Cyber, Green, or Brown Monday? Why Not Cyber Month?

Tis the season for online shopping. According to CNNMoney.com, Cyber Monday (the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday) was big this year for online retailers, with more than 4 million shoppers per minute visiting sites early that morning (November 30), all in search of bargains via their laptops and desktop computers.  By day’s end, Coremetrics estimated that Cyber Monday sales rose 14 percent this year compared to 2008. Experts also point to strong sales for the entire 11-day “Cyber Stretch” around Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a return to 2007-like fourth quarter sales and conversion rates among retailers.

So how did your online store perform on “Green Monday” (two days ago), typically the busiest online shopping day of the year – to guarantee delivery by Christmas? And what are your prospects for “Free Shipping Day” coming this Thursday, the deadline for most free shipping, or next Monday, “Brown Monday”, when retailers start dramatic markdowns in order to sell their remaining holiday merchandise?

Since December offers so many opportunities to boost online sales (think…after Christmas, New Years Eve, etc.), it’s never too late to tune-up your site and sales strategy for what could be a profitable Cyber Month. To help out, we’ve listed a few tips and suggestions:

• Test your shopping cart and your storefront: Is everything functioning properly – fast, efficient, responsive, accurate? Are the keywords, descriptions, links and images all correct and constantly updated?
• Ramp up your merchandising: Does your cart/storefront promote cross-selling, suggested items, ratings and customer feedback? This holiday shopping season offers the perfect opportunity to generate increased sales through discounts, coupons and other incentives.
• Review and revise, if necessary, your SEO: It’s never too late to optimize your search keywords and use analytics to see how they’ve performed on past Cyber Mondays and other big sales dates.
• Reach out to customers: Email your loyal customers, use Twitter and Facebook to encourage a visit to your store. It’s easy and direct.
• Think about your offline sales, too: Not every shopper wants to buy online or during Cyber Month. Use your site to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar store (if you have one) or catalog. Keep all your customer touchpoints in mind.

Any more ideas? Please share with us!