ShopVisible : Holiday Shopping Season Starts Now for Online Retailers

Marketing — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Holiday Shopping Season Starts Now for Online Retailers

Leading ecommerce solution, ShopVisible, provides strategies to get ready for holiday shopping season now

ATLANTA (July 10, 2009) – Online retailers need to be asking themselves today – am I ready for the winter
holiday shopping season? ShopVisible LLC, a leading ecommerce solution provider, is helping e-tailers get
ready now so they can be prepared to maximize sales during the most critical selling season of the year.
“Maybe it is a little early to hang the mistletoe, but in all seriousness, if you are an online retailer looking to
really capitalize on the holiday season, the time to start preparing is now, " says CEO of ShopVisible Sean Cook.
“Whether it is time to overhaul your entire Web site, or just prepare your marketing tactics for the holidays,
there are some efficient and effective strategies e-tailers may be overlooking that they can easily implement
to achieve results.”

This year, because of flagging retail sales, there will be particularly intense pressure on the winter holiday
shopping season for retailers to meet their annual sales goals. And, with more people expected to be shopping
online than ever before – the stakes couldn’t be higher. By dedicating efforts now to have a definite plan of
attack for Christmas, business owners can fix and prevent potential problems with online storefronts before
it’s too late.

“We have already begun setting our end-of-year sales plan into motion with features such as social media
sharing, gift lists, gift ideas and free shipping,” says Susan Aplin, president and CEO of Bambeco.com. “By
getting out the gate fast now, we will be in great shape to have a very lucrative holiday sales season.”
“Don’t get caught trying to solve issues on the fly,” says Cook. “E-tailers cannot just hang some garland in the
window and hope shoppers will come in and buy. Get your technology straightened out now, and create a
specific plan for marketing and consumer promotions – so when the season is upon us, you are just executing
the plan.”

ShopVisible offers online retailers the following recommendations for their holiday sales planning:

Is Your Web Site Ready?:
First and foremost, make sure your Web site and underlying technology can support your marketing plans; you
need the right capacity to quickly and accurately process large quantities of orders and a unified platform that
gives you a single dashboard that allows you to monitor and refine sales strategies quickly and effectively. It is
important that online storefronts be user-friendly for both customers and back-end management in order to
maximize sales and grow business. If e-tailers are operating on a sub-par platform they may lose sales
opportunities, waste valuable time fixing inefficient technology and even suffer a site shutdown. To avoid
these problems, E-tailers are advised to switch now to an ecommerce solution that provides smart technology
that can grow with their businesses.

Search Engine Optimization is a Marathon, Not a Sprint:
High visibility in search engine results are worth gold, online retailers can implement strategies right now that
will yield results by year-end. The right technology and the right content creation now will help move your
products to page one of search engine results.

New Home Page Promotions:
Shoppers will be searching diligently online for sales and promotions to help every dollar count this year, and
having a well-timed series of homepage promotions can help businesses capture savvy shoppers and turn
them into happy customers. It is great to have a specific set of calendar items, so your team has a
“countdown” of marketing activities to continue to entice customers. E-tailers should begin homepage
promotions as early as November 1 and sustain activity with new promotions through December 24. From
coupons to special offers on select merchandise to featured products, business owners should begin planning
home page promotions now and make sure they can be easily implemented through their sites.

Implement Channel Integration: Online retailers need to tap into the many available online marketing
channels, such as Amazon, eBay, Overstock and the many different comparison shopping sites to help make
their products available to more people in more places – which will help increase sales and grow business.
Intelligent ecommerce platforms provide seamless channel integration and order management that allows
businesses to easily push their products onto the virtual shelves and manage those customer orders in one
place.

Free Shipping & Drop Shipping: Smart shipping is one aspect of online retail that can greatly affect the
customer shopping experience and reduce abandoned shopping carts. By selecting the right vendor and
minimizing fulfillment inefficiencies, online retailers can offer free shipping for the holidays – an added value
that can help an indecisive shopper decide to buy. In addition, businesses should research potential dropshipping
partnerships with preferred manufacturers to allow them to expand their selection while reducing
overhead risk. Keep in mind, the common denominator in all shipping options is providing shoppers with
assurance that their gift will arrive in time for the holidays.

Wish Lists & Gift Registries: Everyone has someone who is hard to shop for, and providing wish lists and gift
registries can help make one’s online store the perfect shopping solution this holiday season. Integrating a
wish list feature onto a site will allow customers to build a list of gifts they would love to receive and share
that wish list with family and friends. This feature is simple to add to a site and helps make gift giving easy.

Web Word of Mouth: Word of mouth has long been the key to success for many retailers, and remains
important today. Online retailers who want to expand their customer base should incorporate functionality
that allows shoppers to spread the word easily to their friends and networks via the Web. One way to do this
is by adding “email this” buttons to product pages to allow customers to email their shopping finds directly to
friends and family. Also, incorporating social media widgets into a site will allow shoppers to quickly spread
the word about their new favorite store by sharing it on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace
and Digg.

E-tailers need to be getting ready for holiday shoppers now according to ShopVisible, and these ecommerce
tools can help online retailers maximize their efforts and achieve bottom line results. By partnering with a
comprehensive ecommerce solution provider, business owners can easily make fast, cost-effective additions
to business strategies to help meet and exceed holiday sales goals.

“We encourage business owners to look ahead and make changes now so they can have a very successful
holiday come December,” says Cook. “E-tailers who want to re-launch their site with a richer, more effective
platform in time for holiday shopping have plenty of time if they begin today. Even if you are not prepared to
re-launch a whole new site, we can still integrate key functionality into your existing site to enhance your
productivity this year.”

About ShopVisible
Based in Atlanta, ShopVisible is the most search engine optimized ecommerce solution available to online
retailers. ShopVisible’s SaaS (software as a service) ecommerce solution is a comprehensive suite of tools that
creates a business environment where customer service, back office, inventory, marketing accounting and IT
seamlessly work together. The ecommerce solution ensures online visibility and revenue growth through
built-in Search Engine Optimization that takes businesses to the top of the page in search results and puts
products in all the places online where people are shopping. ShopVisible helps you make money and save
money by eliminating inefficiencies and redundant software – taking your business to a place where pay-perclick
campaigns and patchwork systems are obsolete. For more information, visit www.shopvisible.com or call
(866) 493-7037.

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ShopVisible : Holiday Shopping Season Starts Now for Online Retailers

Holiday Shopping Season Starts Now for Online Retailers

Leading ecommerce solution, ShopVisible, provides strategies to get ready for holiday shopping season now