Although most of us have only just unpacked from our Summer Holidays the retail year marches relentlessly on, as I discovered to my horror in my local supermarket over the weekend. Keen to stay ahead of their competitors, giant retailers are unabashed at panicking their customers in to preparing for Christmas with the ever expanding array of seasonal foods and gifts available from September onwards.
Despite the palpitations it evokes in most of us it does bring home the importance of preparation for this period and it couldn't be more important to retailers this year as research shows that in the UK alone consumers will spend over £10 billion pounds in the run up to the festive season.
As a web design and development company Mancala Technology have begun to contact our Ecommerce clients with the following 7 top tips to ensure that we all receive a little Christmas cheer this year:
1) Planning is everything.
Take a tip from the high street and get organised early. Give your business or web development supplier enough time to produce timely and effective marketing campaigns on your behalf. This includes making sure your online marketing is in place, now is the time to make sure your Adwords Campaign is up and running and optimised to get the best return on investment (ROI),
2) Relevant Design.
Take the edge off the wide spread panic which Christmas normally induces by developing a seasonal motif that works along side your branding and creative copy but highlights the coming period.
3) Target your Homepage.
Your Homepage is the first port of call for most online shoppers so gearing it towards a creative and hassle-free shopping experience will seriously boost your traffic. Think carefully about your use of copy, the availability of useful information, and don't forget to ‘get creative' by providing quick solutions to finding the right gift. This may include the option to shop by budget, product or recipient for example. We truly believe that by providing a clear route around your site and providing ideas, will reduce your bounce rate.
4) Delivery.
This is always a bit of a hot potato with retailers. Eager to push ahead with proactive marketing, the logistics of delivering your product or service can often be neglected. By making sure you reconcile your stock, man power and realistic delivery times and dates, you should avoid the usual pitfalls. Remember that communication is the key and a concise explanation of your delivery policy from your Homepage (see top tip no. 3) should keep everyone in on the loop.
5) Email Marketing.
By drip feeding your customers with a well planned email campaign about the products and solutions you can provide for the coming Christmas you should create awareness with your customers and hopefully begin to reap Christmas related profits sooner rather than later.
6) Packaging
If, like me, you're a sucker for pretty packaging then you'll know how irresistible the option to spend a little extra to put the finishing touches on a great gift and be. It's an easy opportunity to generate extra revenue and also offers your customers a more complete service which they are more likely to re-use. However, remember the importance of planning to avoid becoming bogged down in the detail however pretty it may look!
7) Monitoring.
Finally, make all of the marketing tools you've used and developed over the Christmas period work for you throughout the year. By measuring your website traffic, sales, feedback, performance and statistics you can learn more about your customers shopping habits and how your service can be developed in the coming year.
We hope that these top tips help to take the edge off the Christmas madness, further advice can be found at our website http://www.webbeads.co.uk/
Mancala specialise in Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Adwords Campaign Management and Email Marketing based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. 0191 241 6726