For Online Sellers, the Holidays are just around the corner…

What has Volusion done to prepare for your Holiday Season?

1. Increased Technical Support Staff:
We recently increased our support staff by 50% in anticipation of another great holiday season!

2. Added Servers & Increased Bandwidth:
Additional servers have been added and we've also significantly increased the server bandwidth in anticipation of heightened holiday traffic to our client's sites. We appreciate your patience while the upgrades are taking place.

Is your site ready for the approaching holiday season?
Last year was an awesome holiday season for online retailers, with sales reaching $18.1 billion in November and December, a 25 percent increase over 2004* and with 33 percent of American households making an online purchase, up 10 percent from the year before. Anticipated sales for this holiday season? Even bigger. Ready yourself and your site as this holiday season approaches.

Things you can do to prepare for the approaching Holidays

(Part 1 of a 3 Part Series)

1. Your Products Make sure you have plenty of products in stock and accurate photos of each of those products. This will increase the likelihood of completed purchases and will help to lower cart abandonment. For more info, read our latest Blog entry "Product Images are an Important Factor in Making the Sale".

2. Your Site's Holiday Appearance Add some seasonal spice to:

Your logo: some frost to your logo for cold weather, some bats soaring around for Halloween spookiness, some colored leaves for the ever-changing Fall season…
Your Homepage: Show your visitors up front that you’re already in the holiday spirit and ready to get them there as well.
Your Homepage Graphic: a Thanksgiving turkey beside the words Free Shipping, some Christmas lights surrounding your Homepage Graphic... Learn how to change your Logo & Homepage Graphic now.

3. Holiday Promotions Some things to consider offering your customers this Holiday season:

Free shipping
Free gift wrapping with purchase
Holiday Discounts and Coupons: Learn how to create Quantity Discounts and Coupons.
Holiday Gift Certificates: Learn how to setup Gift Certificates.

Statistics on Promotions Offered to Customers Last Year:

Marketing promotions U.S. online retailers used to generate online revenue from loyal customers during the holiday season:

Free shipping - 63%;
Value added promotion - 42%;
Online only sale - 33%;
Special repeat buyer discount - 33%;
Bundle offer - 29%;
Early shopper discount - 28%;
Rebate - 11%;
Other - 22%;
No special offer - 12%.

-- WebTrends

Free shipping was offered - with conditions - by 79 percent of online retailers.
-- Shop.org

What does this say about offering free shipping to your customers for the holidays? Not only is it a helpful offer to have, you may actually lose sales by not having it!

IMPORTANT FACT: Which week will your site be the busiest this holiday season?
Last year before the holidays began, retailers predicted that the Monday after Thanksgiving would be the busiest online shopping day of the season, assuming that consumers returning from the holiday weekend would sit at their computers and buy all day. The National Retail Federation even gave it a nickname, Cyber Monday. The most important day of the season was indeed a Monday. But it was Monday, Dec. 12- two weeks later!

*according to the research firm ComScore Networks, which monitors the Internet buying of two million consumers.