Halloween is over; let Christmas shopping begin—at least online

Online Christmas shopping to a measurable extent starts the week after Halloween, several weeks before it shows up in stores, says Wells Spence, vice president of marketing for stores and e-commerce for Discovery Communications Inc., operator of the Discovery Channel and the associated Discovery stores.

That means that online retail managers need to be in the holiday mindset weeks ahead of their store counterparts. For instance, Spence says, Discovery did a catalog mail drop a few weeks ago in anticipation of the post-Halloween start-up. “We timed the catalog to prime the pump for online shopping,” he says.

Discovery then sent e-mail messages to online customers reminding them that Christmas is coming and they should get online now to ensure they get the products they want in time for the holidays. It will do another major catalog mailing next week to encourage online shopping, then another later in the month to drive store sales, he says. “This week is big for our online marketing,” he says. “The real crush starts earlier online than in the stores.”

Discovery is also hoping that the holiday season will build on the positive ratings that customers gave the online shopping experience in a study that Discovery commissioned from Vividence. That survey showed that Discovery customers rate the online store in the top category for visual presentation, product research and satisfaction with site search and in the next-to-the-top category for overall customer satisfaction. The purpose of the survey was to find out what customers like and don’t like about the site and where improvements can be made, Spence says. “We can make all the partnerships we like and bring all kinds of traffic to the site, but if the customer doesn’t find the site usable and easy to navigate, it doesn’t mean anything,” he says.