Creating a Better Holiday Rush

Holiday shopping season is now well upon us, and if your store has deals, online shoppers want to know about them. So what kinds of deals are shoppers looking for? According to survey results released by Shopzilla, this coming Monday:

• More than 80% of shoppers will be seeking discounts
• 69% of shoppers will be searching for free shipping
• 53% of shoppers will be looking for one-day promotions
• 32% of shoppers will be looking for buy-one-get-one-free promotions

While Cyber Monday kicks off the busiest part of holiday shopping season, merchants should remember that past holiday seasons have shown it’s not the biggest online shopping day of the year. In 2007, comScore reported that "Green Monday" — falling two weeks later — had Cyber Monday beat. So even though Shopzilla’s survey asked about Cyber Monday specifically, chances are that shoppers will be looking for these same things — and in higher numbers — during the second week of December and "Green Monday."

If you haven’t already done so, it’s not too late to consider some last-minute promotions and marketing efforts for the busiest shopping week of the year. Along with special discounts and sales, are you offering holiday bonuses like free gift wrapping and gift cards? How about free shipping? (Or at least free shipping on purchases over a certain dollar amount.) Do you have a special section of your store for holiday sales and promotions? How about gift sets?

If you’re offering holiday promotions or features, make sure these are evident both in-store and in ad campaigns. A good example to check out is American Bridal. This store’s sale information is almost impossible to miss, and shoppers can see right away that there are coupon codes for special savings, that free shipping is offered for orders over a certain dollar value, and that international shipping is also available.

While it’s late in the season for any major changes to your store, making sure your holiday deals and bonuses are clearly called-out to shoppers on your home page, section pages, product pages, and campaign landing pages can help you entice shoppers to buy from your store. If you have a clearance section, it’s a good time to move the section link to the top of your navigation menu, or to cross-promote it throughout your site.

It’s also a good time to check that your ad campaigns and any email marketing you have planned over the next several weeks speak to what shoppers are looking for this holiday season. Michael Mothner of Wpromote recently wrote about this and a few other last-minute ways to boost holiday search engine marketing results. A good takeaway from his article is making sure to incorporate holiday messaging in your PPC campaigns. If you’re offering freebies like shipping or gift wrapping, include it in your ad, and make sure the message speaks to the holiday season. (The example Mothner gives is changing an ad title from "Shoes on Sale Today" to "Holiday Shoe Sale" for greater holiday relevance.) He also writes about PPC daily budgets, last-minute link-building, call-to-action placement, and email campaigns.

If you’re a smaller merchant without a large budget for ad campaigns or email marketing, you can still promote your store and holiday offerings to friends, family, and past customers, and encourage them to spread the word. Using the Simple Promotional Email tool, you can create an email announcing your holiday deals, feature up to three items from your store, and include a coupon.

If you’re a Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, or Yahoo! Store merchant and have enabled Yahoo! Web Analytics, now’s a great time to create a scenario analysis for your checkout flow, and to watch this, visitor navigation paths, and bounce rates very closely. Creating alerts for key areas of site performance will also let you keep an eye on things without being glued to your reports. And, it’s a good idea to review top internal search terms to make sure you’re carrying the products shoppers are searching for. Once you know what these products are, you can make them easy to find by featuring them prominently on your home page or at the top of section pages. Cyber Monday traffic should call your attention to any problem areas that could be hampering your holiday efforts, and may also give you some good insight into visitor demographics and behaviors that can be used to refine your holiday marketing.

As you get ready for the busy weeks ahead, we’d like to wish you all a great holiday shopping season, and a happy Thanksgiving.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Optimal Cross-selling for the Holidays

With the ups and downs of the market, it’s no wonder that online merchants are expecting a challenging holiday sales season this year. This makes it more important than ever to optimize every sales opportunity. If you haven’t done so yet, now is the time to focus on increasing order size by effectively cross-selling products for the holiday season.

Merchants with Yahoo! Store, Merchant Solutions Standard and Merchant Solutions Professional plans can take advantage of the cross-sell feature in a several ways:

Add-ons

If you sell products that require batteries or other accessories, add them as a cart cross-sell for those products. This way, once someone has made that first step towards purchasing, you can offer them a product that they’re going to need anyway — and they might as well buy it from you! In the case of batteries, even if they don’t need them for something they bought at your site, it may remind them that they didn’t buy batteries for a previous purchase at another store and baddabing! — you’ve just increased your order size by several dollars.

Product pairs

Last Christmas, it seemed like every kid who wanted a Hannah Montana doll also asked for a High School Musical doll (my four nieces with the same gift request has got to be a pattern!) but auto-suggestions can’t predict what new items will be hot together this year. For your newest items, go to a brick and mortar store and see how they are merchandising. Also, keep an eye on your first few orders — they will help you determine some dependable cross-sells that you can set up using cross-sell rules. Once your sales of these items are on a roll, you can opt to auto-suggest only.

If purchasing trends show that a set of items often sell together, you may also want to create a special gift set out of these items. For more about gift sets, check out a previous blog post, “Giving the Gift of Increased Order Size to Yourself.”

Unique products

Shoppers on your site may not be specifically looking for some of the unique items you have in your store, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t want them if they knew about them. I received a set of tools last Christmas from a relative who saw them while waiting in line at an auto parts store checkout (aka “cross-sell nirvana” for brick and mortar stores). Had that product not been at the checkout, he never would have thought to buy it for me, and I’d still have no pictures hung on my walls.

During the holidays, shoppers are looking for a range of gifts for a range of people. Shoppers also tend to be much more open to suggestions, unlike other times of the year when they tend to focus on a particular purchase. Think about it — how many relatives do you have to buy for? Wouldn’t it be great if you could get shopping done for multiple people at just one store? And for how many of them do you have no clue what to get? Shoppers are intent to buy, but not necessarily intent to buy one particular item, and the suggestions you give can be quite welcome to a shopper in a gift-giving conundrum.

Once the holidays are over, you should revisit your cross-sell options to make sure they still make sense. Less targeted cross-sells (like unique products) may be better placed on your home page or a featured items page, rather than distracting a customer on their path to making a purchase. It’s also a good time to turn on auto-suggest if you haven’t already, since all of your traffic and purchases from the holidays will be leveraged by the system to make auto-suggestions. If you’re still hesitant about using auto-suggest, keep in mind that, on average, auto-suggested cross-sells drive 30% higher revenue per order than merchant-created cross-sells (manual rules).

If you’re not using Cross-Sell, the holidays are a great time to start! To find out how you can get started, check out our online Cross-Sell help section.

Laurie Briggs
Yahoo! Small Business

Feature Highlight: Customer Ratings

Recently, Yahoo! merchant Bob Shirilla — owner of Keepsakes, Etc. and Simply Bags — took the time to write us about the Customer Ratings feature, and how useful he’s found it for understanding his customers and their experiences with his store. He noted, "Many people will only call us when their expectations were not met. The Customer Ratings survey encourages clients to provide comments on products, pricing, delivery, ease of purchase, and general customer service. We’ve gained valuable information and changed internal processes from the comments left by customers."

While Customer Ratings is not a new feature, Bob’s note is a good reminder for merchants not using this feature to enable it in checkout, as the information that’s collected from customers can serve your business well. For merchants who aren’t familiar with this feature, Customer Ratings provides an easy, automated way to collect feedback from your customers about shopping and post-order experiences. When this feature is enabled in checkout, customers can choose to have Yahoo! send them an email, asking them to rate the merchant. Customers who choose this option will be sent an email with a link to a ratings form several weeks after completing their transaction.

If you belong to Yahoo! Shopping, ratings will let shoppers see how customers have ranked you. Good ratings can help you gain customer confidence, can play a key part in shoppers choosing to buy from you rather than from your competition, and may improve your ranking in shopping search results.

The screen shot above comes from Yahoo! Shopping product search results. On the right, underneath the price listing and business name, Keepsakes Etc.’s rating is displayed to potential customers. I asked Bob if he could tell me a bit about how he’s used Customer Ratings feedback to improve his business and maintain a five-star rating, and to share some advice for new merchants also looking to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction and good ratings.

What’s the most valuable feedback you’ve received from customers, through their use of Customer Ratings?

Learning the importance our customer places on fast shipment of their purchase, and how much our customers appreciate us communicating the status of an order throughout the delivery process.

What changes have you made as a result of feedback from customers who provide ratings?

At first, we tried to drop-ship but found that just did not give the level of service required to retain customers. Now, we warehouse almost all of our products on-site. At Keepsakes Etc., we also implemented an order management system to ensure accuracy and timeliness of our products and service.

Can you share some examples of things your stores do that help you achieve "Excellent" ratings and repeat business?

At both Keepsakes Etc. and Simply Bags we go beyond the basics to give customers more than they expect. For example, our free gift bag and gift card make for a personalized gift and a striking presentation. Just because a client makes an Internet purchase, doesn’t mean they want a gift in a plain paper wrapper. (Good point, and one that we can’t emphasize enough. You can also read a previous post to the blog for more “beyond the basics” ideas. — Jennifer)

We also focus on exceeding the stated availability and delivery of our products. By keeping popular products (such as our throw blankets) in stock, we can ship almost all of our orders on the same day our order was placed. We’ve read numerous comments from customers stating that they can’t believe how fast they received their purchase and because of this, they plan to purchase again.

Do you have any customer service tips or advice for new merchants, that can also help them achieve good ratings?

For new merchants looking to achieve good ratings and repeat business, I recommend:

• Having a real person answer the phone every time it rings.
• Being knowledgeable about your product.
• Ensuring your website accurately represents your product.
• Finding a way to deliver more than the customer expects.

Thank you for your tips, Bob, and for taking the time to write us about your use of this feature.

If you’d like to learn how to enable Customer Ratings for your store, please see our online help. And if you have a store feature you’d like to see highlighted, please let us know!

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business