Prepare your VPASP store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
	Gareth Sales Thursday, November 8, 2012

Hi everyone,

Black Friday & Cyber Monday are just over two weeks away and this year more people than ever will be doing their shopping online. Set aside some time this weekend to prepare your VPASP store for the rush using the tips below:

Submit product feeds to shopping engines

As comparison shopping becomes more and more popular, so do comparison shopping engines such as Google Product Search. This makes it more important than ever for you to have your products listed where shoppers will be looking. If you haven’t already, purchase the SEO Toolkit today for $95 (usually $195) and use it to create your product feed which you can submit to Google, StoreYa and Amazon Product Ads.

Send Teaser Emails

During the week before Black Friday & Cyber Monday, send an email to your customers giving teasers of the deals you will be offering, this will help create a buzz leading up to the big weekend and ensure your customers have your store fresh in their mind. Also use your Facebook & Twitter accounts in the same way if you have them.

Offer Free Returns:

This is a big one - did you know that 60% of UK consumers will not even consider making a fashion purchase online unless they can return unwanted items without being charged?

60% also say they won’t consider buying online unless returns are free, which leads us onto the next point;

Offer Free Shipping

55% of online shoppers expect free shipping on every order - it is perhaps due to this statistic that 85% of ecommerce sites will offer free shipping promotions during the holiday period, can you really afford to be in the 15% that don’t?

You don’t need to offer free shipping on EVERYTHING, promotions such as ‘free shipping when you spend over $50 / $100’ are highly effective.

Take a look at this helpnote for instructions on how to set up free shipping coupons for select customers.

Offer Gift cards

As November and December are typically the busiest months of the year for online store owners, January and February are usually the opposite. One way of encouraging business during these traditionally slow months is to offer gift cards with purchases in the holiday season.

For example you could offer a $50 gift card when customers spend over $200, these gift cards would only be valid after January 1, 2013 until the end of February (this is something you would need to make clear to avoid a potential customer service nightmare!). This sort of offer helps to extend your relationship with your customers as they are encouraged to come back and shop with you a second time.  

Don’t forget to tell your customers about your promotions via your newsletter, Facebook and Twitter!

I hope you find these tips useful, if you have any other tips and tricks we would love to hear them, just add to our comments section.

Happy Selling!

Gareth
VP-ASP