Guest comment: Wishing you an optimised Christmas

There are several periods in the year – most obviously Christmas – where the world of etail sees surges in website traffic. In order to take long term advantage of the opportunities that these surges present – earning new customers, enhancing brand loyalty and, of course, achieving a healthy profit – a well-thought out strategy and design to your website is essential. Steve Davis, executive vice president and president of GSI Commerce Europe offers advice on optimising your web store.

Infrastructure

It sounds obvious but make sure that your infrastructure is robust enough to meet the high level of traffic that will hit your site over short periods of time. This is all a question of timing. Problems are caused by small concentrated bursts rather than slow accumulation – plan for a peak minute rather than a peak day or week. 

There may, for example, be a midnight product launch of the latest x-box console which will lead to a peak for the immediate minutes that follow. Similarly, you might well experience a spike from the traffic yielded from your email campaign and sale that launches at 9am on a Monday morning. You need to be prepared.

Customer service is made online

The biggest mistake that retailers make with regard to customer service is thinking that optimising the customer’s experience involves greater investment in customer service or contact centre staff and training.

Put simply, to provide a great consumer experience online, your focus must be online. This is all about eliminating constrictive contacts and providing a site which ensures an easy, quick shopping experience; this can be as simple as including inventory availability information and product pictures on your site. A great consumer experience also involves great fulfilment, accurate inventory, low cancellations and a ship-it quick facility. You’ll be amazed how much influence these factors have on improving your customer’s experience not to mention the reduction in contact centre costs.

Continuous SEO

Execute search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies continuously. This process should cover site content, structure and linking, external links and banners, all of these elements drive relevancy improvements.

Use Price comparison sites

Price comparison sites will be vitally important to online shoppers this year. However, costs to participate are high. The key to performing effectively is to leverage sophisticated feed tools that don’t send your entire catalogue to the website but send only those products that convert for you. That may mean a larger catalogue during the peak weeks at Christmas and a smaller one throughout the year.

Festive Re-styling

Although aesthetics are important to a site and a user’s experience all year round, at this time of year when consumers associate Christmas with buying gifts, a general restyling can be productive. If you choose to restyle though, keep it simple, consider the key message you want to communicate and do it well. Don’t allow your organisation to try and communicate eight different messages on every page.

Consistent Messaging

As well as keeping the messaging simple on special offers and services around Christmas, ensure that these messages are aligned to the key messages of your company’s brand and other marketing output. Christmas time will invariably attract new customers who are likely to be visiting many sites. If your brand image and messaging is clear, distinctive and consistent, they will be more likely to remember you and re-visit your site.

‘Additional Services’ equal additional sales

Providing convenient, time efficient solutions to your customers’ demands is key at this time of year.

 Gifting is the main reason ecommerce booms during the festive season. Online stores allow opportunities for many unique gifting experiences – a great gift finder will go a long way to allowing your customers to find a product that works for them. Multiple shipping destinations, gift cards and gift wrap are a must for satisfied customers. Sell your physical gift cards online as well, as emailable gift certificates for last minute purchasers and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the resulting increase in sales and customer loyalty.

Don’t skimp on Fraud

Work with experts. Unless you are a retailer of the largest scale, and 99 per cent of companies won’t fit this criteria, the cost of the expert services to help you will cost far less than the cost of fraud you will avoid. It can be tempting to skimp on this service, in an attempt to cut costs but it is simply not worth the risk.

Finally, very simple, make sure your site is usable. If you take three strangers, lock them in a room, and give them fifty pounds to purchase some merchandise on your site and watched and detailed the experience closely, you’d be shocked about how many opportunities there are to simplify and enhance it. Very simple advice, keep it simple.

By Steve Davis

Executive vice president and president

GSI Commerce Europe

www.gsicommerce.com