Brightpearl Blog

A positive sign of growth in the UK from eBay Posted on February 22nd, 2012 by Harriet Fletcher

eBay announced the UK as its fastest growing territory, outpacing even their two largest marketplaces – US and Germany.  The number of Britons using the UK eBay site has seen double digit growth year on year, at 15%.

Not only is this a really positive sign of retail growth in the UK but it also proves the value for companies using eBay as a sales channel to help them on the road to growth and profits.

At Brightpearl we definitely believe eBay is a great sales channel for retailers and we’ve made it even easier for our customers to tap into this channel following our recent eBay announcement, but we also believe that a multichannel retail strategy is the key for retail success. Recent research suggests that multichannel retailers – i.e. those selling via more than one distribution channel – marketplaces, webstore, in-store, mobile – can generate up to four times the sales per customer compared to companies that rely on only one channel – why is this?

It’s being driven by both retailers and consumers.

Retailers are looking to spread risk and increase exposure to as many potential buyers as possible through adopting multiple channels.  High street retailers are looking to get online to make up for lost sales on the high street.  Online retailers are looking to maximise touch points through not just marketplaces or a webstore but by having both.

Consumers are shopping in different ways, they are always so quick to adopt different methods to buy and communicate – taking advantage of the benefits of the different sales channels e.g. the transparency of price and reviews offered through marketplaces vs the ability to touch, feel and assess quality by seeing the physical product vs the ease of purchasing something through a mobile device. If you have brand continuity and touch points across every sales channel you are more likely to see the customer purchase, wherever it is they choose to buy.

By adopting a multichannel strategy Retailers create a win-win situation. Consumers get more choice about where they can make purchases and Retailers are more likely to  increase sales through maximising customer touch points.

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The pitfalls of overselling – reap what you sow Posted on February 16th, 2012 by Tom Glason

Unfortunately, and research has proven this (http://www.jstor.org/pss/40472060), selling has been negatively portrayed consistently by scriptwriters for over 100 years. They have given us Willy Loman, Herb Tarlek, Delboy Trotter and my personal favourite, Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross. However, it’s hard to imagine anything more fundamental to the economy than selling. But it’s safe to say that when selling is bad, it is horrid.

We all abhor the over-selling salesman, and rightly so. Overselling, or ‘mis-selling’, is the ethically questionable practice of misrepresenting or misleading a buyer about the characteristics of a product or service, typically by overstating its capabilities in the hope that this will lead to the sale.

At Brightpearl – and this probably applies to any business that offers a product or service on a subscription basis with no contractual commitment from the customer – we are passionate about rooting out overselling in every form. For if we’ve overstated the capabilities of the product during the sales process, this will soon become evident once the customer starts using the software ‘in anger’ within their business, and that’s when the real anger will set in – resulting in them cancelling their subscription very quickly and a bad taste being left in their mouth.

We’re acutely aware that if we don’t set expectations properly with prospects about what Brightpearl can and can’t do, the following is likely to occur:

1. Implementation pain; moving business systems is hard enough without the added burden of trying to migrate to software which isn’t ‘fit for purpose’. The implementation is likely to be hugely frustrating for the client and lead to excessive drain on our support team as help-desk tickets come flooding in!

2. Feature requests get over-looked; the client may decide to work through the challenges of implementation, but you can guarantee they’ll be very vocal about requesting those missing features that the salesperson implied existed already or were “due out in a release very soon!” We don’t have the luxury of a development team big enough to build every feature requested and this will inevitably lead to further disappointment and frustration for the client.

3. Churn; the scourge of any subscription business that relies so heavily on keeping customers for a certain period of time in order to get a return on the investment of acquiring that customer. David Skok, serial entrepreneur turned investor in subscription-based cloud businesses like Brightpearl, blogs in detail about the need to manage the relationship between cost of acquiring a customer (CAC), life time value (LTV) and churn. His rule of thumb is that businesses like Brightpearl need to ensure that the LTV of each customer (i.e. how much they pay in subscription revenues during their lifetime as a client) is at least 3 x the cost of acquiring that customer. Given that Brightpearl is focused on providing SMB’s with great value, affordable software, understandably, the average revenue each customer pays us per month is not high. It’s therefore essential that we keep clients as happy users for as long as possible!

4. Negative feedback; if it’s true that a happy customer may tell one person but an unhappy customer will tell 10, then the worst thing we can do as a business is ‘sell’ them a product that isn’t going to deliver the value they’d expected – leading to frustration and dissatisfaction! In this world of social media and online reviews, businesses can’t afford to leave a bad taste in the mouths’ of their customers.

So as you can see, ‘overselling’ is not only painful for customers, but also the businesses that are unfortunate enough to have salespeople working for them who take the ‘say anything to win the deal’ approach. At Brightpearl, we work hard to recruit and develop sales professionals who are great at what they do; leading, guiding, educating and directing buyers to help them solve a problem or achieve a desired outcome in an ethical, customer focused way.

So when a business takes out a trial of Brightpearl, they can rest assured that the salesperson will be calling to understand their business requirements and fit with our product, not sell to them at any cost.

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Do you have time to go out tonight? Posted on February 14th, 2012 by Harriet Fletcher

Valentine’s day is here again and today of all days it’s time to leave work early and spend some quality time with your Mr or Mrs. The last thing you need is to get held up with admin tasks and stock takes at the end of the day.

We built Brightpearl so you could spend less time on admin, and more on growing your business or staying out of the office. And we chose to make it entirely web-based so that if you do need to check something you can easily do so while you’re at home on your laptop or ipad.

Take a look at Brightpearl today to free up time, leave early and go out tonight…

… although we can’t promise that you’ll get tonight off (you’re probably going to be excitedly playing with your new Brightpearl account…) but next year you’ll be able to take the whole day out !

Happy Valentine’s day from Brightpearl!

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Release early, release often Posted on January 31st, 2012 by Ben Halstead

And listen to your customers. This is a quote from an influential essay on software development called ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ by Eric S Raymond. Put simply, the goal of software companies is to put useful, working features in the hands of their customers as quickly and frequently as possible.This might sound obvious, but it’s only in the last ten years that this has become an accepted approach to building software. Many companies still subscribe to the ‘traditional’ approach to building software which starts with someone dreaming up every possible feature they would ever like to see and then not releasing anything until everything is complete.

The theory is that customers only ever receive rich, complete and bug-free software, but in reality it means:

  1. The software company can only release their product a couple of times a year at best and there are so many new features it can be overwhelming.
  2. The world has often moved on. The software industry moves so quickly that features which may have seemed vital when a project began are just forgotten footnotes when it finally complete.

The opposite approach is to have small, regular releases where features are delivered to customers in the simplest useful form and then fleshed out in subsequent releases. This process is called iterative development and means:

  1. Customers get their hands on new functionality as soon as possible
  2. Customers can provide feedback about what is working, what’s not and what’s missing very quickly.
  3. Risk is low – if the feature is scrapped because of negative feedback, only a short amount of time and effort has been wasted.

Iterative development is at the core of a group of ‘software development methodologies’ (processes for building software) collectively known as ‘agile‘. Here at Brightpearl we use a version of agile called Scrum.

We work to a two week cycle called a sprint, and break our teams (developers, testers and business owners) into groups of ten or fewer called scrums. During a sprint, each scrum plans, builds and tests as many features as it can.  All of these features are completed to a standard where we could release them to customers if we so choose.

This short time scale leads to an extremely focused, productive and intense working environment where we are always busy. It also means that we have to very carefully choose the work we include in each sprint. Every new feature, bug fix, performance upgrade and usability improvement that we would dearly love to deliver is evaluated against each other to decide what brings the most benefit to the largest number of our customers.

At the end of most sprints, we release a new version of Brightpearl and the eagle-eyed among you will notice that our three figure version number creeps upwards.  We completed 37 releases in 2011 and sometimes, when we’re especially proud of something, you’ll notice that the first number moves up a notch.

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Changing your business systems Posted on January 25th, 2012 by Dave White

Changing business software at first glance could seem somewhat daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be.  At Brightpearl we help numerous companies migrate to our software and as Director of Services and Support I’ve put together some handy tips if you’re thinking about changing systems for your own business.

Firstly, research what it is you need for your business.  What is your current set up, why isn’t it working and what are the key things you need from a new system?  The last thing you want to do is choose a system that doesn’t actually do what you intended it to. To help choose the right software I recommend you put together a score sheet of criteria you need and rate each solution you are reviewing against this.

Once you have chosen your software solution, as tempting as it may be to get ‘stuck in’ straight away, I would strongly advise you against this approach! The best implementations are well planned and thought out. Put together a realistic schedule for implementation which allows you enough time without rushing it, but not too much time that you lose impetus half way through.

As part of your planning process ensure you learn about your new software – read the manuals and ‘getting started’ instructions, join any webinars or demos on offer, watch videos and generally immerse yourself in whatever documentation is available.

Finally, if you have any doubts about being able to do it yourself then get expert help.  Some of the worst implementations I have seen are those companies who try and go it alone but don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to it.  Paying for a little bit of professional services expertise up front can save you both time and money further down the line, when you then find out your business system hasn’t been set up properly to enable you to run your business as efficiently as possible.

If you follow these 4 simple steps the road to implementing new software for your business can be a lot smoother, you are more likely to use it properly and in doing so, you’ll reap the rewards of greater efficiency for your business.

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Our top 5 ways to make your 2012 more successful than your 2011 Posted on January 17th, 2012 by Harriet Fletcher

Big retailers had an incredibly difficult 2011. Harder even than their 2010 – 10% more filed for bankruptcy in 2011 than in 2010. 183 in England and Wales to be precise. On the other hand, at Brightpearl we see plenty of examples of small, independent merchants – both retail and wholesale – who are thriving in the teeth of the downturn. 200+% growth in some cases! How are they pulling this off and what can we do together to make your 2012 look like their 2011?

As specialists in business management software for retailers and wholesalers, Brightpearl has a wealth of experience, both personally and through our customers, as to what can help merchants grow their business efficiently.  We’ve used this experience to put together a list of the top 5 things we recommend to lead to a more successful 2012.

1. Commit to software – Through deploying software that ties together your back end business processes such as CRM, inventory control and accounting with your sales channels, you have the opportunity to sell more and grow in 2012. Business automation leads to fewer mistakes and better tracking means you never miss a sale or sell something you cannot deliver.

2. Seek expert help – Look to experts for best practice advice on your business processes and procedures.  From fine tuning your inventory and stock control processes, to setting up reports to show your most profitable product lines – expert advice and the resulting improvements can help you save  wasting money in inefficient processes and sell more of your most profitable products.

3. Expand where you sell - Reach new customer bases by expanding into new sales channels.  Research in 2011 found half of all online retail traffic went to eBay, Amazon and Alibaba.  As a retailer you can no longer afford not to be selling via marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon as they represent a huge opportunity to reach millions of buyers.

4. Learn from others - There are hundreds if not thousands of successful small business retailers and wholesalers out there, we suggest you take every opportunity you can to share and collaborate on what works and what doesn’t in order to further your own business prospects.

5. Buy Brightpearl – Brightpearl helps you achieve all of the above!  Brightpearl ties your whole business together, automating back end processes and helping make your business more efficient, freeing up your time to focus on selling more.  Brightpearl employs a team of experts who are available to help you by providing affordable best practice advice, whether you need training, consultancy or someone to do it for you. Brightpearl also makes expansion easy, helping you to be everywhere you want to be, from marketplaces to online web-stores and in-store POS, we’ve got it covered. In 2012 Brightpearl intends to bring together successful independent merchants to foster learning and the secrets of success to help make 2012 the year of growth and profit.

So watch this space in the next few weeks for some important announcements from Brightpearl as well as an opportunity for you to get involved.  For your free Brightpearl 30 day trial, click here.

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The customer journey – from trepidation to trust Posted on December 7th, 2011 by Amy Monro

Brightpearl partners with Sagepay as our payment services provider.  In this guest blog post they offer some useful insight for you, regarding how to convert more customers on your website and make it as easy as possible for them to pay.  Find out more about our special offer with Sagepay.

Opening an online store can be a daunting process. CRM, stock control, invoicing and purchase order management can be a lot to think about when looking to ecommerce to sell your goods. Luckily, our Partner Brightpearl are taking the pain out of all of these business operations with their streamlined system, allowing retailers of all sizes to free up their resources and concentrate on maximising those all-important conversion rates.

Earlier this year we put together our e-business benchmark report, which showed that only 7% of website visitors end up completing a purchase. So, once you’ve got customers to your site, how do you keep them interested, enticed and assured enough to get them to the checkout? Once a shopper has hit your website and found exactly the product they’ve been searching for, they’ll be looking for reassurance. After all, in the online world, you ask your customers to hand over their cash before receiving any goods so you need your brand to instill trust in them.

We look at how to influence a purchase and make it easy for customers to pay, while the lovely team at Brightpearl take care of the rest!

Here are the key things that your customers will be looking for:

- Security policy
Make sure you have a security policy detailing how you keep customers personal data secure. We found that 78% of top performers have a clear security policy on their website.

- T’s and C’s
Keep your website Terms and Conditions short and to the point, and make them easily accessible for your customers.

- Clearly displayed delivery times
Keep your customer informed of when they can expect delivery of their goods so they don’t panic if it doesn’t arrive the next day. And don’t forget, consumer expectations are at an all time high and shoppers now not only want a good deal, they want it quickly. Free or next day delivery is another vital offering to help encourage customers to place their order with you.

- Money back guarantees , special offers and loyalty schemes
These tools are a great way to encourage shoppers to buy from your site. With the economy continuing to be a challenge, consumer bargain hunting is near universal. Anecdotal evidence from our survey respondents shows us that e-tailers aren’t just pushing out special offers through their site but also via newsletters, Facebook and Twitter- rewarding those who’ve opted to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ their brand.

- An easy to use site
User testing doesn’t have to cost a fortune. 73% of respondents to our survey with above average conversion rates test their site regularly for ease of navigation. But very few were spending more than £50, proving that honest feedback from family and friends is just as useful as using a third party company

- Previous customer reviews and testimonials
If you have case studies and quotes from happy customers then you should be shouting from the rooftops about it. No matter how much marketing you do, nothing is more effective than previous customers advocating your brand.

- Contact details
One of the common mistakes made by retailers is to hide away their company contact details. Putting contact details on every page, makes it clear to the customer that you’re available to talk if they encounter any issues or problems and won’t hide behind your site.

- Customised payment pages
We found that 61% of our higher-performing e-tailers have customised their payment process to ensure a consistant look and feel from the moment a customer clicks on the site. Branded, professional-looking payment pages provide customers with the reassurance they are looking for. Even lesser known brands should link their website to their payment pages visually. The combination of your logo and the strength of a well-known payment providers brand can work well for newly established businesses.

- Awards and certifications
Including any awards or certifications you have achieved reinforces the positive messaging around your brand and will help the shopper to see you as reliable and secure.

For more tips, statistics and best practices, download Sage Pay’s e-business benchmark report here: http://www.benchmarkyourebusiness.com/

Amy Monro
PR and Marketing Specialist, Sage Pay

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Speed up your homepage and compete with the big brands Posted on November 23rd, 2011 by Ben Halstead

The homepage of your website is probably your most important online asset for attracting visitors and converting them to customers and it’s really important that it loads quickly. You can spend hundreds of hours and a lot of money on SEO, but if it takes 20 seconds for your homepage to load, your potential customer will give up and just move on to the next link in Google’s search results. In actual fact a fast website will end up helping your SEO!

This is a real opportunity for small businesses because the homepage of most big websites is a furious battleground between all the different departments in a corporation: the sales team want as many products as possible on there, the design team want beautiful high resolution photos and the marketing team want all sorts of tracking widgets to monitor customer behaviour. The end result is a big bloated page which takes forever to load and takes months of wrangling to change.

As a small business owner, you’re in complete control of your homepage and can change it whenever you choose. To make the most of this advantage, I’ll need to give you a little bit of technical background, but feel free to skip ahead to our top ten recommendations at the end of this article!

Anatomy of a webpage

It’s easy to think of a webpage as a single file, like a Word document, but in fact each page can be made up of dozens and dozens of separate files.

Generally speaking, there are four types of files required to build a typical page – an HTML file, some images, one or more CSS files (stylesheets) and any number of Javascript files.

- The HTML file contains your text and the basic structure of a page as well as containing instructions on where to find all the other files your web browser will need to display the page correctly.
- Images are the pictures you see on the page.
- CSS files, or stylesheets, control the font sizes, colours and general design of the page.
- Javascript files can be used to add interactive features and customer tracking to the page.

When you click on a link in a web browser, the first thing that happens is your browser loads the HTML file for the page you want to see. It then scans through the HTML file to see which other files it needs to load. Until all these other files are loaded, your page won’t look or behave as it is supposed to. So the trick is to make sure all those files can be loaded as quickly as possible.

Top ten ways to tune your homepage

1. Give your homepage a physical

Your browser has built in tools to help you tune your homepage. Open up Chrome and go to your homepage. Hit F12 (or cmd + alt + j on a Mac) and press the ‘Network’ icon.

If you then refresh the page by pressing F5 (cmd + R) you’ll see a breakdown of all the files on your page and the time it takes to load them. At the bottom left you’ll see the number of files (requests) and the total size of your page.

The red vertical line on the timeline represents how long it took for your page to be loaded and completely ready to use. The holy grail is 1 second or less!

2. Put it on a diet

The easiest way of reducing the time taken to load your page is to reduce its size. You should aim for your homepage to be no more than 300-500kb in size (for reference, Google’s is about 120Kb). Make sure your images have been saved using the ‘optimise for web’ feature in Photoshop or whichever tool you prefer.

3. Host your site close to your customers

If your customers are mostly in North America, make sure your website is hosted in North America. You’ll be surprised at how much extra time it will take to load a file hosted on the other side of the planet! This is called latency and will affect every file needed to build your page.

4. Cut down on tracking

User tracking features, analytics and affiliate tracking schemes are a major contributors to a page feeling slow. Whenever possible, try and stick to a single tracking mechanism on your homepage.

5. Keep it simple…

The more files on your homepage, the slower it will be. If you look at pages optimised for speed (like the Google homepage) you’ll see there are very few images.

6. …but don’t forget the words

However, your homepage is very important for SEO and you’ll need to remember to have all your key SEO phrases in place.

7. Set your content free

Consider using a Content Distribution Network (CDN) like Amazon’s Cloudfront. These can be used to serve your images, stylesheets and Javascript files from Amazon’s servers rather than yours. This has several benefits: less pressure on your web server, content served from servers close to your customers and encouraging your browser to load more files in parallel.

8. Reduce, reuse, recycle

If you find yourself using lots of different Javascript files, consider merging them into a single file and ‘minifying’ that file.

9. Haven’t I seen you before?

If you use the same image or Javascript file again and again, encourage the browser to ‘cache’ those files so it doesn’t keep downloading them. This should be done automatically by your web server, but check in Chrome’s timeline. If the file is grayed out, it was found in the browser’s cache.

10. Stick to your guns

As your company grows, you will start to get the same pressures from sales, design and marketing as the big brands do. They will all want a piece of your homepage, but make sure that speed is always your primary goal.

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Black Friday – Are You Ready? Posted on November 22nd, 2011 by Harriet Fletcher

This coming Friday it’s Black Friday in the US, the day after thanksgiving which is a well know date in the retail world as representing the start of Christmas and one of the busiest days in the retail calendar.  Many shops open early and close late to make sure they get the most sales possible.  Black Friday is closely followed by Cyber Monday (28th Nov), the biggest online retail day of the year.

Retailers must make sure they are ready to maximise on the sales being made during this period!  If you haven’t already seen our 3 part series on “Getting Ready for Christmas”, there’s no time to waste, with the biggest dates in the retail calendar this weekend, and just a month to go to the big day itself.

Our Getting ready for Christmas series included …

Part one – Stock – the first in the series this blog post gives hints and tips on stock control. Have you got the inventory to fulfill orders?  Look at previous years best sellers and trends to make sure you have the right products in stock too.

Part two – Marketing - this post looks at tips for optimising your site so it’s user friendly and customers can find what they are looking for, ideas for places to market and advertise, as well as ensuring you get relevant traffic straight through to the most relevant page to increase the chance they’ll buy.

Part three – Customer Service – don’t forget about looking after your customers, communicating with them and helping them with their enquiries, this will make sure they come back time and again as well as recommending you to their friends!

A few practical ideas to think about before Black Friday:

•

 Do you have enough staff to cope with the rush? And if you do need to take on more people to service your customers have you made sure you’ve got enough tills? With Brightpearl you can take on extra EPOS tills for a short term period as there are no contracts etc
• Server space – do you have the infrastructure behind your website to cope with the extra influx of traffic? Have your website hosted in the Cloud means that you have access to the kind of infrastructure that can cope.
• Make sure your website is up-to-date. People get organised for Black Friday by making lists so make sure what you have in store matches what you are saying on your site to make their experience consistent and easier.
• Make sure you have enough bags, gift wrap, cellotape, receipt paper and gift certificates in store so that you don’t run out when the rush hits.
• Position impulse items wisely to increase sales. Have them by the POS tills, next to the queues or as related items on your website.
• Make sure you have enough petty cash on hand to be able to give your customers change.
• Be aware that shoplifting may increase when you have so many more people in your store. Ask staff to be extra vigilant or think about hiring a security guard or installing a camera to police your store.
• Be prepared for returns. These are likely to increase after a bit rush of customers. Make sure you have enough staff to cope with this and encourage them to upsell or cross sell when the returns are happening. An exchange is always better than a refund.

It goes without saying that Brightpearl can help you with your stock control, marketing and customer service.  From our integrated software which automatically updates stock records whether you are selling online or in store, plus producing reports for products reaching low stock thresholds, through to customer service with our CRM and helpdesk modules to help you manage your customer queries and communications – Brightpearl makes it all seamless.  Then from a marketing perspective Brightpearl has a neat integration with mailchimp making emailing your database  possible at the touch of a button (it’s probably worthwhile emailing your database ahead of this crucial weekend to remind them about you and your product offerings!). And for customers taking our website and ecommerce modules, we have some website templates ready built utilising best practice to help you sell more through your website, or you can use our professional services team who can provide more bespoke services.

In a nutshell….Make sure your business is in the right position to consolidate on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas sales this year! DS6T9FBKANG5

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Get Ready for Christmas (Part 2 – Marketing) Posted on October 31st, 2011 by Penny Edwards

Here in the UK the nights are drawing in and the leaves are turning shades of copper and red, which is a sure indication it’s time to get creative and look at your marketing for the Christmas rush. Of course some of our customers across the globe, will still be enjoying bright sunshine (the lucky things) but either way you need to start getting some marketing done. So here is the second installment of our ‘Get Ready for Christmas’ series to help you finish 2011 on a high and maximise those Christmas sales.It is essential that you are confident that your stock will all be in order before you start making promises you can’t keep. But once you’ve planned out your strategy around stock it’s time to go out there and tell potential customers what you’ve got and why they should be buying it from you.

Get your website ship shape and Bristol fashion

First things first; before you start driving customers to your website you need to make sure it’s looking good and working for you. It is much easier for people to go elsewhere when they are shopping on the web. At Christmas in particular people have a lot of shopping to do and not much time to do it, if your website isn’t up to scratch they will leave and most likely won’t come back.

Try to use your website in the way a customer would. Make sure that all your products are easy to find, have all the information a potential customer will need to make a buying decision, and that the checkout process is easy to follow, trustworthy and free from distraction. Try to catch problems that could otherwise affect the number of sales you make during the Christmas period. For instance, are there spelling mistakes on the site that might be causing customer to lose trust in your brand or are your products lacking enough information for customers to be comfortable understanding that they will meet their requirements? For more detailed information on giving your website a workout check out this free guide.

Remind your existing customers you’re here

So now your website is performing optimally it’s time to encourage people to visit. The easiest people to convince will be those people who have already bought something from you already. Hey, you’ve already convinced them once right! Hopefully, you have stored their contact details so you can get in touch with them in the future. If you’re not already doing this then it’s time to invest in a CRM system, this will help you to capture data about the people who buy your products. You can then keep in touch with them so that next time they are looking to make a purchase you will be in the forefront of their minds.

Email marketing is a great way to do this. It gives you a platform to outline what you are offering over the Christmas period. As they are already customers it’s always a good idea to reward them for their loyalty. Sending out an offer will make them feel special but will also encourage them to tell their friends about you. Money off or free delivery during the Christmas period where budgets are being stretched to the max will make you a popular choice.

The first three weeks in December are the highest for retail sales and Fridays are the highest converting days for email that are sent out. There are certain dates leading up to Christmas which stand out as being key days for shoppers to be buying for example Cyber Monday (28th November this year) which is known to be the busiest shopping day of the year. Target your email campaigns around these dates to get your highest returns. Remember other retailers will also have picked up on these trends so make sure you offer stands out. Making it generous and repeating one offer that is easy to remember often will help you to beat the competition. See Responsys’s 2011 Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season and Epilson’s Holiday Trend Report for a more in-depth insight into email marketing around the Christmas period.

Get social

Social media is a fantastic way to engage with customers and prospective customers alike. You can get involved with their conversations whilst they are going on, send out offers and marketing messages and see instant results, showcase your wares and even react to feedback as it is happening.

Around Christmas people spend lots of time online shopping but will inevitably look to the social channels for inspiration and reviews. If you can get in front of them with an answer as they are asking the question ‘Where can I buy…?’ or ‘can anyone recommend a good website that sells…?’ you are able to intercept them just as they are preparing to purchase. Another great place to get in front of shoppers is Facebook. According to there latest stats there are more than 800 million active users and more than 50% of them log onto Facebook in any given day. Facebook advertising is a great option because people fill out so much personal data on their profile meaning  your marketing can be very highly targeted. You can opt to pay only on a cost-per-click basis so if you get your targeting right you will only be paying for people who will be specifically interested in the product(s) you’re selling.

Tighten up your PPC

PPC, eh, you what? If you’re not running Pay-Per-Click marketing then you’re potentially missing out on huge volumes of sales. PPC is a great way to get yourself to the top of the search engine listings quickly. If you have products that you want to push around Christmas time when people are most likely to be looking now is the time to start investing in PPC.

Google Adwords is the first thing to concentrate on as they have the majority of the market share. But don’t forget the other search engines like Bing or Yahoo as they also run adwords and these are often significantly cheaper for the same search terms than Google is. To get up and running work out what budget you are prepared to spend for a sale to convert this will give you an idea of which keyphrases you can afford to bid on. Use Google’s keyword tool to research popular keyphrases and their approximate cost-per-click (CPC), you ideally are looking for high volume, low competition keyphrases that are relevant and specific enough to describe exactly what’s on the page they will be linked to. If the keyphrases do not give an accurate impression of what is on the landing page then visitors are less likely to convert and you will be paying for traffic that you don’t want. Read Google’s Adwords Beginner’s Guide to get started with PPC.

List your products on shopping channels

Listing you product on shopping channels such as Google Base will give you another channel for getting them to market. At Christmas shoppers are likely to spend a lot more time on these types of shopping comparison sites so it pays to be in front of them. It could be a good idea to consider other marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay for pushing your wares. Whilst there is a cost associated with adding your items the increase in visitors they are likely to see at this time of year might make these a cost-effective option for you in terms of the increase in your sales.

Measure your marketing

Marketing is easy to pump money into without really knowing the return. Make sure you track all sales back through your systems with a relevant marketing tag or data field, and make sure you keep hot on the reports. Use a tool like Google Analytics and set up goals for your different products so that you know which items were most popular and where the buyers have come from. You can then quickly up the amount of time you concentrate on these areas to increase your sales even further. This information will also be extremely useful when it come to doing this all again the year after this.

Just the tip of the iceberg…

These are just a few ways that will get you started interacting with your market. See our free guide on inbound marketing for a whole range of other ideas for driving traffic to your website. Remember though that it is essential you don’t make promises that you can’t keep. If you sell an item and promise to get it there before Christmas and it doesn’t show up you’re in for a whole world of complaints. Of course, there will always be some mistakes and sometimes you can turn these to your advantage if they are dealt with properly. Which is why our next post will be on customer service, tune in then for our lowdown on how to get your customer service ready for the Christmas rush.

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