Capitalize on the Holidays – Create a Gift Guide
Last year at Nexternal (for the first time ever) we actually saw greater online holiday spending on Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday. The next 28 days are the busiest shopping weeks of the year, so pull out all of the stops and finish the year strong with your online sales! Timing is of the essence! One creative idea you can implement to help shoppers with their lists is to create a gift guide. Thinking of the right things to buy someone is tough and your job as a merchant should be to make it easier. 
What is a gift guide? It’s basically a web page that you can direct people to in order to see items that you think make great gifts. Here is an example from a very popular company – Apple.
Aside from showcasing great gift products, what else should your guide have? For starters, it should give some direction. Categorization can be very effective and here are some ideas:
• Top Gifts for Under $100
• Gifts for Dad
• Light Gifts That Ship Inexpensively
• Gifts for the Health Nut
• Gifts on Currently On Sale
To implement such a guide in your Nexternal eCommerce Platform, consider creating a top level category called “Gift Guide”. You can then create subcategories that are attached to the Gift Guide Category (taking ideas from the list above). To feature products on the gift guide, you might use the category’s description field at the top of the page, and insert an image or html that features your most desired products.
Once you have your gift guide in place, you should email it out to your existing customer base and also post it on both your Twitter and Facebook pages. Make it happen now so that your gift guide is together by Black Friday!
After receiving a degree in Industrial Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Alex began his career as a technology consultant with Accenture. In 1999 he left Accenture and founded Nexternal – a cloud-based eCommerce Platform company. Alex is passionate about eCommerce and online marketing. He is now a Senior Vice President of HighJump, managing the Nexternal business unit.
