Father’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:

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”:

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

…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.

The holiday shopping has really picked on the Black Friday (November 27 this year), and continues to grow. The chart on the right shows an increase of affiliate-referred sales within just one affiliate program.

I have noticed a very similar picture across several affiliate programs: a considerable slowdown in sales on the day before Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving Day itself, and a substantial rise on Black Friday and thereafter. Having spoken with several retailers that traditionally register a defined seasonality of sales, I hear that most are only expecting to see further growth: both in overall sales, and in affiliate-generated ones.

Comparing the November 1-27 period of retail e-commerce spending in 2008 to that of 2009, comScore has reported a 3% increase in sales, where Black Friday alone “saw $595 million in online sales, making it the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009 and representing an 11-percent increase versus Black Friday 2008″:

It is being stated that consumers are expecting to see more free shipping offers this year, more bargains/coupons, and Amazon is projected to continue driving strong sales — good news both for the merchants that sell on it, and for the affiliates (or is it “associates”?) that are working with Amazon [more here]. Also, according to an NPD Group‘s study, the top 5 categories for the 2009 consumer holiday spending will be: (i) apparel (49%), (ii) toys (34%),  (iii) movies (29%), (iv) books and electronics (28%; I am not sure what these two categories have in common, but on some reason they were grouped together), and (v) peripherals, camcorders and mp3 players (24%) [more here].

The consumers’ spending intentions look as follows:

Finally, we’re witnessing what has already been christened the first “Twitter Christmas” season in history as merchants and affiliates alike are actively tweeting and posting consumer-oriented deals and promos on Twitter, Facebook, and other similar Social Media platforms [more here].

Happy Halloween!!

It seems appropriate to dedicate my today’s post to the most appropriate costumes for Internet marketers (search engine optimizers, emailers, Social Media and affiliate marketers, those of us involved in analytics and usability, and everything in between).

I have compiled a list of 11 costumes that I have found to be most appropriate for an Internet marketer to dress up like (and dress his/her family too!) So, without further ado, I am hereby presenting them to your attention:

Twitter [source]

Facebook [source]

YouTube [source]

Spam

Keyboard [source]

Computer Mouse [source]

Duplicate Content [source]

Spider

Robot

Black Hat

White Hat

All of those costumes that do not have a “source” link next to the title are sold on HalloweenMart.com, a client of ours.