As all good things must come to end, the 2005 holiday online shopping season will
soon draw to a close. However, with some careful planning,
the months of January and February can provide online store owners with a unique opportunity to
extend holiday sales and prime your storefront for success in the new year as well. So put down that glass of egg nog and prepare to ring in a successful new year
with the following e-commerce advice.
Plan a Clearance Sale
Like many brick-and-mortar retailers, online retailers can launch holiday
clearance sales by selling products (e.g., overstocks or holiday underperformers)
at reduced prices. Promoting a “Holiday Clearance Event” as a limited duration
event can help to energize sales immediately after the holidays are over.
Conduct a Survey
The holiday season provides a great opportunity to analyze customer
behaviors and the overall success of the website and marketing campaigns.
How did customers find you? Which products did they buy most often? Which
features of the web site did visitors like best? Were they able to check out
quickly and easily? Are there any areas that need improvement? One way to get
answers to these questions and others is to run a customer satisfaction survey.
The survey could be sent via email or linked off your site’s home page. You can
offer a special discount or other promotion to increase participation levels.
Update Your Home Page
Updating your home page immediately after the holidays will
impress shoppers who visited your site during the peak shopping season.
A few simple updates to the site’s home page content can go a long way to keep
the site looking fresh and add credibility to your e-commerce venture.
For example, you could include a “Thank you” note to customers for their
patronage over the holidays, advertise a New Year’s Sale, or the special
clearance event mentioned previously. You may wish to advertise a successful
holiday product to new customers—or create a new opportunity through “up selling.”
For example, if many customers purchased an electronic device from your site over
the holidays, you might consider advertising related accessories for that device.
Continue Free Shipping
If you can afford to extend holiday offers like free shipping to help win over new
customers, why not do it! This will help to set you apart from competitors as well
as increase customer loyalty. Combining an extended free shipping offer with a
clearance event could prove to be a boon for post holiday sales. Consider advertising
any planned post holiday sales or including coupons in your holiday shipments to entice
the customers to come back.
Persevere with Online Marketing
Ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to bring continuous
traffic to your site, so don’t neglect to perform SEO after the holidays! If you
haven’t already started advertising in pay-per-click (PPC) search engines such as
Google AdWords, you can set up campaigns in advance and time them to become active
just as the holidays come to a close. This could really give an you an edge over
the competitors who have exhausted holiday marketing budgets. Similarly, continue
email campaigns towards the end of the holiday shopping season to announce clearance
sales and upcoming promotions.
