The Holiday season is now here are you ready? If you are an online retailer or a business owner you should be. If not check out this white paper checklist ti see what you will need to do to turn your online business into a money machine this holiday season

1. be seen.
What Holiday Shoppers Want from
Online Retailers
People love online shopping. It’s convenient, fast and oftentimes the easiest way to score deals on
coveted products.
That’s great news, but it can be nerve-racking when retailers consider the ever-rising consumer
expectations of shopping online. It’s important to meet these standards during the year, but the
stakes are sky-high during the holiday season.
You can prioritize what you can do to please shoppers and sell more during the holiday season.
Here are the top four most influential consumer expectations during the holiday season and how
you can deliver to meet and exceed expectations:
THEY EXPECT LOW PRICES
With the abundance of options online and the ease of quickly comparing prices to find the best deal, online consumers know deals
are out there if they look hard enough – especially during the holiday season. During the holidays, 85% of consumers base their
final purchase decision on price, including promotions, so this is one you can’t ignore.
Put your best price forward on every channel during the holidays, but pay special attention to your prices on eBay, Amazon and
other marketplaces. There’s an abundance of merchants selling similar items there, and consumers can easily price compare to find
the best deal.
For marketplaces, if you’re not repricing your products frequently, you’re missing out. It’s becoming more common to reprice items
multiple times each day to stay up to speed with the competition, and this can be done through an automated repricer that adjusts
prices according to the competitive landscape and the business rules you set. Don’t lose out to the competition due to a few
pennies; find out more about how ChannelAdvisor reprices your products.
THEY EXPECT FREE SHIPPING
Free shipping is one of the most important incentives you can offer during the holidays. In fact, December 17th has been dubbed
“Free Shipping Day,” another seasonal bonanza alongside Black Friday and Cyber Monday when thousands of retailers offer free
shipping and other bonuses to shoppers.
Studies have shown that as much as 61% of consumers would cancel holiday orders if they found out they needed to pay shipping
fees, and it’s the second most important factor in consumer holiday purchase decisions, just behind price1.
Even for small and medium businesses, it’s possible to offer free shipping and still make a profit. Think creatively about how you can
do this: establish minimum order amounts, offer flat rate shipping that encourages customers to buy more at once or offer tiered
shipping options.

2. THEY EXPECT TRANSPARENCY
The days of fine print are behind us. Consumers want to know exactly what they’re getting into before they purchase. Some studies
have found that transparency even trumps recommendations when it comes to purchase decisions. With e-tailing, transparency
during the holiday season means providing clear information to shoppers. Make sure your return policies, delivery dates, shipping
timelines, promotion and sales offers and deadlines, and other information important to consumer decisions are blatantly visible on
your website, in emails and across all possible consumer touch points.
THEY EXPECT A SOLID REPUTATION
Seventy percent of shoppers say that merchant reputation and product reviews affect holiday buying decisions. That’s a lot of
floating cash for retailers who aren’t taking advantage of the free reviews and reputation-touting widgets on various e-commerce
sales channels.
Make sure you’re doing everything you can to earn the trust of shoppers on every channel. For example, Google Shopping
merchants can have a Trusted Stores Badge, which increases conversion and average order size 3.1% and 5.5%, respectively,
according to Google. If you sell on Amazon or eBay, ChannelAdvisor’s Amazon 360 and eBay 360 dashboards give you a snapshot
view of things that affect your reputation, such as Order Defect Rate, Buyer Claims and Negative Feedback Comments, so you can
make sure your reputation is blemish-free as often as possible.
Don’t fall short of the four most important consumer expectations this holiday shopping season! To learn more about how to prepare
for the holiday season, watch our on-demand Holiday Megatrends 2013 webinar, or contact a ChannelAdvisor representative at
info@channeladvisor.com.
1
comScore study, “State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy,” 2011
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