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

12 Posts of Christmas: Tip 6 Don’t forget the Batteries

As the parent of a boy that often gets electronic gizmos for gifts, my favorite gift-givers are those that are extra thoughtful and include whatever batteries the gift may require. There is a reason that batteries are often stocked in the checkout lanes—they are a nice way to provide a reminder to the buyer they may need batteries, and a great way to bump up the average order size.

You can do the same thing in your own checkout if you are a Merchant Standard or Merchant Professional account holder. These packages include the Cross-Sell feature where you can merchandise specific items in your shopping cart depending on the item the buyer has added to their cart. If you sell electronic goods, maybe you would cross-sell batteries (if you sell them) for items that require batteries.

You can choose a few different strategies depending on your buyers and the products your store sells. If you sell DVD camcorders for example, you may wish to cross-sell DVDs, memory cards, camera bags, or other accessories. The higher cost items can really boost your average order size but you may have to offer discounts or other incentives to convince buyers into adding these items on top of a high-ticket item; the Cross-sell features allows for both a dollar amount off or percentage discount. You can also try to convert lower cost items by cross-selling low-cost items and changing your cross-sell headline to something like “Don’t forget the stocking stuffers” (you can even add an image to appear before or after the text using HTML). You may even wish to review past orders to see which items if any are commonly purchased together. Whichever route you choose, try to figure out what items are the “batteries” for your type of products.

Learn more about the Cross-sell feature.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

12 Posts of Christmas: Tips 4 and 5–Gift Wrap and Gift Cards

Editor’s Note: Since many merchants are getting busier with holiday orders, I’m going to keep the next posts much shorter and provide some tactical tips you can do to ramp up holiday sales.

Part of the whole benefit of online shopping versus battling the crowds is convenience. Make it convenient for shoppers to buy from you, and your virtual cash register will start ringing non-stop during the holidays. One way to offer more convenience for holiday shoppers is to offer gift wrapping. I’d imagine the gift wrap option easily appeals to more ribbon-curling challenged men than women so if your buyers are typically men you would do well to consider this option.

Both the version 2 checkout (Order Forms) and version 3 checkout (Checkout Manager) offer the following gift options:

• Gift wrap: Allow buyers to select to have packages gift wrapped. Since this service requires extra time and cost, you have the ability to charge buyers per order or per item when selecting gift wrapping. Maybe you want to offer free gift wrapping on orders over a certain dollar amount, or maybe you want to wrap all orders where this is requested for free as a value-added service. Only offer though if you can spare the time it takes to wrap orders. You don’t want to fall behind and delay sending a package due to a backlog in wrapping some packages.
• Gift message: Allow buyers to send a gift message with an order. This message will be printed on the Packing slip that you can print and insert with the order. You may also consider dressing up gift messages with a special holiday gift label that you customize, print, and include with orders. Microsoft® Office Online offers templates for Microsoft Word™ such as this holiday label template. Not only will the buyer appreciate this extra touch, but you can also use this as a branding opportunity for a potential customer. Include your store address and your own holiday wishes. You can even include a coupon code for first-time buyers but remember to keep this more about the special gift message and less about advertising–no one outside of Hawaii likes spam for Christmas.

By offering a service or special touches you help to set your store off from competitors or mega-merchants that can’t or don’t offer these services. Doing so can win loyal customers that will shop year-round from you.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

12 Posts of Christmas: Post Three—Tell a Friend

In a recent Yahoo! sponsored survey about Holiday buying habits, sixty percent of respondents said recommendations from friends and family were a top influencer in purchase decisions. So how do you make sure that friends and family can easily make recommendations to others once on your site? Make it easy for them to send an email.

Below is one method for adding a JavaScript to pages that creates an email link with a pre-formatted subject and message along with a link to the page which the shopper is viewing. Note: The instructions below are for adding the script to pages built in the Store Editor but this script will work for any HTML editing tool where you can add code to the head section and body section of the page. This method also requires the shopper has an email client on their computer.

To add this feature:

1. From the Store Manager, click the Store Editor link.
2. Go to the Variables page and add the head section code to the Head-tags variable. (You can also override the head-tags variable on a per-page basis if you wish to use this feature only on a few select pages.
3. Go to the page(s) where you wish to add this feature and add the body section code to the page.

Note: If you wish to add the link to all pages, you have a few options of where to add the link

• final-text variable
• intro-text field
• HTML-below-nav-bar (Editor 3.0 only)
• HTML-above-nav-bar (Editor 3.0 only)
• Use the Link button to add a link to your contents navigation links
• Create a custom type that includes a new property for this link where you specify in a custom template

Head section (add the below part to the head-tags variable)


<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
function emailafriend()
{
var emailbody = "Insert text here to appear in the email message. Hint: Don’t include any words likely to trip up spam filters "+window.location;
var emailsubject = "Enter text here to appear as the subject—Hint: Don’t include any words likely to trip up spam filters.";
window.location = "mailto:?subject="+emailsubject+"&body="+emailbody;
}
// end -->
</script>


Body section (add the below part to your page where you wish the link to appear)

<a href="javascript:emailafriend();">Tell a friend</a>


You can also replace the “tell a friend” link text with a tell a friend graphic that you create to match the look of your site and make this feature stand out more. Also, while it is possible to set up this feature without using JavaScript, this method allows you to customize the subject and body message of the email to fit the season (for example “Saw the perfect stocking stuffer”, or “Here’s a great gift for Mother’s day”).

You can also set up a more formal solution that will not only send the email, but also allow you to collect the email address* (of those that approve) of the sender and recipient. This method allows anyone to send an email but it does require more time to set up, and some shoppers may be wary of providing email addresses to a newly visited site for fear of spam.

*Note: Be sure you are in compliance not only with the Yahoo! Small Business Terms of Service and the Yahoo! Store guidelines but also with all state and federal laws regarding privacy and unsolicited commercial email (spam).

So don’t wait. For a few minutes of set up time, you can start getting some highly qualified leads at no cost to you.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business