Retailers are guilty of not properly preparing for Christmas with their online store like they do in the offline world. It is important that online vendors use the months leading up to Christmas to research and test all areas of their online campaigns as well as the website itself to ensure they maximise sales over the festive period.

There are several areas that retailers need to pay attention to. The search market is key to locate what words you need to be focussing on to capture your customers. Looking back on last years search data will help greatly to work out what worked and what didn’t. Look at what keywords you were focussing on last year and analyse the success of these words - retailers should be learning year on year for Christmas.

On the run up to Christmas, retailers should test out various adverts and offers to see which converts the best for them. Trial and error is the best way of discovering what is going to bring potential customers to your site.

Along with ensuring that search campaigns are fully optimised, retailers need to ensure that once they consumers have reached their site every step has been taken to keep them there.

Landing pages are very important in your Christmas strategy – any offers or discounts that you refer to in your Christmas campaigns need to be confirmed on your landing page. You need to continuously motivate your customers to continue through the website and ultimately make a purchase.

To find out how Motive can help with your online Christmas strategy, please speak to the experts.

In order to be successful in the online word, fashion retailers need to make sure that every step has been taken to mamimise the potential of their website.

Fashion retailers need to optimise their product range for their online e-commerce store. Consumers must be provided with a wider choice along with various offers that make it advantageous for them to buy online rather than in stores.

The average fashion e-commerce site should achieve a minimum average item value of around £12-£15. Lower priced items than this should be avoided when selling online as it is harder to make them profitable than it is in stores. Lower priced items do, however, have potential to be profitable when offered in bundle packages. It is crucial that online fashion retailers maximise the potential of cross-selling and up-selling opportunities that a website offers.

Where possible, fashion e-commerce sites should avoid being out of stock. If a customer comes to your site to purchase an item and it is out of stock, they will leave the site with a negative image of your company. The big advantage the Internet offers consumers is the ease with which they can buy items, if this process is held up for them in any way they will be frustrated and probably not return to your site.

A key factor in the success of a fashion ecommerce site is that every possible effort is made to re-create the in store experience the customer has of buying clothes. In high street stores, consumers are able to pick up, feel and try on garments to decide whether to purchase or not. Online obviously this contact is lost and so to ensure that the customer feels confident enough to buy, they must be shown the product minute detail. This can be done through:

• Focus on key product detail (stitching etc)
• Zoom features to see the product in extreme close up
• Alternative Views (see the product from front, behind, side etc)
• Video – actually use real models wearing the clothes so customers can see what the garment actually looks like on a human being.
• 3D Spin
• Clear size guides – this maximises customer satisfaction and minimises returns

Highlighting to your customers that your website is safe is also very important. Consumers often have concerns over using their card online and so to reassure them that their payments will be secure the latest payment technologies should be used by the website.

To find out how Motive can develop a highly profitable e-commerce store for your company, please talk to our E-commerce Team.