Is your ecommerce site ready for Cyber Monday? You still have time, but not much! At our free Lunch & Learn on October 18 at Innovation Depot, we'll give you a checklist and expert support.
For the rest of the world, the holidays are merry and bright, but if you own or work at a retail business, they’re probably just super hectic. If things are going well, you’re as busy as an elf in Santa’s workshop, scrambling to fulfill orders, restocking shelves, wrapping gifts and making sure everything that you’ve promised will ship by Christmas will actually make it. And if things aren’t going well, you’re scurrying and scrapping just as much, hoping you can turn things around.
As an owner of Church Street Coffee and Books, one of my responsibilities was to decorate our brick-and-mortar store for Christmas. That meant recruiting my elves (a.k.a. my parents and sister) to spend their Thanksgiving day with me at the shop dragging garlands out of storage, tying bows onto gift cards, and cutting book pages into ornaments and paper tabletop Christmas trees. I did this not because I’m really into Christmas (I actually am really into Christmas, but that’s beside the point) — I did it because draping our shop in Christmas cheer resulting in a dramatic increase in holiday sales.
If you’ve owned a retail store, you already know the holidays are a big deal for sales. You know that decorations and coupons and free gift wrap are important, and you also know it’s essential to be sure your staff is prepped, your inventory is stocked, and your shipping policies are sound.
These same things are important to the ecommerce side of our businesses, but we often forget about the online side of holiday business. Cyber Monday can be a blockbuster day for online sales, but many independent businesses don’t know how to harness web traffic to result in sales. Some of us forget to prioritize online fulfilling orders quickly or to factor in shipping dates for holiday sales, and that can result in lost sales and angry customers (and negative Google reviews).
If you haven’t made a move on getting your ecommerce site ready for the holidays, don’t worry — you still have time! But … you don’t have a lot of time. Just like in a brick-and-mortar, planning goes a long way in getting your website ready for Cyber Monday and for the holiday season. This Tuesday, I’ll be giving a free ecommerce talk at Innovation Depot in Birmingham to go over exactly what should be on your radar and how to make it all happen.
I’ll be going through a checklist of what you can do to get your website ready for holiday traffic, and our customer support experts from Infomedia will be on-hand to answer your questions. Oh, and we’ll also have a free lunch from Taziki’s! All you have to do is click here to grab your free ticket. I hope to see you Tuesday!
