I know it drives us all crazy when we go to the CVS the day
after Halloween and they already have the holiday stuff out. And here I am
contributing to the problem. Hey, I’m just jumping on the bandwagon along with E-Commerce
Times, Internet
Retailer (who says 45% of moms start holiday shopping in September and
October) , and eMarketer,
who clearly already have holiday shopping on the brain.
Catalog Success asked me to do an
article last year on lessons learned from Cyber Monday, and it occurs to me
that it might be more useful now that it was when they asked for it, which was
right in the middle of the heaviest shopping time, when most retailers already have their strategy locked down and in place.
In the event that you’re still making tweaks to your Cyber
Monday strategy, a few highlights from what I wrote when it was all still fresh
in my mind ten months ago:
We surveyed 36,000 retail website visitors over the 2006
Thanksgiving weekend and found that shopper satisfaction dropped significantly
on Cyber Monday from previously high levels over the holiday weekend. What can
you do about it?
- Set
expectations if you can.: Decreased shopper satisfaction on Cyber Monday resulted at least in part from customers who were disappointed when they didn’t get the free shipping and price discounts they expected. It’s
a classic case of higher expectations leading to lower satisfaction.
- Understand
the impact of your Web site on multichannel operations. A website isn’t just an additional sales channel anymore. It’s also a channel for
research, branding, comparison shopping and offline influence. Get metrics
in place now to understand how the Cyber Monday experience is influencing purchase behavior online and offline so you don’t write off abandoned shopping carts as a failure, when in fact the person just bought the same product from your store.
Our next holiday topic: what kinds of marketing and
advertising drive the best quality traffic?
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