Ecommerce with all the trimmings

Things are expected to reach a head on Monday 1^st December, which has been declared Cyber-Monday, the biggest day for online sales during the whole year.

If you’re an online retailer hopefully you’ve been planning your Christmas activity for months, but it’s not too late to get your ecommerce website ‘oven-ready’ for the Christmas period. We’ve put together a selection of ideas, plug-ins and tweaks to score some quick ecommerce wins in the run up to Christmas.

Add a special Christmas landing page

It’s never too late to get into the festive spirit. So rather than create a new yuletide web design for your entire site simply add a special landing page dedicated to gifts and services that Christmas shoppers want to see.

Add new search and filter options

People, particularly last minute shoppers, want you to make their lives easier. That’s why new filter options geared specifically to Christmas shoppers, covering product areas such as Gifts for him, Gifts for her, Luxury gifts and Stocking fillers, provide inspiration and help them find what they want quickly.

Install a countdown clock

It’s a simple addition to your site and an easy way to drive sales as it prompts customers’ to buy. Just set it up to show a simple countdown to the big day or, more importantly, the last day shoppers can place orders to ensure delivery before the 25th.

Add a Wish List function

A simple extension to your Magento website will add a gift registry where customers can create their own Christmas wish lists to share among family and friends. This is a great way of drawing new customers to your site and becoming someone’s one-stop shop for all their presents.

Offer a gift wrapping service

By applying an easy-to-use plugin you can offer your customers a wide range of choices within a few clicks. So not only can they select items to be gift wrapped but they can also choose multiple items to be grouped together into bigger boxes for different recipients.

Check you have enough stock

This seems basic but running out of stock and not being able to replenish it in time to meet pre-Christmas demand can result in lost sales. By adding extra functionality to track stock levels as orders go out you can be alerted when products reach low levels. It’ll also tell you what’s popular, what isn’t and when you need to reorder.

Plan a Christmas email campaign

Send out regular email updates to alert your customers to offers and promotions as well as how long they have left to place their orders. Also, make it easy for new customers to sign up and tailor their email settings, so they control how often they hear from you. Be flexible enough to react to how sales are performing and let people know about promotions like discounts, multi-buy deals and free delivery offers. Then, once you reach Christmas day, it’s time to start promoting your January sales. You can also use the data you collect to target customers and reward loyalty, just remember not to burn any bridges by emailing customers too often.

Add Live Chat functionality

Good customer service can be king so if a shopper is struggling to find what they want on your site real time chat will let you help them immediately and enhance their experience. You won’t just make a sale but it also builds loyalty and positive word of mouth.