Push to Christmas - Emergency Preparedness

Cyber Monday is over, you have a little calm before the last-minute-Christmas-shopper storm. Now is the time to do your emergency preparedness. Getting ready for those frantic shoppers needing their orders on time and those customers who ordered and expected their order by the holidays is essential for making your business' holiday season finish smoothly. One of the best ways to do this is to let customers know approximately when they will receive their order. Do this on your home page, your product pages, in the cart, and on the email receipt.

• Home Page Delivery Notice - on your home page, or in a main area on your website, advertise when is the approximate last day to place an order in your store and safely receive it by Christmas.
• Product Page Delivery Notice - some products ship quicker than others.  If you drop ship products, have custom products or products that ship at a different time, you will want to let customers know.  Include some text near the add to cart button letting customers know approximately when to expect each individual product if they ordered it that day.  Or, for each individual product, list the last day that product can safely be ordered to arrive by Christmas.
• Shopping Cart Delivery Notice - this should be the most exact delivery notice because at this point you have the customer's shipping zip code.  Include on this screen the delivery date as exact as possible.  Make this notice clear so that customers can assess if their gifts will arrive when they want.
• Thank You Delivery Notice - include the approximately delivery date in the email receipt if possible.

Another thing you may want to offer this time of year is expedited delivery. This will put some of your last minute shoppers very excited.

Good luck preparing for the final push of the hectic holiday season!

Advertise Cyber Monday Deals with Post-Purchase Share

I recently added a new enhancement feature for ShopSite merchants to add a post-purchase share to Facebook or Twitter.  This allows your customers to share what they purchased, and it is a way of advertising your website through your customers to their friends and family. I believe that this feature will be especially beneficial over the Black Friday - Cyber Monday weekend.  You can encourage your customers to share their purchases with their friends and family by including coupon codes or sale announcements in the Facebook post or Twitter tweet. Advertise your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales through post-purchase advertising.

The post-purchase share to Facebook and Twitter enhancement is regularly $50, however if you "Like" LaurenHillsDesign.com on Facebook (click here), you can receive 70% OFF this enhancement feature by using the coupon code "sharenow" at checkout.

Reward Your Tired and Weary Shoppers

Everybody knows about the sales on Black Friday.  If you've participated in the craziness, you know that stores open as early as 4 or 5 in the morning, which means you are up at least by 2. However this year the sales start even earlier.  Stores such as Walmart, Target and Kohl's are opening their doors at midnight. Stores are putting more of an emphasis on the Black Friday sales. Another interesting bit of information is that NRF's Holiday Survey found that people are planning on spending more on themselves this year. So how can you use this knowledge to your advantage? Reward the weary!

The equivalent for online retailers of Black Friday is Cyber Monday, yet, by this point shoppers have already spent an exhausting weekend at local retailers hunting for deals.  By the time Cyber Monday rolls around you have some pretty exhausted and sleep deprived shoppers.  They have not been able to get all the items that they wanted at local retailers, so they are turning to the internet to solve their gift giving problems.  Yes, they are likely still looking for some glimmer of those sale prices that they saw over the weekend, but, as NRF's survey forecasts, they are also looking for a little pick-me-up for themselves. So show your tired shoppers some love by offering them free gifts or bonuses.  They can purchase the gifts for their loved ones, then get a guilt-free bonus gift for themselves.  You'll want to make this incentive worth your while, so offer deals such as "Spend over $X and get a FREE X!" This will increase your total per sale and will raise your customer's spirits over the busy shopping weekend.

Post-Purchase Advertising

I have begun seeing messages on facebook and twitter from my friends such as "I just pre-ordered the new Amazon Kindle!" and "I just purchased this new phone case.  You can save $10 on a new phone case using promo code 'fonekase'." Allowing your customers to advertise your products on their facebook and twitter accounts easily is a great way for you to get new customers, and it's free advertising. Some stores will simply form a message for the customer stating what they purchased with an image of the product and a link back to your website while other stores will offer customers and their friends incentives, such as providing a promotion code or advertising an upcoming sale in the facebook post or tweet.

If you need help setting up a "share on facebook" and "share on twitter" option on your ShopSite thank you page, you can have me set it up for you.  More information about this option can be found at the following URL:
http://laurenhillsdesign.com/templates/post-purchase-share-on-facebook-twitter.html

Is Your Site Ready For Mobile Commerce?

Many top websites have optimized their website for mobile or have mobile pages.  So many sites have done this that smart phone users are beginning to expect that sites will have a mobile version. Pinching to enlarge and squinting at the content is no longer acceptable for many smart phone users.  So is your website ready?

ShopSite is planning to have a mobile capability built into their next release where users will be redirected to a mobile optimized version of your website.  So what do you need to do to prepare to use this upcoming feature?

• Logo. Start by creating a mobile sized version of your logo.  Many websites that you visit will have a header/logo area that takes up no more than 60-70 pixels of the top of the mobile screen.
• Navigation. No doubt you have many different ways for users to find what they are looking for on your website, but since space is limited on a phone, narrow your main categories down to about 4 main categories that will be listed on every page.  The first link should be a "home" link or a "categories" link so that customers can always return to your main list of store categories.  The other three links should be your top categories, or your most interesting categories such as "sale" or "new items." Decide what 4 links you would like at the top of all your mobile pages.
• Template Tags. If you are using built in templates within ShopSite, this is not an issue for you.  However, if you are using custom templates, you will need to add the new mobile tags to your custom page and custom more information page template so that the redirect code will be included on your pages.  Below are the two required template tags for mobile.
           [-- MOBILE_JAVASCRIPT --] - goes within the <head></head> tags.
           [-- SS_MOBILE_REDIRECT --] - goes right after the <body> tag.
• Footer. Your footer should be simple but informative.  Many merchants will include their company information links in their footer such as the "about us" page, the "shipping and returns information" page and "terms and conditions." If you have copyright information that you would like to include, you can include that in the footer as well. 
• Emails. Often, smart phone users have one or more of their email accounts tied to their phone, so when they receive an email, they can check that email without going to their computer.  Because of this, you will want to make sure that ALL of your emails to customers are mobile optimized.

I am excited to delve more into the capabilities of mobile as there become more and more mobile users and mobile optimized websites causing mobile to evolve. If you are planning to have a mobile optimized website, make sure you keep up on mobile trends.  This technology if rapidly expanding and changing.

Favorite Tips From American Express

On American Express's Open Forum blog they posted "30 Ways To Boost Sales Without Discounting." Below are my favorite of those tips.

1. Future-use coupons
Use wording such as "For every $50 you spend tonight, you get $10 off your next purchase of $50 or more." Your customers have an incentive to spend at least $50, and you'll get an additional $50 in purchases when they apply their future-use coupon.

9. Upsell
Have you trained your staff in the power of suggestion? Many restaurants do, but you might have overlooked it. Wait staff or counter staff should always have an upsell suggestion at the ready. "Would you like fries with that?" is only the beginning.

13. Shipping
Offer free shipping or faster shipping for purchases made within a certain time or over a certain dollar amount.

14. Bulk order rewards
Customers who buy in bulk get a reward of some kind, such as a free customer club membership or a free T-shirt or other promotional item.

15. Features
Highlight a particular item and put it front and center. Sales will increase just because it is "the featured item" even though it isn't discounted.

16. Customer reviews
Gather positive customer reviews and put them beside the product or service being offered. Testimonials are powerful.

30. Rewards and levels
Offer rewards, but tie them to dollar amounts or commitment levels. The greater purchase or commitment garners the greater reward.

You can view the complete list at: http://www.openforum.com/articles/30-ways-to-boost-sales-without-discounting