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Preparing for a Competitive Holiday Season
by Jim Hedger
http://www.stepforth.com
Christmas is a time of joy, family and a fridge full of
turkey soup and sandwiches to fill your happy belly for
weeks to come. It is a short but stressful break at the
start of a long and (at least in most parts of Canada),
normally bleak winter. It is also the time of the year
that accounts for over 40% of most retail business sales
and can either make or break a business depending on the
retail success of the season. I don't want to be the one
to break the news to most of you but someone has to do it;
the holiday season is coming and this year it's coming
sooner than you think. Many Internet based retailers, or E-
Tailers have come to recognize that it is never too early
to promote a good thing, especially if search engine
placement is a cornerstone of their marketing strategy.
Search engine placements can often take six to eight weeks
to achieve. Six weeks from now the kids will be going
back to school, the summer will be drawing to a close and,
wouldn't you know it~ the holiday season will almost be
upon us. If you are not ready for the shopping season
yet, you better get ready soon or you might find your
competition making sales that should have been yours.
This year, the holiday season will be more important than
ever for small retailers in North America. The past few
years of meager economic growth has the retail sector
desperate for strong numbers to bolster their bottom line.
In other words, what should be the best time of year for
all of us might actually become the worst of times for the
local retailer. At times like this, conventional wisdom
says the only way to succeed is to attract more customers
to replace the ones who aren't spending as much this
year. Merchants need to attract customers and to do that
they need to advertise. For "brick and mortar"
businesses, the most logical place to begin advertising is
to place an advertisement in the local Yellow Pages
telling people how to get to their store. The e-tailers'
functional equivalent to a yellow pages ad on the Internet
is the search engines. Used by almost every Internet
user, search engines have become the standard way Internet
users look for information and you don't have to wait
until the next printing cycle to insert or change your ad.
Even better, this medium is (in most cases) a level
playing field where achieving a top position does not
necessarily have to require a big budget (see our 10
Minute Optimization).
Consumer Habits, On and Off the Web
Increasingly, search engine users are looking for
Christmas related items. StepForth tracks the usage of
various keywords month to month using the Overture search
term suggestion tool. In April 2003, there were 58,267
searches conducted for "Christmas". That number jumped to
67,234 in May 2003. Now that summer is upon us and
Christmas is getting closer, there were 252,480 searches
for the keyword "Christmas" in June 2003! Clearly, search
engine users are looking for Christmas related items.
Several studies have shown that while sales for
traditional brick and mortar retailers appear to be
holding steady, there has been very little actual growth
in consumer spending over the past two years. Online
sales on the other hand have increased by 25 ~ 30% over
each of the past three years. According to Los Angeles
based Internet retail analysts, BizRate.Com, sales for
electronic retailers on the Microsoft Network increased by
more than 50% for Christmas 2002 over the previous year.
Similar numbers have been reported from electronic
retailers located in Australia, the UK, Canada and the EU.
There are several reasons for the continued growth in
online sales. Consumers are becoming more confident in
spending money online, as security and shipping protocols
have been refined year after year. Consumers are also
starting to think of online shopping the same way they
think of traditional shopping experiences by favoring
sites they have shopped at before or can easily navigate
through. In order to retain past and current clients as
well as attracting new customers, E-Business owners should
consider their websites from an "End-User" perspective.
The aim is to make finding information as simple as
possible. Often, this process involves re-evaluation of a
website and its purpose, leading to website redesign or
the re-ordering of information on a website. Keeping the
coming holiday season in mind, some website owners might
want to think about staging the redevelopment of their
sites in order to begin promoting Christmas sales on the
search engines as soon as possible but waiting to
introduce seasonal graphics until the beginning of
November.
If you rebuild it, will they come?
An honest answer is, yes but it might take a few months
before your site ranks well on search engines. Search
engines require time to find your website, read the
information on the site and rank it. Once the site is in
search engine databases, it can typically take 2 ~ 3
months for a website to achieve top10 placements, even
after an effective optimization campaign. As your site is
competing against thousands of similar sites, it is
important to invest the time, money and patience into
creating the strongest possible promotion for your
business. This is going to be a very important retail
season for many if not most retailers. After two years of
stagnating sales and shaky economic numbers, most
merchants are in the same position. If all things were
equal in the world of business, one could ride their luck
but, as we all know, things are not all equal. Put some
extra strength in your business this season and be visible
against your competition.
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