Top Christmas Ecommerce Tips

Once everyone is back from their summer holiday, Christmas will come around before you know it. Here are our top ecommerce tips for getting ready for Christmas. Mine Your Data - Your most valuable resource for deciding what you should do next Christmas is data you have from last year. Look at who bought from you and when in previous years.  Use this data to build segments for your email campaigns. Review what products you sold most of last year. Can these categories be expanded? Are there any categories that didn't sell well? Additionally, review which promotions worked the best; what times of year and what types of promotion were they?   Embrace PPC - You might not normally use PPC but at Christmas it can be a great way to cut through the competition and boost traffic and sales. Customers are more likely to convert at Christmas which means better margins than the rest of the year. Google Shopping feeds, Remarketing Lists and image ads can take time to get right, especially if you have to go through external developers and designers so give yourself plenty of time to set these up.  Optimise Mobile & Tablet - Sales made with mobile phones last Christmas grew 14% compared to 2015 and are set to keep growing. We would hope that everybody has a responsive mobile template by now, but are you doing everything you can to make it easy to buy from you on mobile? Adding simple payment solutions like Paypal can give your conversion rates a real boost.  Improve Conversion with Plugins - Basket Abandonment functionality and review software, like Feefo or Trustpilot, are proven to improve conversion rates. We've seen great results with both types of software. If you want to get the most out of these improvements before Christmas, you're going to have to get coding and testing soon.  Site Speed, Code Freezes & Hosting - Slow speed or site crashes can cause huge revenue losses in the lead up to Christmas. We recommend a 'code freeze' in Q4 to prevent any unexpected bugs and changes taking down the site during peak business. It’s also worth checking with your hosting providers to see how easy it is to scale up your hosting capability during peak times.  Find out more about us here.

Is it too early to mention Christmas Ecommerce?

While the summer tries to make a stuttering start we thought it was about time to start thinking about how to maximise Christmas performance. As with all things, a successful ecommerce Christmas relies on careful planning and doing simple things well.

So, with apologies for bringing up Christmas in July, here are our top tips for getting prepared for the Christmas rush ahead of time:

1. Mine Your Data - Your most valuable resource for deciding what you should do next Christmas is data you have from last Christmas. Look at who bought from you and when in previous years. Use this build build segments for your email campaigns. Review what products you sold most of last year. Can these categories be expanded? Are there any categories that didn't sell well? Additionally, review which promotions worked the best; what times of year and what types of promotion were they? 
2. Last posting dates - Speak to your couriers now. You may not have checked, but Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, which means that the week before will be critical to your business. Yet with DPD stating in Feb 2016 that they where already at capacity that week, based on contracted volumes, don't just assume that all will be well for you. 
3. Embrace PPC - You might not normally use PPC but at Christmas it can be a great way to cut through the competition and boost traffic and sales. Customers are more likely to convert at Christmas which means better margins than the rest of the year. Google Shopping feeds, Remarketing Lists and image ads can take time to get right, especially if you have to go through external developers and designers so give yourself plenty of time to set these up. 
4. Optimise Mobile & Tablet - 40% of ecommerce transactions last December were on mobile of tablet. We would hope that everybody has a responsive mobile template by now but are you doing everything you can to make it easy to buy from you on mobile? Adding simple payment solutions like Paypal can give your conversion rates a real boost. 
5. Improve Conversion with Plugins - Basket Abandonment functionality and review software, like Feefo or Trustpilot, are proven to improve conversion rates. We've seen great results with both types of software. If you want to get the most out of these improvements before Christmas, you're going to have to get coding and testing soon. (The same goes for mobile and tablet changes!). We recommend a 'code freeze' in Q4 to prevent any unexpected bugs and changes taking down the site during peak business. 

Need to know more? Visit our website here or send us an email to discuss your ecommerce needs.

Top Ecommerce Trends 2016

Now that we've survived the first two weeks back after Christmas, it's starting to feel like 2016 has begun. As usual at this time of year there has been a flurry of emails, blogs and articles about what is going to change in Ecommerce this year.

We've picked out our favourite, most actionable insights -

1. Smart phone revenue may finally overtake desktop revenue. If you don't have a mobile site, you need to get one. (Econsultancy)
2. Listing products on marketplaces - like Amazon - will become even more important as a way of reaching customers (Webretailer).
3. It will become even more important to look after your top customers(Ometria). What are you doing to turn your best customers into your best brand ambassadors?
4. Customers are going to become more security and privacy conscious(Mercurytide). This means you need to upgrade to HTTPS if you haven't already, and make sure you are extra clear about how you use customer data. 
5. Shipping is changing (Ventureburn). Amazon has already rolled out same-day delivery in London. What can your site offer that gives you a competitive edge on that?

Need help transforming your 2015 website into a 2016-ready business? We can help. Drop us a line at info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Ecommerce Site Launch: Flamingo Gifts

MoneySpyder are pleased to announce the launch of the newest addition to our client list.

We have been helping Flamingo Gifts with their online marketing since March. Moving over to our platform means they can take full advantage of our online marketing capabilities as well as the improved warehouse and fulfilment functionality.

Design changes have been minimal so far - with the exception of a much slicker checkout and the removal of some conversion blockers - but we're planning to start adding new front-end features and designs in the coming months. We're confident that conversion rates and traffic volumes are going to improve greatly in the run up to Christmas.

Take a look at our site if you're looking for a more heavyweight ecommerce solution to capitalise on the Christmas peak, and beyond.

Is it too early to mention Christmas ecommerce?

Every year Christmas ecommerce advice gets published earlier and earlier. This year, to get ahead of the curve, we're starting now.

Christmas may seem like months away - and it is - but if you want to be ready for the Christmas peak now is the time to start work.

Here are our top long term projects to start working on now if you want to have a very merry Christmas:

1. Conversion Rate Optimisation

Don't wait until summer is over to start thinking about responsive mobile templates, abandoned basket auto-emails and conversion rate optimisation. Our ecommerce mentoring  programme aims to help businesses make meaningful and long-lasting improvements over a period of 3-6 months.

2. Ecommerce Platform Upgrades

A new website, or new functionality takes time to perfect. You don't want your site build to run over schedule and be testing new features halfway through November. If you think your current platform isn't the right one to take you through next Christmas take a look at our Ecommerce Platform brochure.

3. Christmas SEO

What keywords are you targeting this year? Now might be a good time to set up some category pages for wrapping paper or Christmas decorations. You don't necessarily have to link to them in your main navigation but it would be prudent to get them live and indexed by Google.

If you want to know more take a look at our ecommerce consulting pages or our ecommerce platform offering.