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Tis’ The Season To Prep Your Site For The Holidays

VP Newsletter Celerant head shot 061714In 2013, retailers witnessed a major shift during the winter holiday season. The biggest day for e-Commerce traffic — Cyber Monday — saw a dramatic 20% increase in sales, making it the most successful day in online shopping history. Meanwhile on Black Friday, the biggest day for brick-and-mortar traffic, sales dipped by 13.2% over the previous year.

The tide of holiday sales supremacy has turned in favor of e-Commerce as the gap to brick and mortar continues to widen. And even though the summer has barely begun, retailers with ambitions of surfing that e-Commerce wave should start preparing now for the surge of holiday shoppers. When preparing for the holiday season, retailers can organize their e-Commerce efforts under three main categories: strategy, technology and merchandise.

A Strong Strategy

The best way to start preparing for holiday season is by analyzing data from years past to help reveal which tactics will work best during the holiday sales season. Specific winning strategies depend on individual business goals, customer profiles, and product categories, but outlining a strategy now will allow you to carve out goals heading into the holiday season and flesh out which tools will work best to accomplish them.      

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If your strategy hinges on discounts and special promotions, consider how well your retail management system or e-Commerce platform manages customer relations and communicates offerings to them. If you want to utilize mobile POS units to minimize lines at physical store locations, this may require some additional hardware. If you anticipate more sales through mobile devices, consider optimizing your e-Commerce site for smart phones and tablets. 

A sound strategy will deliver a favorable bottom line, but the right technology is necessary to provide the tools for carrying out that strategy.   

Improving Or Introducing Technology

Some plans may call for changes to existing technology while others require the introduction of altogether new technology. In either scenario, the process should begin in earnest. Retailers who plan to unveil an e-Commerce site for the start of holiday season in November should begin the development process now to help ensure any potential issues initially are ironed out in time. It takes an additional time window to test run the new site and train employees on its usage, so count on a start to finish development cycle of roughly five months.

Making improvements to existing technology can often take the same amount of time. For example, you may want to boost conversions by adding more flexible search options so customers can navigate your site more easily. Such a plan may require a complete overhaul of the web site’s hierarchy. Whether you want to modernize the aesthetics of your site with a trendy new design or update capacity to accommodate an increase in traffic, a complete site overhaul can also require a timeline of several months. 

Did we mention that November is only five months away?   

While upgrades in retail technology can often involve significant investments of time, capital, or both, they can also produce tremendous ROI.

Mastering Your Merchandise

Choosing the correct merchandise to sell makes or breaks a retail operation, but reliable inventory tracking proves as critical a puzzle piece when selling through multiple channels. Ensuring all channels can communicate seamlessly before the holiday rush is imperative. Unless an e-Commerce platform can determine the availability and location of its inventory, any promises on fulfillment will ring hollow and risk angering customers if they cannot be upheld.

A successful e-Commerce site should also function akin to a top salesperson in how effectively it relays product knowledge. Embarking on a new e-Commerce venture as early as possible will leave adequate time for polishing and tweaking the “post-production” elements of the site such as producing attractive product pictures, listing relevant features, and writing compelling descriptions.

With the holiday season just five short months away, the summer will cool off much sooner than you think. When that happens, holiday sales will start to heat up. To make sure your e-Commerce enterprise can handle that heat, consider it wise to start preparing right about… now.


Michele Salerno is Director of Marketing for Celerant Technology. She is responsible for increasing brand awareness for the company and driving strategic growth for its products within the retail market.  Salerno leads the planning, developing and execution all of Celerant’s marketing strategies, public relations and communication efforts. With nearly 10 years of marketing and management experience in retail technology and an extensive background in the hospitality industry, her passion for effective messaging has led numerous successful campaigns and improved market penetration. 

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