Father’s Day is quickly approaching, and just as is the case with any holiday, its the merchant that makes gift shopping as easy and stress-free as possible that gets the sale. Holidays are great time for gift-related merchants, but take the stress out of shopping you want to provide your customers with two things: (1) a holiday shipping schedule [more here], and (2) an easy way of selecting a gift.
Looking at the cosmetics and fragrance sector, for example, I see three groups of merchants: (i) the majority which doesn’t do either of the above two things, (ii) some who take care just of the shipping schedule part, and (iii) very few that do both. I am sure the picture will be the same in other sectors too.
With the holiday shipping schedules, things are pretty straightforward. You want to provide your customers with the order cut-off time and dates, as well as the corresponding shipping methods that will deliver their order in time for the holiday. Here’s how BeautyEncounter.com does it:
Many merchants add shipping schedules to their sites for holidays like Christmas, but smaller holidays frequently get ignored. I don’t know why.
As for the easy way of selecting a gift, things are even worse. Some merchants add “gift idea” sections, which are most often based on the list of section-specific bestsellers (e.g. men’s cologne and perfume), but very few make things as much fun as the above-quoted merchant is doing it now. When you go to their homepage, you see a link to their “Father’s Day gift guide”:
Upon clicking the link, you arrive at a totally cool page where you can select “your type of dad”:
…and then shop for the gifts he will more than likely appreciate.
Great job, Beauty Encounter!
The more online merchants make shopping this much fun and stress-free, the brighter the future of e-commerce will be.