Merchandising your Online Shop for Christmas - Less pain: more gain.

For many consumers, present buying amounts to the nightmare before Christmas. Envisaging jammed car parks and shopping malls teeming with frenzied crowds, this retail season often adds pressure to lives that are already too busy to justify traipsing around stores, searching aimlessly for the best deal.

Consumers are looking for something easier, something less painful—as online research shows. 
Nielson Online Research shows that over 81% of New Zealanders using search engines to research online (statistics, May 2009), online retail stores have the potential to become consumers’ knight in shining armour.

So how can online retailers deliver this stress-free shopping experience? In a phrase: alleviate the pain.

If, as an online retailer, you’re able to reduce the perceived risk—and highlight the benefits—of purchasing online, customers are more likely to buy from your site right now.

Let’s start by identifying the risks and fears some shoppers might have:

What if it doesn’t show up on time?
Do shipping costs cancel out any savings from buying online?
What if I don’t like it or what if it doesn’t fit / work?
It might be cheaper at the shopping mall?

We’ve all experienced these hesitations when buying online; however, in most cases, they simply aren’t an issue. What is a barrier is that the answers to these concerns are often hidden on a website’s shipping or FAQ pages. The solution? Promote your standard trading terms, return policies and guarantees as unique selling points—and promote these as part of the online shopping experience.

If shipping is free or there is a deal such as “Spend $100 and get free shipping”, then make a big deal of it. Make this one of the key points that customers first see. This promotion doesn’t have to be gaudy, but it could help to change a customer’s mindset from researching to purchasing online. Remember, fearless customers are willing customers.

When merchandising your online store for Christmas, think about it from your customers’ perspective. How inviting is the homepage? It needs to say: “This is us; this is what we sell; here are the deals. It’s easy; it’s fun; get shopping!” It should drive customers to key areas of your site: your latest products, the easy-to-sell products, or sale items.

How well organised are those products for gift shopping? Think about grouping products together with banners and merchandising imagery, similar to an in-store merchandising display. This works just as well online as it does in your retail store, and can make your site a more immersive and enjoyable experience.

By addressing each of these points, your online store has succeeded in delivering consumers a solution that alleviates the Christmas purchasing pain, while increasing your potential retail sales gain.