How Internet retailers can maximize revenue any time of year

What Online Shoppers Want

A recent survey on consumer shopping habits by Channel Advisor found that 58% of respondents are likely to purchase their holiday gifts online this year. If your business has an e-commerce site, this is the time of year to evaluate its usability and maximize its impact. By creating a fulfilling online shopping experience for your customers — regardless of the time of year — you can build loyalty for your brand and increase revenues. Consider the following tips to make your online store work harder for you:

1. Monitor customer behavior. Tailor your website to your customers' preferences by paying attention to their online behavior. Even the most basic analytic tools, like Google Analytics, can tell you what pages on your website have the most visits, what kind of browser your customers are using to access your website, how long customers are spending on your site, and more. Try tweaking subtle things like font size or color palette, then monitor customer response. If you have a clothing retail website, place your sale items on the pages most frequented by your customers.
2. Make buying easy. Create an organized look for your offerings and a prominent checkout page. Also, offer easy ways for customers to seek out specific products. The easier it is for your customers to browse and buy from your website, the easier it will be to encourage sales from online shoppers.
3. Get in the spirit. Update the content and visuals on your website to reflect the season. Providing fresh content is key to enticing shoppers to spend more — especially this time of year — and return in the future. Even the simple addition of "Happy Holidays!" to your site's header or a sprig of holly temporarily added to your logo can remind customerswhy they're buying, triggering an emotional response that will help your bottom line.