Based on the reports from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, £13.16 billion will be spent by UK shoppers in the run up to Christmas, equivalent to £215 per person. This represents a 15% increase in year on year sales.

It is also estimated that 3.5 million people will shop for bargains on the internet actually on Christmas Day spending around £52 million.

High street stores such as Argos, Marks & Spencer, Halfords, Comet, Dixons and PC World will all start their sales online at midnight on Christmas Day.

So at this time of year it is paramount that your web site is up to the job. Soula have prepared a guide to making the most of the Christmas sales peak with your ecommerce store.

There are a lot of reasons why retailers spend so much time and money preparing for the Christmas period – the opportunity of earning new customers, enhancing brand loyalty and, of course, achieving a healthy profit – a well-thought out strategy and design is essential. The same effort and attention should be applied to online retailers too.

Infrastructure

Make sure that your infrastructure is tough enough to meet the high level of traffic and demand that will hit your site over short periods of time. This is a question of timing. Problems are caused by concentrated bursts rather than slow accumulation – plan for a peak minute rather than a peak day or week.

Customer service

We’re not talking about investing in an outsourced 24/7 call centre to handle enquiries and complaints. To provide a top consumer experience online, your focus must be online. This is all about providing a site which ensures a quick, easy shopping experience. This can be as easy as including stock availability and product images to your site. A good consumer experience also involves accurate inventory, low cancellations and a fast shipping option.

Ongoing SEO

Keep on top of search engine optimisation (SEO) continuously. This should include content, linking, structure, banners and external links. All of these, as well as other digital marketing strategies, improve relevant traffic to your site.

Use Price Comparison Sites

Price comparison sites are going to be very important to online shoppers this Christmas. The key to using price comparison sites to increase your traffic is to invest in advanced feed tools that don’t send your entire catalogue to the website but send only those products that convert for you. That way you will be getting the most ROI on the products you submit.

Festive Re-styling

Aesthetics are important to a site all year round but a general restyling at Christmas can be benificial. If you choose to restyle your site, keep it simple; consider adding just a few festive graphics to the key parts of your site such as a Christmassy banner and some holly on your calls to action should suffice.

Consistent Branding

As well as keeping the messaging simple on special offers and services around Christmas, ensure that these messages are in line with the key messages of your company’s brand. Christmastime attracts new customers who are likely to be visiting multiple sites. As long as your messaging and brand image is clear, consistent and distinctive, they will be more likely to remember you and re-visit your site.

Additional Services

Gifting is the main reason ecommerce booms during the Christmas season. Online stores allow for many unique gifting experiences – a great search facility or gift finder will go a long way to allowing your customers to find a product. Providing convenient, time efficient solutions to your customers’ demands is key at this time of year.

Gift cards and gift wrap, as well as multiple shipping destinations, are a must for satisfied customers. Sell your gift cards online as well as in store for last minute buyers and you’ll be surprised at the increase in sales and customer loyalty.

Functionality

Finally, very simple, make sure your site is usable. Although traffic and sales increases over the Christmas period so do bounce rates – Customers are searching for the cheapest, best, most unique gift idea and if they can’t find what they are looking for on your site within the first few pages they will click away and not come back. Very simple advice, keep it simple.

After a difficult financial year for many companies, marketing budgets are being cut and marketers being pressured to deliver more for less. With the emphasis moving away from customer acquisition, and focusing on driving sustainable growth, brands need to adapt to deliver marketing relevance.
The good news for people in the digital marketing sector is that 98% of marketers say online marketing is crucial to business success through the economic downturn, according to research by Efficient Frontier.
The survey, conducted of over 300 European marketers found 73% expect to see digital marketing teams increase through 2009, and 87% predict digital marketing will increase at the same rate in 2009 as it did in 2008.

Marketing has traditionally been the first department to join the redundancy pile when a recession hits. However, new statistics from Shape the Future suggest that it will be a different story this time around. The latest corporate spending survey indicates an increase in spending on marketing and promotion over the next 12 months.

Two new areas have also been marked for increased budgets: Networking and Website Optimisation (SEO) (by one fifth or 19.7% of the sample)

A 1/4 of UK businesses surveyed said websites (25.1%) and PR (11.9%) will be the most important marketing tools over the next 12 months.

In total 36.4% of companies planned to increase their marketing budgets over the next 12 months. Almost 1/2 planned no change and only 9% planned to reduce their budget, leaving 9% undecided.

These statistics are supported by intrim results from Digital Marketing Group, who have seen an increase in profits of 71% over 6 months.

Ben Langdon, CEO of Digital Marketing Group, said “Many of our clients have increased their spend through digital channels while reducing their overall media and marketing spends,” he said. “Digital media channels deliver better ROI relative to traditional media and this is becoming increasingly attractive for clients in an economic downturn. Indeed it appears that digital channels appear to be thriving as a direct result of recession.”

Source http://www.nma.co.uk

Hello,

Here at Soula we like to keep up to date with all aspects of web and graphic design and the upcoming Max 2008 Europe Event hosted by Adobe in Milan, Italy is for designers and developers alike is the perfect place.  Each year they create innovative sessions which this year include web experiences, Actionscript, building rich internet applications and much more.

The Adobe MAX Awards also take place at this time which are well recognised global awards whereby digital design agencies and freelance designers can showcase their work and show full use and understanding of all Adobe products including Dreamweaver and Flash.

Attending can really help networking in the industry, with the added bonus of viewing designs from top graphic designers in the industry and the latest ideas and techniques from development.

We will let you know how the event goes and any advances in graphic design and development you will see in our upcoming designs.

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