October is the New December.....Happy Holidays!

My sister calls me yesterday. "What day are you coming home for Christmas?" I grab my calendar..."I'm sorry I thought it was October..I hadn't really thought about it yet."

Although premature to me, her question reminded me how soon people begin buzzing around getting prepared for the holidays...including holiday shopping, the single biggest sales opportunity of the year.

While I haven't even put my Halloween pumpkin out, according to advertising.com this year most people will begin shopping for the holidays in 2007 earlier than they did in 2006. Over 50% of shoppers have already begun their holiday shopping within the month of October.

Keep in mind we're talking about when people BEGIN shopping and evaluating, the data suggests the majority of these people still wait until November and December to actually complete their purchases. So as an online contemporary retailer there is still a pinch of time to prepare if you haven't already.

Here are a few ways to capitalize on the early bird phenomenon.....

--Make sure your website has a "drop ship," function. This is the ability for one person to buy and send to another....possibly multiple others.

--Have attractive gift packaging and show it. When sending gifts most people are understandably concerned about presentation. Make sure you take a picture of your gift wrapping options and post it on your website.

--Begin pushing giftable product. Although people still shop for themselves during the holidays...a good majority of people will also be on the lookout for gifts. Therefore you may want to highlight easy pickings like accessories, men's product (if you are mainly a women's retailer), one size items and hard goods.

--Start programing your site for holiday promotions. Some of the most successful promos include free shipping, free returns and free gift wrapping.

The key is really to plan ahead and keep your marketing momentum up throughout the season.

Because even though, Christmas comes on the same date every year...some people still prefer to procrastinate. So you may want to implement some last minute holiday promo surprises for people like me...people like that I mean;)

Be sure to check the survey out for yourself at http://www.advertising.com/data/research/62/2007_holiday_survey.pdf.

Happy Holidays!