The end of the year is here, everybody is thinking about the upcoming holiday season before turning to the New Year light. While many people are smiling to get relaxed from all their hard works throughout the year, some are busy planning to travel to someplace, where they can have a special time with their special someone.

“Image courtesy of Samuiblue / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”

Holiday is known as a shopping season, people always look for gift representing their feeling to give to someone they love, respect, and feel appreciated.

As ecommerce merchant, you should prepare your store and let it be ready for these once-a-year occasions. You may be surprised to find the increase amount of shoppers who come to shop in your store, you may have to welcome unexpected numbers of customers coming along with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year festival.

If you don’t want to miss your opportunity in this year of shopping season, you might want to make your store stand in the way with 5 simple things you can implement right away.

1. Offer A Gift Wrap

Gift won’t be a gift if it is not wrapped up with some sweet wrapping papers. Shoppers purchase gift for their people which could be anyone in their family or their friends. Hence, it’s wiser to offer a free gift wrap so they won’t waste their time to find other places to wrap their present up where you can simply do it for them.

A little cute gift card attached with a present might also be a good idea, you can offer them both and let them express what they feel to their receivers, make it more impressive for the givers and the takers. Show customers you care by providing a service to ensure that they won’t leave your store and step out to another.

2. Attract With Special Promotion

Who could resist special promotions? When it comes to a holiday season, money is likely to be spread all over shopping areas. If you want some of those huge profits to run around your ecommerce store, you should build your own unique promotion which effects to customer’s needs.

There are hundreds of tips you can consider for improving your store. You may think about offering them with some discount when their purchase reaches the amount you define, you may give 20% discount or $50 off the price to entice more customers to run into your store. You may decide to set product Y as a today’s special to let your customers buy it so you can generously offer them with another product for free. It works something like “buy two get one” or “buy one set get all three”.

To make it more like a holiday, you may choose products that are popular to be given specifically in a holiday season as your promotion, such as, chocolate, gift basket, bouquet, mug set, scarf, and much more.

3. Get Ready For Mobile And Tablet

As seen in everyday life, people get used to touch their smartphone or tablet wherever they go, they may walk on a footpath while chatting with their friends, they may sit on a bus and play games on the way home or they may send an e-mail to their clients while waiting for lunch. They use these portable devices in almost every activity in the day and night life.

According to market research firm, eMarketer, there are 81 percent increase for shoppers who purchase through their smartphone and tablet in 2012. By this research, we, as a merchant, shouldn’t overlook to prepare mobile/tablet site to support this group of smart device’s lovers. One of the most possible ways is to rely on responsive website.

Responsive website plays an important role in optimizing mobile/tablet usability. The design that is friendly with a variety of screen sizes helps shoppers browse your store efficiently. They can read full content, clear product description, and actual image size as appeared on their laptop or PC using any devices in their procession without worrying about zoom in and out.

4. Make A Website More Accessible

Holiday always calls for more people, it’s highly possible that your website will have to experience with vast customers who come to search for the best gift. It’s necessary for you to make your site static, accessible, and flawless for the big coming holiday season.

There are things you can check in to make your store ready for shoppers in this shopping season, including:

• Product description and product image: Is your description correct? Does your image match with a product displayed in your store?
• Navigation and search function: Is it too complicated to search for products? Are there too many steps before your customers can find what they require?
• Add to cart and check out process: Are these two processes really functional? Are there any errors found during some steps?

Aside from fixing problems occurred on your site, designs and decorations are also being considered.

You can make a bit of change for your website by adding some cute Christmas logo, Christmas tree, making some snow animation or even creating a holiday landing page with a gift category added to make it more seasonal and compelling to your visitors.

5. Send Out E-mail Marketing

Your efforts won’t be rewarded if you just keep it to yourself. Once you are done with a site’s examination, you should not forget to inform your subscribers.

Newsletter is a good place to spread a word about your tasks, you can tell your subscribers which could be your regular customers or your new shoppers and let them know that your website got a new look and promotion for this season or you have special gifts and product release to surprise them. All can be covered up in your newsletter, just send one to take millions.

In case a newsletter is not your best choice, you can shift to use direct sales email where you can directly inform your recommended promotion or eye-catching product which will be available only for the holiday season. Create a mail with one special product or promotion and send it out to your right target.

After you do offering a gift wrap, attracting shoppers with special promotion, getting ready for mobile and tablet, making your website more accessible, and sending out email marketing, keep monitoring how much your store change and learn to improve it little by little. Also, don’t forget to relax yourself, take a break from your works and be happy with a holiday season of the year along with your successful ecommerce store.