Get Your Online Store Ready For The Holidays - NOW

Have you started preparing your online store for the December holidays? If you haven’t already, you will find that you are already four months behind! There are numerous web marketing tactics that you should be looking at for the holiday season – online video, search marketing, email campaigns, online media, social networking – these are all cost effective ways for you to reach potential customers. These are customers that are actively searching for sales and deals right now!

But, why bother with online sales? If you have a brick-and-mortar store, your customers are coming in the door, aren’t they? What if you don’t sell items online? Maybe you only use your store for information and a map to get to your location. This is still the time to be getting ready for Christmas.

According to Advertising.com (http://www.advertising.com/) 84% of consumers will make online purchases this holiday season with most purchases happening in November and December. This study will also occur in local businesses, as well, but you must be prepared for the season.
There are some very important things to remember when you are preparing your online strategy for the upcoming holiday season:

1. Make sure you have the inventory to handle your online sales. A person who uses the internet to make purchases expect to have their orders handled in an expedient fashion. You must either have the inventory on-hand or be able to get their order out the door quickly and efficiently.

2. Customer satisfaction is the name of the game online. Price doesn’t mean anything if you have fantastic customer service in place. Make sure that your customer service keeps the customer informed with each step of the ordering process. Make sure you also post a cut-off date that you will ensure gifts to arrive for the holidays. This is a very easy thing to do and you can stop an angry customer before it becomes an issue.

3. Submit your products and sale items to Comparison Shopping Networks. These are places online that can get your products in front of people’s eyes and compare them side by side with similar products. You can find these at places like: http://www.valueclick.com/, http://www.shopzilla.com/, and http://www.pricegrabber.com/. Remember, people start buying online for the holidays in October. That’s now!

4. Prepare your web site for the holiday season. Change your keywords, tweak your online business, make sure that you are getting the message that you want to your customers.

5. Coordinate your print message with your online message. Don’t confuse your customers by having your online “summer” message disconnecting with the printed message that you are using to entice customers to your store.

6. Offer gift cards to be purchased at your online store. Gift cards can give you up front cash to help you through the months following the holidays. Offer them in both a traditional and electronic format and make sure they are near your navigation bar so that customers can easily find the link to buy a card.

The weather is still warm and we’re all still thinking Autumn, but you have to be ready for the holiday season months before it starts. Promotions take time and that time is now. Keeping ahead of your shoppers will make for a happy and successful holiday season.

High Gasoline Prices Turn Consumers To Online Shopping

by James Fowler
www.mywebsource1.com

Do you sell a product or service? Are you looking for a way to make money with a hobby or business idea? Maybe you should look to selling your business online. Even if you aren’t looking to have an ecommerce site, people are going online to find your business. If you do not have a web site, this is something you may want to consider.

The high price of gasoline does have one positive effect for consumers: As gasoline prices rise, people forgo driving their SUVs out to their local malls and start up their PCs to shop online.

As prices of gasoline threaten to peak over $4.00 a gallon across much of the United States, online sales are beginning to rise. According to Drapers.com, a website dedicated to the international fashion market, online clothing and shoe sales rose 38% in the past year. In fact, internet sales now are responsible for almost 2% of all sales made in the United States. This may not sound like a lot, but that number is over $50 billion dollars in US sales – almost double from the $24 billion dollars spent online in 2004.

This number continues to grow at a steady pace. Free shipping, discounts and ease of ordering over the Internet are also attributed to attracting customers. The war with Iraq and fear of terrorism are other reasons some Americans state as to why they are now shopping online.

In a recent survey from Shopzilla.com, 40% of internet shoppers say they have increased their web purchases to save on gasoline. With gasoline rising on a daily basis and people moving away from driving to the store and looking for products online, maybe it is time to build your web site.