Christmas in July? Sort of! Unfortunately, most merchants don't realize the importance of planning and preparing for the holiday shopping season in Q3. With Back to School, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, CyberMonday, and Boxing Day…. the list goes on for the multitude of opportunities you should be taking advantage of, and ensuring that your eCommerce is up to snuff for the busy season ahead. Whether this is your first holiday experience, or if you're a seasoned pro, we've got you covered. From marketing budgets and calendars, to infrastructure testing, order fulfillment planning and code freezes, there's a lot more preparation and planning needed for Q4 than the average merchant might think. Join us on Thursday July 30th for a frank and in-depth discussion from our VP of Operations, Graham Leckie on the various things you should be planning for before and during the holiday season.

1. Beat the Holiday Rush
Graham Leckie, VP Operations
Demac Media
Planning and preparing your
eCommerce Store
for the busiest time of the year

2. Overview
• What the Holidays Mean
• Code Freeze and System Infrastructure
• Inventory and Fulfillment
• Marketing Campaigns
• Sales and Merchandising
• Staff and Customer Awareness
• Planning ahead - 2016

3. DID YOU KNOW?
THERE ARE ONLY
147 DAYS
UNTIL CHRISTMAS?!

4. What constitutes the
“Holidays?”

5. What the Holidays Mean
• Black Friday – November 27th (Friday)
• Cyber Monday – November 30th (Monday)
• Christmas – December 25th (Friday)
• Boxing Day – December 26th (Saturday)

6. Code Freeze and
System Infrastructure

7. Code Freeze and System Infrastructure
• Make sure to have all development and
testing completed by mid-October
• Still time for responsive!
– Even a theme-based approach
• Table any new development ideas for
execution during the season for
implementation on staging

8. BF MOBILE AND
TABLET REVENUE
UP 194%
2013 -> 2014 YOY

9. CM MOBILE AND
TABLET REVENUE
UP 172%
2013 -> 2014 YOY

10. Code Freeze and System Infrastructure
• Risk Mitigation – know what to do if the site
goes down
• Stress Testing ahead of time
• Server monitoring utilities now
• Virtual vs physical hosting

11. Inventory and Fulfillment

12. Inventory and Fulfillment
• Make sure that correct counts are in place to
limit customer service issues
• Should already have buying complete
• Separate eCommerce inventory
• Ability to pull from warehouse or store levels

13. Marketing Campaigns

14. Marketing Campaigns
• Email
– Do not send a blast to the whole list at once
– Test all links before going out from an external
environment if possible
– NEVER use a search string!
– Cached pages
– Tell a story, not just the sale (higher value items)
– Mobile Friendly - litmus.com
• SEM
– Preplan adwords
– Text vs Display with Social

15. Sales and Merchandising

16. Sales and Merchandising
• Make sure that all content is in place before
the 11th hour
• Index/Cache Completed
• Cross-sell/up-sell for loss leaders – attach!
• Drive traffic as well from social media
• Specific holiday categories
• Rich descriptions and content to differentiate

17. Staff Awareness

18. Staff and Customer Awareness
• Make sure that they know what the holidays
mean – especially for new employees
• Incentives for extra hours – pizza, liquid
refreshers, coffee
– Saves from them having to go offsite
• Customer service is key, know how to make a
customer happy
– Replacement for ‘hot’ items that go out of stock
– They are stressed as well!
– Shipping and Returns
• SMILE!

19. 2016 and beyond….

20. Planning Ahead - 2016
• Data and market driven roadmap planning
• What to do to fill in the valley
• Incentives for return shoppers in the new year
• Deploy what was in development over the
holidays
– Responsive!
– New Features/Functionality
– Code Audit/Clean up

21. ?
Questions?
Graham Leckie, VP Operations
Demac Media