E-shopper is different animal at the holidays, says Fry

Customer demand changes the online shopping environment during the holiday season and retailers need to make adjustments accordingly to maximize sales, says Fry Multimedia, an Ann Arbor, MI-based e-commerce integrator that designs and manages web sites for Crate & Barrel, Eddie Bauer, Coach and others. Preliminary results of a holiday e-retail study examining 2 million web shopping trips show, for example, that during the holidays, retail traffic spikes between 7 p.m. and midnight, suggesting that marketing efforts such as e-mail campaigns might be more effective during those hours.

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Holiday online shoppers also visit a site fewer times before purchasing than during the rest of the year, when they typically visit a site three to seven times before purchasing, but during the holidays they spend more time and hit more pages when they do visit. This makes it critical for sites to make it as easy as possible for shoppers to find everything they need, including shipping charges, warranties, and return policies, which are important features to gift-buyers. During the holidays, retail shoppers are more likely to arrive at a site from search engines, by way of generic search words vs. brand or product names. Retail web sites that grab popular generic words – through paid placement if needed – position themselves to reap more sales from such generic searches, Fry concludes.

Fry’s data also indicate that online retailers need to gear up marketing efforts earlier in the season to match what shoppers see in the offline world. “We’re accustomed to seeing Christmas trees and holiday displays at the mall before Halloween. While it may irritate some shoppers, it’s good marketing,” says Kara Heinrichs, chief customer experience officer at Fry. “Our research suggests it makes good business sense for retailers to do the same thing online.”