12 Posts of Christmas: Tips 7 & 8–Create Gift Categories and Speed Buyers to Them

Editor’s Note: When I started this topic I had a general sense of what I wanted to cover but not exact details of all posts. In retrospect, I should have started with these two posts as they do take some time and may be coming too late to affect holiday sales this season. Maybe that is unofficial tip #13: The Holidays come up fast on you—start getting ready early, me included.

Gift Categories

The thing I like about holiday shopping in a department store is the way products are logically grouped for men, women, children, home, etc . . .. The thing I dread, especially as a last-minute shopper, is once I determine which section I need, there is still a dizzying array of choices. How do I know what is a best-seller? How do I know which are recommended over others?

Fortunately in the online store world, you are not bound the physical constraints of a store—you can arrange your products in as many categories and sub-categories as you wish. And while the holidays are no time to revamp your entire store navigation, you may wish to create new gift categories based on your top-sellers (you can get your top sellers from the Sales report available under Statistics in the Store Manager). Once you have the products, try to sort them into typical gift categories such as Gifts for Him, Gifts for Her, Gifts for the Kids, Stocking Stuffers. If your products don’t sort well into categories, you can consider organizing them at traditional gift price points such as Gifts under $20, Gifts under $50, Gifts under $100, and The Sky’s the Limit.

Once you have how you will organize your products, and which products will appear, you can create the new categories to have them appear in your navigation. You can also consider a graphical holiday-themed image map to link to the new categories or revising your home page to feature these new categories. Two great examples of this are REI.com, and Pottery Barn.

Getting Buyers to Gift Categories

If you create special gift categories there are several ways you can get buyers to them. One clever way is to incorporate a jump menu from a drop-down box. Buyers can select the category and will be brought to the page you link to each.

Copy and modify the following code to use your categories, and change the values to the page names for your categories (e.g. gifts-him.html, gifts-her.html).

<select size=”1″ name=”gift-menu” onchange=”document.location.href=this.value”>
<option selected value=”">Find the perfect gift  </option>
<option value=”link1″>Gifts for Him</option>
<option value=”link2″>Gifts for Her</option>
<option value=”link3″>Gifts for Kids</option>
<option value=”link4″>Stocking Stuffers</option>
</select>

After modifying the code, you can place it anywhere you wish the menu to appear such as the header of your home page or on a special holiday landing page you create.

If you can’t use this tip in time for the holidays, keep it handy for the next seasonal sale such as Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. You can use the same technique and only change the text for the season.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business