two or three items you want to move on your home page. Here are 13 more tips to prepare for the holiday rush:

1. Make sure you have precautionary measures in place.  Where does your business get hit the hardest during the holidays?  Is it local deliveries, customer service, shipping? Focus your attention on getting those parts of your system ready for the holidays.

2. Get help.  Taxing your regular help during the madness that can occur during the season, can do more damage than good. Consider outside help to get you through the holidays.

3. Automate anything and everything you can. This reduces labor costs and streamlines processes and in most cases helps the customer get quicker service.

4. Reduce time by auto-processing credit cards.  That includes auto settle and authorizations.

5. Manage Inventory. With the economic uncertainty of the upcoming holiday season, it is good to keep a low stock inventory as long as you can order and get a quick turnaround on products you need when the time comes.

6. Consider drop shipping orders to cut down on inventory. Use softeware that automatically forwards those orders to your vendors for fulfilment.

7. Rely on someone else’s I.T. Staff by using a software service provider.  They have the compliant issues in place and they may be more able to have a quick turnaround if a proble arises.

8. Personalize your marketing offers. Use your cusotmer database to increase revenues by creating a 1, 2, 3 touch approach to remind them you are there to assist their gift-giving needs. That could be a postcard, email and telephone call or any combination of tactics to get them to order from you.

9. Send emails wisely and prudently. Don’t innundate your email database with messages. They will get mad and ask to be removed. Remember everyone is vying for their business right now. Create email templates or edit and reuse those  that have worked in the past. Saves time, and creative talent to work on other high-priority projects.

10. Automate your gift certificates.  Gift certificates have gained in popularity and every year the % of people who buy them increases.  Many people actually prefer receiving them too.  If you don’t offer gift certificates online, think about adding this feature to your website.  Its a new source of revenue and there is nothing to ship.

11. Make use of multiple stores like ebay and Amazon or Yahoo to test products, to sell overstock items and move last season’s inventory.

12. Consider a “membership” program such as a flower of the month or book of the month club program.

13. TEST, TEST, TEST. Make sure your ecommerce site works properly, is easy to understand and seamless. Do pages load quickly or do they take more than 5 seconds?  Do you have lots of flash?  Do they inhibit buying with obtrusive popups or automatic sound? Invite current customers to do a ‘beta’ test, and Offer discounts to them for their feedback.

The best time to think about next year’s holiday season is when this one is over. You can plan better when records are within your reach and everything is fresh in your mind.

Happy Selling!

 

Entry Filed under: Heidi's Daily Tips, Internet, eCommerce