These tips will give your customers--and your business--plenty of reasons to celebrate the season.
Online shopping last year was up 55% over the previous year, as time-crunched Santas and gift givers tried to save themselves time and money online.
Many companies with online businesses run into the same scenario that brick-and-mortar stores face this time of the year -- Black Friday! Yes, online stores generally have specific days of the year that they get out of the red for the year's Web development and maintenance costs, finally selling enough goods or services to finally make it "into the black" and start showing a profit. This is particularly true for businesses that sell physical products online and have costs of goods sold and shipped, Web site maintenance, hosting costs. and so on.
But how can you dress up your store for the holidays and maximize the season's potential?
Make Sure Your Site Acknowledges The Season
First, remember you have shoppers from all faiths. I'm not suggesting that you don't "show your Christmas spirit" if you are Christian and so on, but make your site festive. Google does a great job of this, turning its logo into a pumpkin for Halloween, a heart for Valentine's Day, and so on.
This is relatively easy and simple to do and should take your Web designer an hour at most. Sometimes even changing the colors to holiday colors is enough to do the trick. If you're using a content management system, this is usually as easy as the flip of a switch on the back end.
What else should you do to get your site ready for the holidays?
First, offer your money-back guarantee logo, big and bold, right there on the home page. Make it easy for shoppers to get right to the store, and make it clear right at the top of the page what benefit they get from shopping with you: Expert advice, forums, and discussion boards for support and so on.
If you sell consulting services online, this is the time to add additional support materials as products because people don't generally buy consulting time as a gift for others. But, products from an expert? You bet.
Coupons and discounts are another powerful tool. One way to create effective coupons is to create a coupon code, tweet it, and post it on Facebook and other social media venues (be sure to have your friends retweet it too!). Most holiday coupons have expiration dates, often set to December 23.
Competing Against The Big Boys
Small businesses can have a hard time competing with the giant Buy.com's of the world who send out mass e-mails promoting $2 universal remote controls, not to mention Amazon's huge discounts.
So you'll want to consider a loss leader you can advertise and send out to the mailing list you've been building all year. Follow the lead of the big boys and don't forget to offer an upsell product or two, too.
Again, sending it out to your newsletter subscribers is only the beginning. Don't forget to tweet, post on Facebook, and consider tools like ShopIt for Facebook as well. Include direct links to your products so that people interested can retweet it, and don't forget the hashtag that directs followers and non-followers to your product niche. You may have several niches, and so you'll want to make several tweets with several hashtags.
Need more ideas?
- Make shipping free for the holidays.
- Offer a no-hassle 90-day return policy.
- Offer to wrap and ship items directly to a third party.
- Offer gift certificates and gift cards to your online store, even if you're a consultant.
- Offer personal gift guides, free advice and consulting on which product might be best for the customer.
- If you have products, consider posting them on eBay. Lots of buyers automatically tune in there for deals, particularly on Black Friday.
- Offer online downloads of products if they're available.
- If you can afford it and have enough traffic, have someone available 24/7 to be available for live chat in case of credit card issues, payment processing problems, or anything else that might come up during a transaction.
- Make sure you're using Secure Socket Layer and an SSL Certificate for all payment transactions, and consider accepting PayPal. As sellers on eBay receive funds from buyers, they may find themselves paying out of PayPal to fund their Christmas shopping.
While you are at it, you can expect to see more visitors to your site during the holidays, so optimize your blogs, your affiliate links, and all of the ways you earn residual income on your Web site. Happy Holidays!
Dani Babb is the founder of The Babb Group, an online entrepreneur, a professor, an author, public speaker and consultant. She has a Ph.D. in Organization and Management with a Technology emphasis, as well as an MBA with a technology emphasis. She is featured regularly on top networks such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and the Today show. She is also the author of The Online Professor's Practical Guide to Starting an Internet Business, available from Entrepreneur Press.
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