Effective Tactics that Boost Your Holiday SalesWritten by Brian Su
Many small e-tailers heavily rely on holiday sales. Meanwhile, numerous net shoppers are looking around for perfect holiday gifts in order to avoid crows in mall. Here are seven effective tactics that you can implement to attract shoppers and increase online sales immediately. If you follow tactics in a proper manner, you may see instant result. 1) Focus on Online Shopping Benefits Holiday shopping has become a big headache for many consumers. Some don’t like crowds in mall, many are not sure what to buy; guys are usually “don’t have time” to go shopping. Therefore, you must emphasize following advantages that you may consider to offer: convenient and secure shopping, big discounts, no sales tax, fast delivery, or evens free shipping. In one word, consumers can save big money when shopping at your online store. 2) Make an Offer No-one Can Resist Everyone who visits your store may be a prospect for your merchandise. Make an exclusive online offer that a visitor can take advantage of, such as discount, cash rebate, free shipping, buy one get one free deal, etc. For example, online jewelry store http://www.AllNaturalStuff.com offers free shipping and discounts on all of their merchandise. There are many creative ways to give your prospects a special offer they cannot refuse. You'll attract maximum number of customers when you offer a good deal they cannot get from other online stores and your competitors. 3) Develop a Cash Rebate & Discount Coupon Program If you don't have a cash rebate or discount coupon program, then create one by offering an online printable coupon that a prospect can download for mail-in rebate when they place an order and/or new orders. Coupons have been proven very effective for many online stores. It provides additional incentive for shoppers to spend extra bucks. Spell out terms and conditions for your coupon program. Don’t forget to encourage shoppers to print out and give away your discount coupons to their friends. 4) Share Your Customers’ Testimonials Your store may be new to many online shoppers. Many prospects may consider emptying their shopping cart before they leave. If you have any satisfied customers with your services and products, you should display them on your site to boost customer confidence and their faith on your business. Customer satisfaction is number one issue for online business. Consider offering a liberal money back guarantee policy. 5) Display Your Return Policy and Privacy Statement
| | eCommerce, Communications and the Global Internet Community.Written by Michael Bloch
In our increasingly online world, cyberspace is still experiencing "gold fever", but there have been and will be many casualties. Only innovative, responsive, financially sound and flexible will survive. Many new markets are joining world of eCommerce; over last 6 months I have seen a remarkable increase in visitors to my site from countries such as India. This trends means more visitors to our sites perhaps; but it definitely means more competition between web developers, etailers and other service providers.India will be extraordinarily competitive in web development, due largely to favourable exchange rates. In Australia, our struggling dollar still favours us in securing work with U.S companies, but not to same degree. I can see that Internet will play a considerable role in valuation of our currencies in future. Up until now, Internet has been very focused on U.S. By 2003, Asia Pacific region will catch up and overtake in regards to Internet usage. While we are all busy submitting our sites to U.S and U.K search engines, have we considered their Indian or Taiwanese counterparts? There are literally thousands of Asia-Pacific search engines and indices. Some of them will grow to be major players in next five years. The Western world tends to forget that we are a minority. Only about eight percent of earth's population speaks English as primary language. As countries such as India, Korea, Taiwan and perhaps even China open up, we will need to adapt to this change. The big players can afford to have their pages translated into different languages. For those of us without budget, perhaps even a simple greeting in a variety of languages on our pages would encourage a visitor with limited English abilities to explore our sites. If you are going to translate your site, ensure that person undertaking translation really knows their stuff, as a single word misinterpreted can turn a welcome into a curse. The proper use of images and other visual cues can also assist in relaying information more effectively than English text. One of other ways we, smaller companies, can welcome these newcomers without spending a cent is to drop our xenophobic reactions to "foreigners". There are no "foreigners" as Internet is now more than ever a global community. Instead of fearing these new arrivals stealing our bread and butter, we should be seeking to establish alliances with them. We should be striving to learn a little about culture of emerging electronic economies. This will assist us in using correct protocols during business dealings. As web masters, we receive many communications via email from our "foreign" visitors. Some of these emails are, in our way of thinking, poorly worded. As an example I received a note other day that didn't have usual signature line of "Regards" or "Sincerely", but had one word at bottom of message - "Waiting". Many of our visitors to whom English is a second language struggle with email writing, sometimes appearing rude to us. Perhaps we become impatient with this and devalue communication or ignore it.
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