In amongst all the doom and gloom of the current financial crisis there is some good news for retailers as we head into the Christmas period.

Research suggests that e-commerce sales will not be too harshly affected by the credit crunch as consumers turn to online stores instead of their offline counterparts.

Consumers are showing no signs of reducing their online spend this Christmas and a recent report from Verdict Research predicted a 39.9% growth in online spend during the festive period.

E-commerce websites give retailers the ability to react quickly and effectively to any change in the market – new promotions and sale items can be quickly and easily edited within the site to respond successfully when needed.

Shopping comparison sites will benefit from the credit crunch as consumers look online for where to find the best priced products. Retailers should ensure that their website is offering competitive prices for those must have items this Christmas.

Along with meeting the needs of those bargain hunters surfing the web it is a good idea for retailers to explore bundling as a potential money spinner. Consumers will feel they are getting a good deal if relevant products are bundled together a discount price – this is a highly profitable way of selling your goods online.

To maximise the potential revenue of this continued online spend from consumers, retailers must ensure that their website is as easy to use as possible and customers are encouraged to proceed through the site to the checkout process. Customers need to have a pain free experience of shopping on your e-commerce site so that they feel they are avoiding the depressing world of the high street.

To find out how Motive can help you with your e-commerce strategy, please get in touch with our E–commerce Team.

Retailers are guilty of not properly preparing for Christmas with their online store like they do in the offline world. It is important that online vendors use the months leading up to Christmas to research and test all areas of their online campaigns as well as the website itself to ensure they maximise sales over the festive period.

There are several areas that retailers need to pay attention to. The search market is key to locate what words you need to be focussing on to capture your customers. Looking back on last years search data will help greatly to work out what worked and what didn’t. Look at what keywords you were focussing on last year and analyse the success of these words - retailers should be learning year on year for Christmas.

On the run up to Christmas, retailers should test out various adverts and offers to see which converts the best for them. Trial and error is the best way of discovering what is going to bring potential customers to your site.

Along with ensuring that search campaigns are fully optimised, retailers need to ensure that once they consumers have reached their site every step has been taken to keep them there.

Landing pages are very important in your Christmas strategy – any offers or discounts that you refer to in your Christmas campaigns need to be confirmed on your landing page. You need to continuously motivate your customers to continue through the website and ultimately make a purchase.

To find out how Motive can help with your online Christmas strategy, please speak to the experts.

A major factor in online success is testing. Your e-commerce website should be tested on a regular basis in order to ensure your clients are being given the best service and your brand is being represented in the most appropriate, professional manner.

Every aspect of your e-commerce website should be tested and re-tested. Obviously achieving the maximum number of conversions is the main objective for your website and unless it is tested regularly there are countless different ways you could be losing potential business.

The most obvious reason for testing is, of course, to make sure your e-commerce site actually works. Any issues or faults with your site will be easily picked up by the user, therefore regular testing prevents your potential clients from developing a negative image of your brand. If your website is disappointing or faulty it will give the user a negative image of your company as a whole.

The term testing can also relate to other aspects of managing your website, however. Testing out different styles and approaches with your website will allow you to work out which method works best with your targeted audience.

Cookie tracking and various web statistic packages enable you to track precisely what is happening in the site and react positively as a result.

Try rotating different images and headlines on pages within the site then tracking the number of hits and click-throughs achieved with the different styles. This will help to determine what is the most effective strategy for your site.

Calls to action are key when attempting to guide users through your site; you should try out different phrases and see how it affects your conversion rates.

Success with your website is trial and error. Your website shouldn’t be a static thing that once launched is left alone. You should be constantly updating, adding to and tweaking various parts of the site to meet the needs of your users and maximise the revenue you get from it.

To find out how Motive can help you maximise the potential of your website, please get in touch with our E-commerce team.

Until recently, there was no easy way to validate that a purchaser on an e-commerce website is indeed the legitimate cardholder. 3D Secure technology was launched to reduce the likelihood of online fraud, by authenticating the cardholder with the card issuer at the time the transaction takes place, thus significantly reducing cardholder disputes and merchant chargeback’s.

3D Secure requires the cardholder to register their card (on the card issuers website) answering a number of security questions. The cardholder then sets up a password and secret phrase which will be used by the card issuer for every online transaction. Once signed up the cardholder uses this personalised password for every online purchase on sites with 3D Secure integration.

This technology is designed to increase consumer confidence in using credit cards online – an issue that is key to commercial success on the internet. However, retailers need to be careful about its integration into a website as not all consumers are yet aware of the technology and therefore if handled incorrectly could actually increase the risk of shopping cart abandonment.

As there has been very little media coverage of the new 3D Secure technology, the average consumer is unaware of its uses, therefore there is work to be done for merchants in creating awareness and highlighting the benefits in order to prevent consumer confusion and shopping cart abandonment.

It may be advisable to add information within the buying process to explain and reassure consumers or perhaps have a link to a page that explains exactly what 3D Secure is and the benefits it presents for people buying products online.

Despite these teething issues, the introduction of this technology is an exciting one and will protect ecommerce merchants from online fraud plus increase consumer confidence in purchasing from sites with 3D secure integration.

3D Secure is predicted to become the industry standard by the end of 2008, providing online consumers with added confidence in sites utilising this technology. We have successfully integrated 3D Secure to e-commerce clients Toner Expert and Red Express, plus we are currently completing work on Jessops.com.