At the end of November, I posted about online retailers showing holiday shipping cutoff dates on their home pages. Now more than two weeks later, and with just over a week left before Christmas, we find more retailers adding this information to their home pages, including reminders about electronic gift cards and in-store pickup options.

On November 28, I posted a few examples of online retailers who gave their home pages a Christmas makeover. One example is Bath & Body Works:

November 28

December 17

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Optimizing Your E-Store for Last Minute Shoppers »

The holiday shopping season is now in full swing, and while there’s still plenty of time for online shoppers to receive their orders by Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa), not receiving an order on time is a concern for consumers. Great online stores ease the fears by providing holiday shipping cutoff dates and making this information easy to find on home pages and product pages. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Bed Bath and Beyond

Tagline: “Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates”

Bed Bath and Beyond dedicates some central home page real estate to its holiday shipping information:

And it’s not limited to just Christmas, either:

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Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates Make Good Ecommerce Usability »

This year children had barely made a dent into their Hallowe’en candy before retailers began their Christmas sales - well in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was at the mall on Friday and Christmas songs were already replacing the musack in some department stores.

So if you haven’t already, it’s time to get promoting your holiday goodies.

Justin over at Palmer Web Marketing recently posted some great Cyber Monday marketing ideas including random “blue light specials” and bounce-back discounts. But you may want to get a leg up on these ideas right away.

Continue Reading:
Holiday Marketing 2.007 - Nobody Waits for Black Friday Anymore »

Guess what? People like to shop online (or by cellphone) and pick up in-store. We all love research to back up our theories, so here goes:

“Jupiter Research states that 51% of consumers are researching on the Internet and then completing their purchases offline; online research influences more than $400 billion of in-store sales and projections call for that sum to surpass $1.1 trillion by 2012.

A Gartner Group study reveals 68% of consumers are comparing prices online before shopping in a physical store and 58% locate items online before going to a store to purchase; only 13% say the Internet has not improved their in-store shopping experience.”

Source: http://view.exacttarget.com

The e-Tailing Group is offering a report of the Buy Online/Pick-Up In-Store Experience. The study sent mystery shoppers to 23 retail stores who offer in-store pickup to report on their customer experience. I won’t rehash the findings of the study here, I’ll leave you to getting those goodies yourself. Today I want to zoom in on what you might think is a minor detail: the Store Locator page. I hit up a few of the top 100-some etailers of 2006 and I offer you the following tips:

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In-Store Pickup and Store Locator Usability »