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.

As the explosion of blogs on the internet continues to grow – 105 million blogs already in existence with 120,000 new blogs created daily – retailers must realise the importance of having their own corporate blog on the website. It is expected that by 2010 – 70% of all content on the web will be user generated so it is crucial that retailers do not get left behind.

The one to one contact that retailers are able to have with customers is lost in the faceless world of retail websites. Having a blog enables you to project a human voice to your customers and break the formality of the rest of the website. The blog is somewhere you can speak as a human being rather than a company and customers are able to respond and post their own opinions and comments. This helps to build a personal relationship with your customers and you are able to respond and react to their comments, suggestions etc.

Although the idea of customers posting up their own comments and views on products etc is an unsettling concept for some retailers, it is better that consumers have somewhere to do this on your own site rather than elsewhere where the conversation is out of your control and you are unable to respond quickly and effectively.

Another advantage to having a blog is that it will greatly help your SEO strategy. You will be able to write blogs filled with all important keyboards and if you are blogging regularly you will be ensuring your site is full of fresh new content – search engine spiders love websites that are regularly updated.

To find out more about how you can integrate blogging into your e-commerce solution, feel free to contact the experts.