12 Posts of Christmas: Tip 12—New Year’s Resolutions

I recently had an opportunity to visit with two local long-time Yahoo! Store merchants—Lawrence Ames of Golden West Specialty Foods (check out his wide assortment of BBQ sauces, hot sauces, chocolate poker chips, and other delectable gourmet products) and Shirley Tan of American Bridal (your one-stop shop for wedding favors and bridal gifts). Both offered tons of insight and advice into online retailing that I hope to share over the coming weeks. One observation that I had, is that both are pressed for time. Both Lawrence and Shirley consistently answered “I do that myself” when we asked who does various things around the business. Both had full-time employees to help, but like many of you, there is seemingly too much to be done, especially around the holidays.

The all-out battle for holiday sales is likely winding down now and you may be busy filling those last few overnight-shipping orders. Before you take some well-deserved time-off, make a point to do a “post-mortem” on your holiday sales season; this is especially true if, like many merchants, you make most of your revenue in the last quarter of the year, but the same is true of other high-selling seasons. Some things to consider:

• What worked well that you wish to do again? Email campaigns? Pay-per-click advertising? Special promotions such as free shipping or coupons for a percentage or dollar amount off?
• What didn’t work as well as expected? Did you offer free shipping but lost money on bulky items? Did your coupons help increase average order sizes or did you just break even? Consider how you can change these promotions with restrictions or small changes to make them really profitable for you.
• What did you not have enough of this season? Did you run out of products quicker than expected? Consider how you may wish to increase stocks or not offer slow-sellers during the high-season in order to stock more of your top-sellers if space is a premium. Did you run out of time before you ran out of orders? Consider hiring seasonal help or other ways you can increase your efficiency. Lawrence of Honest Foods had a great tip in switching all shipping options to UPS during the holidays as the ability for buyers to better track their shipping status helped reduce the flood of WISMO (Where is My Order?) calls he was getting.

After pondering these items, put your thoughts on paper and file it away until October of next year. The holidays can sneak up on you quicker than expected, especially when you are managing the day-to-day operations of your business. With your observations written down for handy reference, you’ll be in a much better place to put together your holiday sales plan for 07’. You can even set a reminder in Outlook® for October of next year, or whenever you kick off your holiday planning.

Best wishes and Happy Holidays to all,

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

12 Posts of Christmas: Tip 11–Don’t Pass on Service in the Holiday Rush

Today’s Y!Store blog is a guest column by retailer/developer Rob Snell of Snell Brothers. Rob posts somewhat regularly in his blog about Yahoo! Store stuff, is the author of Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies, and is conducting some more free Yahoo! Store marketing and SEO webinars beginning in early 2007 (or as soon as he gets done with his holiday shopping).

You’ve almost made it! The mad rush of the online holiday shopping and shipping season is almost over. Here are a few last minute tips to keep your spirits bright so you can cross that year-end finish line with your own holiday joy still intact!

Remember, anything you can do that the Big Boys can’t do is a critical advantage that may make the difference between making it and not making it! While customer service is probably the biggest intangible in retail, that warm, fuzzy feeling your customer gets from your outstanding customer service is a big, big deal to most small businesses.

These days seems like almost everything is impersonal, or some pre-recorded operator is paying lip service to how “your business is important to us!” It really means a lot to many shoppers to know that their order puts food on your table, puts shoes on your kids’ feet, and makes the mortgage payment.

I know you know this, and I’m just reminding you, but taking extra special care of your customers isn’t just good manners, it’s good for your bottom line, too! Cultivating repeat business is the cheapest way to get more sales, and you know how much it costs you in pay-per-click advertising to get a sale in the first place. Happy customers are repeat customers, and those repeat orders trickle in throughout the year when it’s so much easier to ship them!

Want to know one of the most popular things we’ve ever done to make our own customers feel more appreciated? Simply writing “Thanks for your order!” on the customer’s ship ticket / invoice and then signing the note has been a smash hit! We get more comments about hand written notes than anything! How many times have you gotten a hand-written note from anyone who shipped you anything? How easy would it be to add a note to every order?

And I know that you’re in a hurry, but when a customer emails you a question or a comment, a little social lubrication goes a long way, especially in these last stressful shopping days of December. I’m amazed at how many goof-ups I’ve personally gotten out of by being nice or by simply apologizing when I make a mistake. “Thanks for your question about our returns policy…” or “Sorry I screwed up the apartment number on your order, but I’m glad the UPS driver caught it,” or “Sorry I sent you the wrong size collar, just keep it. The replacement shipped out today…”.

Also, make sure your staff knows how important your customers are! Set a good example talking to customers, and not only on the phone and via email, but also talking to your own staff! I’ve always thought how you treat your employees is how your employees end up treating your customers when you’re not around, so be careful not to chew too hard on staff these last shipping days! I know it’s not easy!

OK. You’re all done after you ship those last minute express orders! Now all you have to do is finish your own holiday shopping, and then look forward to dealing with product returns, mis-shipped orders, and do all that end of year inventory and tax stuff. No wonder Christmas is stressful for so many merchants. Y’all have a holly, jolly one!

Rob Snell
guest blogger for Yahoo! Small Business

12 Posts of Christmas: Tip 10—Give the Gift of Convenience

With fewer shipping days left in the season, it’s time, if you haven’t already done so, to start pushing gift certificates*. Offering gift certificates to buyers is very appealing for obvious reasons: no shipping deadlines to beat, no fear of buying the wrong gift, etc…. A few places you can consider promoting gift certificates:

• Home page: up front and center is a good place to catch your shopper’s attention. Incorporate a promotional graphic in your header and link it to your gift certificate page directly.
• Shopping cart: consider swapping out one or more of your cross-sell items with gift certificates. You can change the text headline for the cross-sell area to appeal to the convenience of gift certificates such as “Finish shopping for those last few hard-to buy people on your list” or something along those lines.
• Custom 404 error page: while you should have links to your category (section) pages and maybe even to your best-sellers, you may wish to promote gift certificates as well.

Here are a few examples of sites with fairly prominent promotion of gift certificates, but likely any retail site you visit this time of year will have something if they offer gift certificates:

• Banana Republic
• Pottery Barn

Post Holidays Suggestion: If you are really ambitious, you can consider printing gift certificate vouchers as an option for buyers that wish to present the certificate in person. To do so, you would need add a checkbox to your checkout page that allows buyers to select if they wish to receive a printed gift certificate. You would also need to instruct buyers to enter their own email address in the recipient field for the gift certificate since the code is sent to the recipient automatically (and then there would be no surprise). You can then print the gift certificate code onto a card that you send to the buyer at the Billing Address. You can create your own gift certificate template or use a pre-made template to print on good card-stock, or hire a printer to create custom ones for your store where you add the amount and the number.

Learn more about gift certificates.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

* Gift Certificate functionality is available only to merchants with Merchant Standard or Merchant Professional packages.

12 Posts of Christmas: Tip # 9–How Many Online Shopping Days till Christmas?

Don’t let buyers view your store as the Grinch that store Christmas. Just as WISMO (Where is My Order?) questions are the most frequently asked questions from buyers after an order, WIGMO (When Will I Get My Order?) questions are the most frequent in the weeks leading up till the holidays. Make it explicitly clear what your “order by” date is in order for buyers to receive their orders in time for Christmas. Be sure to factor in whatever time it may take for you to process and fill orders. In other words, if it takes you two days to get an order shipped, back up the final “order by” date by that amount.

Some places to put this information:

• home page in the header or footer
• final-text area of section (category) and item (product) pages
• Shipping options sections in checkout (Checkout Manager makes adding fields easy)

Example of adding a custom field with shipping times to checkout

Also, if time permits, you may wish to contact buyers that select shipping methods that would likely arrive after the 25th. This could be a conscious choice on their part, but it could also be a mistake. Taking a moment to confirm this with them could not only save some angry calls (misdirected though they may be) but it could also win you some loyal customers.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business