Creating a Better Holiday Rush

Holiday shopping season is now well upon us, and if your store has deals, online shoppers want to know about them. So what kinds of deals are shoppers looking for? According to survey results released by Shopzilla, this coming Monday:

• More than 80% of shoppers will be seeking discounts
• 69% of shoppers will be searching for free shipping
• 53% of shoppers will be looking for one-day promotions
• 32% of shoppers will be looking for buy-one-get-one-free promotions

While Cyber Monday kicks off the busiest part of holiday shopping season, merchants should remember that past holiday seasons have shown it’s not the biggest online shopping day of the year. In 2007, comScore reported that "Green Monday" — falling two weeks later — had Cyber Monday beat. So even though Shopzilla’s survey asked about Cyber Monday specifically, chances are that shoppers will be looking for these same things — and in higher numbers — during the second week of December and "Green Monday."

If you haven’t already done so, it’s not too late to consider some last-minute promotions and marketing efforts for the busiest shopping week of the year. Along with special discounts and sales, are you offering holiday bonuses like free gift wrapping and gift cards? How about free shipping? (Or at least free shipping on purchases over a certain dollar amount.) Do you have a special section of your store for holiday sales and promotions? How about gift sets?

If you’re offering holiday promotions or features, make sure these are evident both in-store and in ad campaigns. A good example to check out is American Bridal. This store’s sale information is almost impossible to miss, and shoppers can see right away that there are coupon codes for special savings, that free shipping is offered for orders over a certain dollar value, and that international shipping is also available.

While it’s late in the season for any major changes to your store, making sure your holiday deals and bonuses are clearly called-out to shoppers on your home page, section pages, product pages, and campaign landing pages can help you entice shoppers to buy from your store. If you have a clearance section, it’s a good time to move the section link to the top of your navigation menu, or to cross-promote it throughout your site.

It’s also a good time to check that your ad campaigns and any email marketing you have planned over the next several weeks speak to what shoppers are looking for this holiday season. Michael Mothner of Wpromote recently wrote about this and a few other last-minute ways to boost holiday search engine marketing results. A good takeaway from his article is making sure to incorporate holiday messaging in your PPC campaigns. If you’re offering freebies like shipping or gift wrapping, include it in your ad, and make sure the message speaks to the holiday season. (The example Mothner gives is changing an ad title from "Shoes on Sale Today" to "Holiday Shoe Sale" for greater holiday relevance.) He also writes about PPC daily budgets, last-minute link-building, call-to-action placement, and email campaigns.

If you’re a smaller merchant without a large budget for ad campaigns or email marketing, you can still promote your store and holiday offerings to friends, family, and past customers, and encourage them to spread the word. Using the Simple Promotional Email tool, you can create an email announcing your holiday deals, feature up to three items from your store, and include a coupon.

If you’re a Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, or Yahoo! Store merchant and have enabled Yahoo! Web Analytics, now’s a great time to create a scenario analysis for your checkout flow, and to watch this, visitor navigation paths, and bounce rates very closely. Creating alerts for key areas of site performance will also let you keep an eye on things without being glued to your reports. And, it’s a good idea to review top internal search terms to make sure you’re carrying the products shoppers are searching for. Once you know what these products are, you can make them easy to find by featuring them prominently on your home page or at the top of section pages. Cyber Monday traffic should call your attention to any problem areas that could be hampering your holiday efforts, and may also give you some good insight into visitor demographics and behaviors that can be used to refine your holiday marketing.

As you get ready for the busy weeks ahead, we’d like to wish you all a great holiday shopping season, and a happy Thanksgiving.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business