Christmas Internet Marketing

It's a couple of months till Christmas. Online Christmas shopping has already started and your customers are looking for presents. Brick encourage our customers to get things in motion right now! There are a lot of e commerce sites out there and you need to be ready for action, what is going to drive visitors to your website? Last year was another record for online sales over Christmas. Figures from the IMRG retail survey showed that UK shoppers spent £5.46 billion online in December 2010 – an equivalent of £88.93 for every single person in the UK – 17% up on 2009. This year Christmas falls on a Sunday so it looks like we will have three great shopping weeks online instead of the usual two and a bit. Brick technology are holding 2 Christmas workshops in early October. Please contact Hayley on 01254 277190 hayley.pearson@brickweb.co.uk to reserve your place, our Christmas workshops always get booked up real quick...

Here are Ken Clarke's (Marketing Director) tips for your Christmas website.

1. Increase Sales with your Best Sellers
Review your best selling items and make sure these products are positioned prominently on your home page, give visitors (customers) a short cut to your best lines. Don’t forget to recommend products from the leading product page, accessories, batteries etc.

2. Remember Past Trends
Review last year’s sales to discover seasonal trends in sales and identify milestones such as best selling days and times. This history can be used to work on updates at times where traffic is at its lowest to ensure sales are not impacted and can remind you when additional staff are required for your sales and team.

3. Plan your newsletters
Gather all of your email contacts from everywhere you find them and create an newsletter to attract past customers back. The lead up to Christmas can be a very busy time and you can help people to remember you.

4. Give your websites a festive feel
Dress your pages with Christmas elements to highlight the upcoming festivities. Everyone recognises the Christmas tree, Santa etc! It shows that you are in business for Christmas.

5. Use your promo codes
Stop people from leaving your site in search of "better offers" by linking to pages on your website that offer some discounts such as free delivery or 5% off. Make the codes time sensitive.

6. Advertise your last order day
Make sure you show your last delivery date on every page of your website to ensure that you keep selling right up until the very last second.

7. Hold a pre-Christmas sale
You may have a lot of old inventory that you are trying to sell and make room for new. Putting together a pre-Christmas offer will bring in early shoppers and given your great delivery and customer service will encourage these early shoppers to recommend you.

8. Send a voucher to past customers in a Christmas card
Make use of your websites voucher code functionality and reintroduce your products to past clients by sending them a simple Christmas card containing a voucher code for a small discount. They will realise they are loved and you may just boost your sales.

9. Look at your returns policy
Add some simple bullet points that explain your policy in plain English to assure customers and give them more confidence to shop with you.

10. Stage your offers
Don’t give away all of your promotions and newsletters in one go. Promote a staggered sale weekly/daily and rotate set offers, encouraging customers to return day after day. Promotional discount codes work well as people tend to pass this news onto others, creating natural word of mouth activity.

For more help with your Christmas e-commerce website, call Hayley Pearson on 01254 277190 or email hayley.pearson@brickweb.co.uk and don't miss out on our Xmas marketing workshop.