2 Ways to Take the Stress Out of Gift Shopping

Stressful Online ShoppingFather’s Day is quickly approaching, and just as is the case with any holiday, its the merchant that makes gift shopping as easy and stress-free as possible that gets the sale. Holidays are great time for gift-related merchants, but take the stress out of shopping you want to provide your customers with two things: (1) a holiday shipping schedule [more here], and (2) an easy way of selecting a gift.

Looking at the cosmetics and fragrance sector, for example, I see three groups of merchants: (i) the majority which  doesn’t do either of the above two things, (ii) some who take care just of the shipping schedule part, and (iii) very few that do both. I am sure the picture will be the same in other sectors too.

With the holiday shipping schedules, things are pretty straightforward. You want to provide your customers with the order cut-off time and dates, as well as the corresponding shipping methods that will deliver their order in time for the holiday. Here’s how BeautyEncounter.com does it:

Father's Day Shipping Schedule

Many merchants add shipping schedules to their sites for holidays like Christmas, but smaller holidays frequently get ignored. I don’t know why.

As for the easy way of selecting a gift, things are even worse. Some merchants add “gift idea” sections, which are most often based on the list of section-specific bestsellers (e.g. men’s cologne and perfume), but very few make things as much fun as the above-quoted merchant is doing it now. When you go to their homepage, you see a link to their “Father’s Day gift guide”:

Father's Day Gift Guide

Upon clicking the link, you arrive at a totally cool page where you can select “your type of dad”:

Choose Your Dad Type

…and then shop for the gifts he will more than likely appreciate.

Great job, Beauty Encounter!

The more online merchants make shopping this much fun and stress-free, the brighter the future of e-commerce will be.

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