Beat the Holiday Rush

Graham Leckie, VP OperationsDemac Media

Planning and preparing your eCommerce Store

for the busiest time of the year

Overview

• What the Holidays Mean• Code Freeze and System Infrastructure• Inventory and Fulfillment• Marketing Campaigns• Sales and Merchandising • Staff and Customer Awareness• Planning ahead - 2016

DID YOU KNOW?THERE ARE ONLY

147 DAYSUNTIL CHRISTMAS?!

What constitutes the “Holidays?”

What the Holidays Mean

• Black Friday – November 27th (Friday)• Cyber Monday – November 30th (Monday)• Christmas – December 25th (Friday)• Boxing Day – December 26th (Saturday)

Code Freeze and System Infrastructure

Code Freeze and System Infrastructure

• Make sure to have all development and testing completed by mid-October

• Still time for responsive!– Even a theme-based approach

• Table any new development ideas for execution during the season for implementation on staging

BF MOBILE AND TABLET REVENUE

UP 194%2013 -> 2014 YOY

CM MOBILE AND TABLET REVENUE

UP 172%2013 -> 2014 YOY

Code Freeze and System Infrastructure

• Risk Mitigation – know what to do if the site goes down

• Stress Testing ahead of time• Server monitoring utilities now• Virtual vs physical hosting

Inventory and Fulfillment

Inventory and Fulfillment

• Make sure that correct counts are in place to limit customer service issues

• Should already have buying complete• Separate eCommerce inventory• Ability to pull from warehouse or store levels

Marketing Campaigns

Marketing Campaigns

• Email– Do not send a blast to the whole list at once– Test all links before going out from an external

environment if possible– NEVER use a search string!– Cached pages– Tell a story, not just the sale (higher value items)– Mobile Friendly - litmus.com

• SEM– Preplan adwords– Text vs Display with Social

Sales and Merchandising

Sales and Merchandising

• Make sure that all content is in place before the 11th hour

• Index/Cache Completed• Cross-sell/up-sell for loss leaders – attach!• Drive traffic as well from social media• Specific holiday categories• Rich descriptions and content to differentiate

Staff Awareness

Staff and Customer Awareness

• Make sure that they know what the holidays mean – especially for new employees

• Incentives for extra hours – pizza, liquid refreshers, coffee– Saves from them having to go offsite

• Customer service is key, know how to make a customer happy– Replacement for ‘hot’ items that go out of stock– They are stressed as well!– Shipping and Returns

• SMILE!

2016 and beyond….

Planning Ahead - 2016

• Data and market driven roadmap planning• What to do to fill in the valley• Incentives for return shoppers in the new year• Deploy what was in development over the

holidays– Responsive! – New Features/Functionality– Code Audit/Clean up

?

Questions?

Graham Leckie, VP OperationsDemac Media