We are now deeply involved in this crucial period of business : Christmas will be there in a few days time. On Christmas period, some e-merchants will do almost 50% of their annual turnover so it’s very important to put in place any idea that can increase confidence in your product or service offer. By doing so, you will be more likely to sell to one of the 70%+ of people shopping online for Christmas in Western Europe. Here are 10 tips to implement rapidly to rock your Christmas period.

1. Learn to anticipate when people intend to shop online

Only experience can and should help you determine why and when people will come to your website to actually spend money. Though, some tools can help better anticipate it during the year. You can take an hour or two practicing advanced segmentation in Google Analytics and analysing previous Christmas periods so that you can adapt to the expactations of those visitors and increase your average revenue per visitor.

2. Implement product suggestions and feedback areas

To increase your average basket price, one of the best things to be done is to provide your visitors with a product suggestions area where an algorithm will suggest complementary items. This area can display different types of products, last bought by someone, or the best rated ones. Such “suggestion box” can be very efficient when associated to a feedback or comments area on product pages.

3. Showcase your special offers

Major e-commerce websites experienced that showcasing special offers regularly has a very strong impact on business. You can also add a count-down to your offer to increase the feeling of urgency. This can be an effective way to convince hesitant visitors. A free shipping weekend on the first week of December is also a good way to create a rush before it actualy gets urgent. Usually, Free shipping weekends are organised on the weekend when the last orders can be shipped with a guaranteed delivery before Christmas’ Eve. But you can also anticipate and do it on the first week of December to better distribute orders throughout the month. In any case, make sure you communicate about the operation 3 weeks in advance through all possible media including blogs, Twitter, Facebook and partners.

4. Put products images at work for you

Many blog posts have already covered the impact of loading speed e-commerce performances. Revenues are highly correlated to the time product page take to load in visitors web browsers. Experts have estimated that when pages load 100ms faster, e-merchants net revenue increase by 1% over a year. That said, we recommand that you take special care of your product images so that they are both helpful and lightweight for your visitors. The images should help reassure visitors by displaying the products from every possible angle, but they are certainly not meant to discourage people from visiting your website due to extensive load time. Images for the web should be around 100kb.

(Lire la suite…)

Christmas and the sale period are two important moments of the year for online merchants. Indeed, a big part of their turnover is made during this period.

Get ready for Christmas….

Christmas time is often the occasion for online buyers to make unusual purchases on Internet: quick delivery delay, lack of time, a bigger choice on Internet… It is therefore an interesting time for the acquisition of news clients. Getting ready for this period is essential: a disappointed buyer during Christmas time will become a lost client! So, the key to success is preparation.

For the reminder, online sales in December 2011 were up 30% year on year, and the last week before Christmas 2011 saw almost double the sales compared with 2010. As a token of this essential time of the year, 96% of e-shoppers expect to do some shopping online this Christmas and 26% believe that they will spend more online this year in the run up to Christmas*! During Christmas time, 96m UK internet visits went to retail websites, a 19.5% increase from 2010 figures*.

…and for the sale period:

Other fundamental time in the merchant’s selling cycle: the sale period! Indeed, this period is a strong one to increase turnover, so merchants must be well prepared. The next sale period starts in 2 months, on Boxing Day – 26^th December – , and lasts until the end of January.

Being efficient during the sale period is fundamental. For the record, Boxing Day 2011 was the biggest ever day for online retail in the UK: Britons spent 13m hours shopping on Boxing Day! Furthermore, overall UK retail sales grew by 2% in volume in January 2012 – during the sale period -, compared to the same time in 2011, and by 4.4% in value*. It is therefore a key moment of the year whose sales are growing year-on-year.

It is necessary to develop your distribution channels for these two key times. Lengow allows online retailers to program specific actions and centralize your management in order to save time.

Lengow can help online merchants make the most of the festive season and establish a plan for their seasonal promotions.

If you have any inquiry or if you want to prepare a strong festive season strategy, contact Lengow UK team at .

Yacine Merad, Lengow Country Manager UK (, ), Mariko Komaki, Business Developer UK (, ) and Thomas Nolleau, Business Developer UK (+44 203 445 1002, ) will give you all the information and solutions you need to make Christmas time and sale period a success.

*Source: Internet Retailing & Econsultancy.com

 

The 2011 summer sales started today in France, and the Lengow team has been working hard since 6am to support our retailers regarding the distribution of their products on comparison shopping sites as well as on marketplaces, affiliate platforms and social networks.

It’s indeed a big day for online retailers – one that’s not to be missed!

The first half of the day has been extremely busy. Here are a just few numbers to illustrate what Lengow has accomplished so far today (as of 2pm):

-          18.5 million products indexed on more than 5,500 feeds

-          350,000 clicks tracked

-          6,400 orders generated

-          € 1.2 million in turnover cumulated by all our e-tailers

We’ll try to provide a report by the end of the week in order to predict the trends of this year’s summer sales!