IndustryEcommerce
Plan nowto have the best Christmas ever online
Al Keck, managing director of retail specialist toinfinity, identifies why retailers need to be planning for Christmas and the New Year now
A
s summer comes to a close and the children go back to school, retailers know they need to be planning for
Christmas and the New Year. Christmas planning starts in July and if you haven’t put your Christmas and New Year plan in place yet, you are seriously lagging behind. We predict that online sales over the Christmas period are likely to increase by around 14% to £13bn in 2014 so it is key to start planning now. Get ahead of your competitors with this series
of tips to make sure your website and online marketing strategy take off this festive season:
1. Get your website in order Mobile ecommerce (m-commerce) has been
growing significantly year-on-year and accounted for 34% of total web sales in Q1 2014 according to a report from Capgemini and IMRG. With this in mind, make sure your customers have a good mobile shopping experience and your emails are mobile responsive. Make sure your checkout process is as
efficient as possible. Become the customer and try buying something from your website. Look at what barriers there are to completing the purchase? Does the basket remember what you added when you drop out or shop later on a different device? Does your checkout scream “SECURE”? Are you upfront about delivery costs? Are you converting as many of your visitors into purchasers as possible?
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2. Get all your PPC campaigns ready now Planning ahead for Pay Per Click campaigns
(PPC) means you can react quickly during the busy Christmas period. Create dedicated Christmas campaigns, get your campaigns to show a little earlier as ads can take a couple of days to approve and make sure you have a backup form of payment so your ads never go offline.
3. Consider your SEO strategy well ahead of time Competition for websites at Christmas time is
relentless and one of the most common problems is that work on Christmas SEO does not start early enough. It is time to start identifying what your key
products/categories are going to be for Christmas and ensuring there is a clear and defined path in the navigation to them. Put special offers into your meta descriptions to improve click through rate and add any new Christmas URLs in to your sitemap to ensure the search engines know you have new fresh seasonal pages on your site.
4. Have a stress-free email marketing plan With email marketing over Christmas you
want to ensure you are ready well ahead of the Christmas rush, so this means planning early.
You’re going to be competing for subscribers’ inbox by October. So start putting together a plan of ideas, including send times, content and subject lines. Try re-engaging with your customers that have been inactive by offering them incentives to come back, and make sure you review any trigger emails such as Abandoned Basket or Welcome emails to make sure they have the festive touch. Also, analyse your customer buying
behaviour and don’t disregard customers that have not bought from you for over 6 months, as these customers may well just buy from you at Christmas, so target them with a different message to your other regular customers.
5. Do you have an affiliate program? If so, make sure every incentive and
placement is locked down by October Premium ad placements on newsletters
and key affiliate sites get booked up early so try not to leave it late in Q3 to book. Also, not only do you need to have better
customer incentives at Christmas, but you also need to have them thought out well in advance. Giving affiliates a significant amount of lead-time ahead of promotions will help them match up your promotions with their onsite messaging, increasing the relevance for the consumer and thus improving the conversion rate.
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