With little more than a couple of weeks until the Christmas shopping holiday, retailers are all hoping to capitalize on what is expected to be a promising sales season. Following what has been reported as nearly a 40 billion dollar online retail quarter in a year marked by consecutive quarterly growth for internet retail businesses, sellers are looking at every way to maximize their earnings. One strategy for focusing on the most profitable aspects of a business involves outsourcing order fulfillment operations while zeroing in on how the customer comes to find your brand.


Where consumers look 

In the days of social media sites promoting their brand pages, you might easily believe that online shoppers use sites like Facebook to look for great deals; you’d be wrong. According to a study by Power Reviews, over 70% of respondents indicated that they “rarely” or “never” used social media sites in their search for purchase items. The top two responses as to where shoppers begin their process were search engine, with 44%, and the actual retailer’s site at 33%.  Based on these results, those looking to cash in on what some are estimating to be an 18% increase from the 2010 in holiday online sales need to focus on two primary areas, search engine optimization and web page content design.


What is your service?

Before you begin to take that hard look at your website, ask yourself this question: “What is our service?” While this may seem a bit silly, many companies waste time, energy, and above all, money by focusing on ancillary functions that only support the main reason a company exists. If your company isn’t a direct competitor of the postal service, and you do sell things, outsourcing your shipping may very well be a good way to spend more time more efficiently as you work on other priorities. For the holiday shopping season, this means your online presence.


Get in position

Begin positioning yourself by doing the most with the online customers you already have. Look at your website first, from the perspective of a customer. If you wanted to buy something, how many steps would you have to make for an order? If it’s not invitingly easy, fix that problem now! Next, view your website from the perspective of a department manager hoping to see his or her high-profit items prominently displayed. Again, if you’re not seeing those items with a quick glance, chances are, no one else is either, save for your competition.

For your long term SEO efforts, remember two things:

1) this won’t be the last, peak online shopping season and

2) you don’t have to have your website appear on the first page of a search fright off the bat. You already have some pretty accurate input as to the effectiveness of your online marketing. Look at the numbers from this very recent Cyber Monday. Are there any patterns that suggest a shift, up or down, in purchases for a certain product? Pay attention to these figures and adjust accordingly.

Remember to concentrate your brand’s efforts on what it is your company does. As a retailer, you provide specific goods to buyers who know about and order your products. With shipping off your plate, you can focus on making customers aware of your services.