Top Christmas Tips from the Experts

• Tweet

Image: Master isolated images/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

With December sneaking up on us, our experts from ChannelAdvisor, Permission and AMR Interactive give us their top holiday tips to get your business Christmas-ready.

Mark Gray, Managing Director, ChannelAdvisor

“Spread the holiday cheer and get your webstore ready for the season. Give your webstore a holiday makeover to lure in customers – a full redesign would be nice, but so are small festive changes to logos and banners.

Be sure to also communicate holiday delivery deadlines. The delivery information should be clearly visible as a feature on your homepage or site header by early December.

Finally, offer gift messages and wrapping, particularly in competitive niches – you can stand out from everyone else selling the same product.”

Jeremy Glass, Managing Director, Permission

“Christmas is a time of the year for retailers that always seems to come too quickly. To do effective online retail marketing in the leadup to Christmas you need to really plan out in advance, so if you are only thinking about it now for the first time I would suggest you put a reminder in your diary for early September 2012 to start thinking about Christmas next year.

In the meantime, my tip would be around personalisation and relevance. Customise your marketing content around what your customers purchased last year (product categories and total spend) and use merchandising in your emails and on your website to present products that are relevant as a strategy to increase conversion and basket size. If you have any profile information on your customers use what you can to talk to them about products they are interested in rather than assuming everyone is interested in everything.”

Mary Forgie, General Manager, AMR Interactive

“Recent research we have conducted into Christmas shopping intentions indicates that shopper behaviours will be impacted in several ways by the increased financial pressures broadly felt in the community. There is a desire to still give gifts but be a bit more savvy.

There is a distinct group of shoppers who plan their Christmas shopping activity well in advance and will already be scanning websites for good deals and discounts. However, making gifts is also very popular this year so opportunity exists to promote craft type goods. Given the home cooking phenomenon post-Masterchef, where possible retailers should promote ingredients, baking, preserving and decorating goods for creating more authentic personal homemade gifts now.

At the other extreme of the spectrum are the non-planners who wait till the last minute and expect to reduce the number of people they buy gifts for this year. They will still spend on those closest and most important to them – but may reduce spend on others or drop some off their list this year. Opportunity exists to target them specifically with good value, easy choices with guaranteed delivery in the last week before Christmas.”

Article by Natasha Sholl

Natasha is a content creator for The Media Pad, publisher of Power Retail. She has a background in law and communications and a passion for all things retail. Natasha loves analysing and problem solving all of the challenges and trends that come with new media and the online retail space. Natasha is a yoga addict and reluctant running devotee, both of which are offset by her serious caffeine addiction and obsession with baking.

One Comment

• • 
  • Jerry Rizzo
  • 28th October

  Thanks for the tips Mark, Mary and Jeremy! Definitely a hectic time of year for my clients. Sometimes our work consumes us and the next thing you know it’s a new year. Tons of opportunity to boost the bottom line this year. I typically share these tips with The Dotted Line, which is an online community for businesses/entrepreneurs. I think you all could do the community a lot of good. Check it out and thank you for these! I’ll be sure to share with my clients and networks! Best, Jerry

  Reply