Why You Need Start Preparing Your eCommerce Store for the Holiday Season NOW!

Why You Need Start Preparing Your eCommerce Store for the Holiday Season NOW!

You might think it’s a bit preemptive to start planning for the Holidays now, but it’s almost too late already.  Think about it this way: if you want to make a bunch of changes to your eCommerce website such as an upgrade, a new design, or any new features you need a significant amount of time to get it done.  You’ll need to define the project, gather proposals from various service providers, go through contract negotiation, and then have the work completed.  A fully custom design, implementation and customization can take a couple months, so don’t delay any further and start thinking about the holiday season and how you’re going to prepare for it. 

Also you need to plan out your MARKETING! The last thing that you want to do is stay up all night on November, 23 trying to write email copy and change your AdWords ads to holiday specific text.  Start planning now, and you’ll definitely have a more profitable season with much less stress. 

So that’s the overview about why, but let’s go over the direction as well as the specific things you can do to make your holiday season more successful.  We’ll go over checklists, specific ideas and tactics to make your store ready for the 2010 holidays.

Design Changes
You might want to change some of the main site graphics to seasonal, relevant images.  If you have pictures of people within the design, make sure they’re wearing coats, and you can throw some snowflakes in the header to make it feel like winter.

Sales
Of course you’re going to have a holiday sale.  But which works better, 10% off your order over $X or Free Shipping?  Start testing now! Something as simple as the wording of a deal can effect your conversion rate drastically.

Gift Wrapping
You can offer gift wrapping as an upsell during checkout.  If you’re going to offer this option though, it’s important to plan ahead and get this process worked out within your current procedures.

Delivery Schedules / Deadlines
You can create a sense of urgency if you put the proper messaging on your site.  For instance, “Order before December 20th for Guaranteed Arrival before Christmas!” This short message, repeated throughout the website, could be the push that someone needs to get through the checkout.

Updated Returns Policy
When it comes to gifts, one of the main concerns that people have when buying online is possibly having to return the item.  They might be afraid that the clothing won’t fit properly or the item will arrive defective.  Make sure that your return policy is easy to find and easy to understand.

Add Video to Product Descriptions
One of the main reasons that customers abandon product pages is because they didn’t get a good enough “look” at the product.  If you have a short video of someone reviewing the item or simply demonstrating it, it builds confidence with the potential customer and differentiates you from your competitors.  Anything that you can do that will get someone to push “Add To Cart” is crucial.

Beef Up Customer Support
Make sure that you have enough staff to take calls, answer questions, and train them to sell!  You should have multiple ways for visitors to contact you online via toll-free number, email, chat, twitter or even fax.  It can’t hurt to have the pathways to contact you because if someone wants to call you, they are very close to purchasing.  On the other hand, you also want to have support for current/past customers because that is what sparks people to talk about their experiences.  Think about how Zappos.com because so popular from having incredible customer service.

New Banner Ads
If you advertise with Banner Ads, you should start brainstorming some new designs.  Also start thinking of new places to advertise, and new media buying strategies that can drive tons of traffic to your site. 

New Adwords  (PPC) Keywords / Ads
Don’t wait until the last minute to add new keywords into your campaigns that are seasonally specific.  Also, try testing out new Ad Copy that has holiday style to it. Add in a coupon code, mention a shipping deadline or another offer. 

Gift Categories / Gift Guide
Organized your items into gift categories by person or price (Great Gifts for Mom, Dad, etc…). If you give visitors useful search options and filters, it lets them find what they want faster; speed is key during the holidays.

Affiliate Relations
If you have an affiliate program, get them excited about promoting your products.  Show them landing pages, new items and sales that they can promote before they start.  This allows super-affiliates to get banners made, plan media buys, start new PPC campaigns and test them out before it’s too late. 

New Products
Do some research and figure out what types of products in your industry are going to be the popular items of the season.  If you’re going to stock these items, remember there’s significant work to do each time (ordering inventory, storage, photos, description, etc…).  So start the research soon so you’re prepared to launch them in the Fall.

Shipping Deals
Shipping is the #1 type of sale that you can offer your visitors.  Having free shipping makes the ordering process seem more realistic and it makes the price seem more feasible (since there’s no addition involved).  Another great tactic is to have Free Shipping on orders above $X.  You’ll get a higher average order and happier clients.

Social Media
Start building your following now! Starting a Social Media campaign in November would be a waste of time; however if you have 5000 followers (on twitter for instance) by then you can turn it into a traffic generator, a communication/ support platform and more.  Also remember, 200 happy, engaged followers is much better than 10,000 random people. Get your following organically and you’ll be much better off.

Cart Abandonment Recapture
You can automate the recapturing of an abandoned cart by sending an email to the user with the previous cart contents. 

Gift Receipts & Gift Messages
Have checkout options to add a note or gift receipt to the order.  This way, there’s proof of purchase but the price isn’t in the box.  It works especially well when offering gifts that are sent directly to the recipient.

Backup Server / Increased Bandwidth
If you’re doing media buys and adding a huge budget to your AdWords account you might want to upgrade your web server to make sure that your site doesn’t go down during periods of high traffic.

These are just a few of the things you can do to prepare your site for the holidays and increase your conversion rate.

Why Does Redstage have Magento Support Retainers?

Why Does Redstage have Magento Support Retainers?

We often get asked why we use a retainer based payment system for our Magento Support services.  First off, let me catch you up on what I mean by “Retainer Based Support”.  Our Magento support service works similarly to the way an attorney retainer works.  Basically, if you need ongoing assistance with your Magento site, the retainer is a pre-payment for a number of hours.  These hours can be applied to many different tasks.  Here’s some of the things we’ve done for retainer clients in the past:

  • Magento Upgrades
  • Plugin installation & Configuration
  • Bug fixes
  • Template / Theme Tweaks
  • Custom features or custom plugins and
  • Switching web hosts

We don’t limit the number of issues or fixes you can submit, it’s all based on how long it takes to fix everything. Luckily, we’re (really) good at this. If you ever paid for a legal retainer, it’s almost exactly the same. The lawyer will deduct the hourly fee from the pre-payment whenever you need them to look over a contract or advise in any legal situation.  Redstage Magento support works the same way.  If you need help with any aspect of your Magento store, you log a ticket and we get to work. Ok, so back to the point.  Why a retainer based system? Deducting hourly from a retainer allows us to provide the highest level of service to our support customers.  First, the retainer doesn’t expire.  You can use 2 hours one month, take one off with no issues or tickets, and then use 5 hours the next month.  It let’s us provide a level of safety and security to the a Magento user because we’re there when you need us, just by logging a ticket.  You can have 100 issues, and it doesn’t matter since it’s all based on the time it takes to complete the tasks.  If it’s easy for us, it’s cheap for you. We time the retainer work to the second, so the client gets the most for their money. I apologize if I sound sales-y, but as a marketer, Magento support is a fun sale… Magento users come to us all the time after having bad experiences with developers who weren’t ready for the complexity of the Magento platform and we need to step in and help out.  It took us a couple years to become Magento masters but we’re one of the best around, so it’s fun to talk about.  Our development team likes working with Magento!  If you’ve ever searched around on twitter for Magento, the average developer is frustrated but we’ve gotten over the learning curve and know the system inside and out. Don’t just take my word for it; we have clients who tell us things like this:

“”THANK YOU!!! We all finally feel confident that we have found the right partner for our new business. -Sharon, Founder, Charleston Naturally

That gives us a warm fuzzy feeling… and it proves that the retainer system works! Now, I have to ask… If you need anything Magento related, call 1-888-335-2747 and we’ll set you up w/ a retainer, or a full project if you’re just starting out (full design & development). I hope you understand a bit more about what we’re all about and if you have any questions, leave a comment below! Thanks!

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