Over the last decade, retailers have seen a steady and measurable increase in their online sales. We attribute the increase in online sales activity to two primary sources:

• Consumer confidence in shopping online.
• Increased attention paid to the user experience.

That said, it’s time to begin planning for how you will receive, manage and meet the expectations of your holiday shoppers. Here are questions and considerations to help you develop a plan to receive and be rewarded for your holiday shoppers. After all there are only 163 days until Christmas!

Shipping

• Will you offer free shipping cart blanche?
• Will you include an estimated shipping charge early in the checkout process or will you include it in your product descriptions?
• Will you offer free shipping as an incentive to shop early?
• Where will you post shipping deadlines and guaranteed delivery dates?

Returns

How will you ensure that your customer’s know and understand your return policy?

• Pare your liberal return policy down to 2 sentences and include it on every page of your website?
• Include a Return Policy link on every page of your website?
• Boast about your liberal return policy on each of your landing pages?

How will you manage your customer’s expectations of your return policy?

• With an auto responder email or with a personal email that includes the customer’s name and the salutations you learned to pen in a hand written letter?
• With a personal phone call to your customer that includes a conversation about what your customer can expect, a credit on their Visa card or a store credit?

Incentives

Out shine your competition with a competitive advantage and give your customers every available incentive to buy from you. Use incentives and personal service to inspire them to load their shopping cart and check out with confidence. What incentives will you offer your customers?

• Free shipping?
• Limited time discount to inspire early shopping and ensure on-time delivery and product availability?
• 15% off of your next order coupon?
• Free bonus gift?
• Free gift wrap?
• Personalized gift card for no additional charge?

Trust

Place your trust symbols in prominent places on your site, not just on the page where you think they will be found and read. For example, on every page of your website should either state or include a text link to your return policy. Your site’s trust symbols include:

• Contact information on every page of your website.
• Clear and concise return policies.
• Shipping deadlines and order cutoff dates.
• Secure site symbols and badges.
• Testimonials and product reviews.

Product descriptions

Provide your customers with complete and comprehensive product descriptions that include:

• Size
• Color
• Weight
• Dimensions
• Function
• Manufacturer
• Testimonials
• Consumer reviews

Gift Wrapping and Cards

• Will you offer gift wrapping and cards to your customers?
• Will you give the service away as an incentive to shop in your store or will you charge for the service and thereby create a nominal revenue stream for your online store?
• How will you show your customer what their purchase will look like dressed in gift wrap when the recipient opens the shipping box?
• Will you hand write gift cards with a calligraphy pen or will your printer personalize the card?

Gift certificates

• Will you offer gift certificates?
• How will a recipient redeem a gift certificate, with a coupon code or with a phone order?

Featured items

• What products do you want to feature in your store?
• How will you draw attention to your featured items?  With a call to action on your home page or a "featured item" category in your online store?
• How can you cross promote your featured items to expand and enhance your merchandising?

Testing

The functions of your online store should work seamlessly and flawlessly. Test, test and retest your:

• Links
• Checkout process
• Search function
• Promotions (coupons, discounts)

Cross Merchandising

Cross merchandise products based on price, intended user, and complimentary items. Create new, broad spectrum categories for the products in your store. Here are a few ideas for cross merchandising your store’s inventory:

• Gifts for Dad.
• Gifts for Mom.
• Gifts under $20.00
• Gifts with shipping included!

Images

Every picture in your online store should be optimized to load quickly, and be a high quality image. High quality images are staged with lighting and backdrops, quality that you expect from a professional photographer to capture with a shutter click.

Plan Now

Now is the time to prepare your online store for the holiday shopping season. With only 163 days until Christmas to develop and work you plan so it will work seamlessly for you!

Social Media is a good idea for your small business for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, prospective customers are three times more likely to trust their online community, as opposed to advertising, when they are making buying decisions. Additionally, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising.

While there are a number of Social Media platforms from which you can choose, this month’s article (and final installment in our six-part series about Social Media Marketing) delves directly into the world of Twitter.

So What IS Twitter Anyway?

Twitter is a free Social Media website that allows users to follow each other's 140 character posts (called a Tweet). Some people use Twitter to keep in touch and up-to-date with friends and family, with daily activity posts.

As Twitter continues to grow in awareness and popularity, businesses are seeking ways to leverage the Twitter community as a marketing channel - an extension of their marketing strategies. There are several reasons for businesses to evaluate Twitter and determine if it should be added to their marketing plans:

• Twitter usage continues to grow and also drives consumer awareness.
• Twitter users actively discuss products and services. Businesses (whose target market is on Twitter) need to not only monitor what users may be saying about their businesses, but they should also be providing content for those users to discuss.
  • o 42% of users learn about products and services via Twitter.
  • o 41% of users provide opinions and information about products and services.
  • o 31% of users ask for opinions about products and services.
  • o 28% of users seek discounts and sales.
  • More Americans are aware of Twitter (87%), but few are using it (7%). Compared to Facebook, where 88% are aware of Facebook and 41% are using it.
  • Most small businesses are NOT leveraging Social Media. In fact 81% of small businesses have not used Facebook, Twitter or Linked In during the past twelve months. This is a fabulous opportunity for you to get a jump on your competition.
• 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products.

Additional reasons why Twitter may be a good fit for your business include:

• Your niche target market is spending time on Twitter.
• You provide time sensitive information or updates about your business.
• You want to share information in "real time" with your target niche market.

Moreover the benefits of adding Twitter to your marketing plan include:

• Speed. Information can be disseminated very quickly using Twitter.
• Reach. Information can be shared between users' networks, extending a broad reach.
• Target. Twitter has niche interest groups. Information can be shared to specific groups of people.

Twitter Demographics – Who’s Spending Their Time on Twitter?

The primary reason for a small business to consider using Twitter, is if their target market is using Twitter. Based on the aforementioned, if your target market is using Twitter, then they are spending time chatting about your products, services and brand. You want to be a part of that conversation! You want to provide them with something to talk about!

The following demographic information will assist you as you determine if your target market is spending time on Twitter.

• Median age of users is 31
• 55% of users are female
• 45% of users are ages 18-34
• 24% of users are ages 35-49

Most users are generation Y followed by generation X, accounting for 69% of Twitter users. Gen Y-ers are ambitious, information driven and strive to get ahead. While gen X-ers are more reactive and very street savvy.

• 35% - live in urban areas
• 9% - live in rural areas
• 17% - households earning less than $30K tweet
• 25% - households earning between $30K - $60K tweet
• 28% - households earning between $60K - $100K tweet
• 30% - households earning more than $100K tweet

• 69% of users are Caucasian
• 16% of users are African American
• 11% of users are Hispanic
• 53% of users do not have kids (ages 0-17)

• 49% of users have no college
• 38% of users are college graduates
• 13% of users have advanced college degrees

Summing it up ... if your target niche is a Caucasian, female, between the ages of 18 - 49 without kids, but with disposable income ... then you may want to consider tweeting!

Twitter and Blogging

If your marketing strategy includes blogging, then you should consider the power punch that Twitter offers to bloggers. One of the most powerful Twitter tools, for bloggers is RETWEETing. Twitter users can retweet posts - whereby sharing the initial tweet with all of their followers.

For example, you write a blog post and then you tweet about your blog post with a link back where the entire post can be read. You may only have a few followers who will read your tweet. However, some of your followers may have hundreds of followers. When one of your followers retweets your post ... you have now reached hundreds more people, who may click on the link to your site and read your new blog post.

Keep in mind when blogging and tweeting about your blogs, always produce good, quality content. Users are drawn to great content, and are much more likely to share it.

Best Times to Tweet

So, you’ve decided that tweeting may be a good strategy to add to your marketing plan. How do you know when you should be tweeting?

• The best days of the week to tweet are Tuesday through Friday - with Thursday being the busiest Twitter day.
  • Wednesday
  • Tuesday
  • Friday
  • Thursday
• The best time of the day to tweet is between 9:00am and 3:00pm (Pacific Time). During business hours.

The ultimate best time to tweet is Thursday afternoon. However, consider putting together a strategy where you are tweeting at least once per day on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Don’t worry too much about tweeting on the weekends. Most of the tweeting that occurs on the weekends is family and friend related.

Twitter Tips

Here are a few more suggestions and tips to consider, as you build your Twitter strategy.

• Blog often - and always tweet about your blogs.
• Retweet useful tweets from others. You are sharing interesting content with your followers ... not to mention those you retweet might take the time to check you out - or even follow you!
• Use the hash tag (#) to mark the topic of your tweets. For example, include "#topic" within the tweet. Users of Twitter often times search all of Twitter by topic. You don't want your tweets to be overlooked.
• Tweet in parts. If you've written a blog that has three main points, you can tweet each point separately throughout the day, with the same link back to the blog post.
• Tweet during rush hour. Be sure tweet when the most users are on Twitter. It increases the chances that your tweets will be read. If you're typically busy during these times, use a tool that allows you to schedule your tweets.
• Use Twitter Search to learn:
  • If your competition is using Twitter.
  • What conversations are happening about your business industry.
  • Keywords related to your business/industry and what other's are tweeting about.

Finally, if you are still wondering if Twitter is a good fit with your business, or if you’ve figured that it is, but don’t know where to start. Join us on June 23^rd in Redmond, for our next workshop … Twitter for Biz!