By Kristyn Levine, Solution Strategist

Preparing for the holiday shopping season is an annual ritual that can’t be ignored by most retailers. To maximize results during this critical period, plans (and contingency plans) should be in place to ensure a positive user experience and financially beneficial interaction with each customer. Retailers should leverage what’s worked in the past while taking into account important shifts in online customer behavior.

In my new whitepaper "Preparing for the 2010 Holiday Season", I give you 10 critical things to consider to help you prepare for the 2010 holidays. This guide shares key considerations and actionable ideas to help you increase your opportunities for success in the 2010 holiday shopping season. Some are new and some are time-proven. You likely already have the foundation and infra-structure in place to implement most of them. A few may require additional up-front time and resources, but they will lay the foundation for important long-term gains.

This paper also identifies key Demandware functionality you can leverage to prepare for this key selling period. The key is to start preparing now.

How is your team preparing for the 2010 holiday shopping season?

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing

Last week, Demandware hosted an evening of cocktails for NYC ecommerce executives at the Barneys New York Penthouse. High above the hustle and bustle of Madison Avenue, above floors and floors of handbags, shoes, and must-have designers gathered ecommerce executives from the greater NY area. Everyone gathered for some industry chatter, delicious appetizers, thirst quenching cocktails, and of course story time by the one, the only...Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York.

We promised Simon we would not reveal too much of what he shared, but let's just say that we learned what Simon "the First Elf" Doonan was up to all year in helping the Obamas celebrate their first Christmas at the White House. Unfortunately if you missed the event, you will have to wait until Simon's coffee table book about his adventure arrives sometime in the distant future.

Thank you again to all those who attended. It was a night full of great company, stories, and ideas!

Special thank you to Simon, Larry, Jordan, Heather, and the rest of the team at Barneys for helping us with yet another amazing event!

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing 

Demandware clients are having a tremendous Holiday season so far. Kicking off with a remarkable 79% increase in YOY revenue on Thanksgiving Day (now if I didn't see it with my own eyes I would have had a hard time believing too - but trust me it is!) Our clients are truly performing above the crowd across the board, check out the table below for the day by day breakdown of the holiday weekend resulting in a 54% increase overall in YOY revenue compared to 2008.

The good news is despite the tough economic year, ecommerce continues to be the growth engine for retailers this holiday. According to ComScore the industry saw an 11% YOY increase in revenue on Black Friday as well as a 5% YOY increase in revenue on Cyber Monday. Coremetrics also provided results on Cyber Monday and reported a nearly 14% increase in YOY revenue. Clearly our metrics are above and beyond.

We strongly believe that our clients are set up for greater success particularly for a couple reasons:

• Performance: Our platform, and hence our clients' sites, delivers with better availability and response time than any of the Top 20 Web Sites as reported by Gomez, in fact we have consistently delivered at 99.97% availability over the last 5 years and 100% during the holiday season. If your site is down, your customers can't buy - it is as simple as that.
  
  
• Merchandising: Our platform uses analytic data (i.e. conversion, return rate, sales velocity, rating) to dynamically present items to the right customers at the right time. Merchants can use this data to create new weighted scoring systems, removing the need to manually organize hundreds and hundreds of category pages and freeing up invaluable time to personally merchandise the most critical aspects of the site.
  
  
• Support: We provide our clients with the support they need to be successful. Not just technical support, but also ongoing retail support. We make sure our clients are ready for the holidays and that their site is primed for performance and purchasing.

Congratulations to our clients and best of luck for the remainder of Holiday 2009!

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing 

Product finders, gift finders and configurators have proven to be very successful—resulting in conversion rates of 20-30% for those who engage. So why doesn't every site have one? The trouble is the time, effort and money that goes into creating the finders—that for the most part are hard coded flash object that don't account for out of stock products or seasonal turnover. You are left with an empty shell that you need to pump more time, effort and money into. That is why we were pumped to see the new completely dynamic and data driven Board Finder on the recently relaunched www.burton.com, built by the folks at Burton!

Using their internal flash skills combined with Demandware out of the box features (i.e. search refinements, price scrollers, customizable attributes) and their intimate knowledge of what makes a board good for certain people, Burton has launched an unbelievable Board Finder. Check it out and get that special someone a new board for the holidays so they can shred it when the powder returns this winter.

For those of you short on time, below are some screen shots of the finder. But if you have an extra moment, check out the real thing.

Demandware client innovations—designed, built and launched all on their own. Now that is what Demandware is all about.

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

Earlier this week, we issued a press release highlighting the success of our clients over what was a particularly challenging 2008 holiday season. Despite the fact that overall online spending dropped 3% versus the 2007 holiday season (source: ComScore), Demandware clients posted significant increases across all key performance indicators. I wanted to take a moment to congratulate our clients on a successful season as well as share some of the data with you.

Another interesting nugget we found was that our European clients—who represent approximately 45% of total order volume across the Demandware platform—experienced even higher growth than our U.S. clients. With European consumers shifting their shopping online, European retailers upgrading their sites and non-European retailers expanding internationally, it is clear that this market will continue to grow.

For the online retailers out there, we'd love to hear how these results compare to yours. What did you do this season? What worked? What didn't? For a more detailed look at this data please check out our press release or feel free to contact me for a personal briefing

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing

1. The CEO is in the server room chanting "YES WE CAN!"
2. Even physical store locations are offering free shipping to customers
3. Email spam filters bloat faster than the floats at the Macy's Day Parade
4. Sites are going down faster than Tom Brady's 2008 season
5. Kids catch their moms trying to swipe her credit card through the laptop DVD drive
6. IT manager busted for injecting servers with steroids
7. Al Gore surfaces to trademark the term "Web 2.0"
8. Media proclaims: "this Internet thing just might catch on"
9. Work productivity falls faster than the DOW index
10. Clickity clickity click

Hopefully our humorous look at Cyber Monday got some chuckles, but there is a scary truth behind each of those laughs. During the current economic downturn, the Web channel is going to be saving grace for retailers and manufacturers alike, as it's currently the only growth channel. CEOs and board members see the increase in Web sales and profitability as a way to offset the balance sheet bleeding. And while more CEO and board-level coverage is great, it also means that the Web channel's sales needs to continue to increase while in the spotlight.

Until recently, the online channel was growing at such an incredibly fast pace that retailers didn't need to do much more than offer free shipping to ride the online shopping wave. Now, however, we are faced with the unfortunate reality that consumer spending is at record lows and the retail sector is suffering. In order to even compete in this market (let alone succeed in this market), retailers are going to need to raise the bar and increase the efficiencies of their online stores. They will need to differentiate themselves from competitors and be able to turn on a dime with new promotions that will convert customers. What if online merchandisers had the ability to quickly react to economic woes? How powerful would it be to not only acknowledge the falling DOW index, but to create a promotion that discounts the price of all products by the percentage fall of the DOW? Aligning your business with the economy and telling customers you understand their financial situation not only gains points in the short term, but will create a sense of partnership and loyalty in the long term.

The Internet as a selling channel continues to evolve faster than the speed of light.. It only took two years from the time Shop.org coined the term "Cyber Monday" to when "Green Monday" eclipsed the day with more online sales. What is "Green Monday" you may ask? Green Monday is a newly created term for the second Monday during the month of December when all the procrastinating shoppers buy online. "Green Monday" rang in sales of $881 million in 2007 compared to "Cyber Monday" sales of $733 million. If the Internet has evolved that much in two years, is your ecommerce site staying up with the times?

By Julian Chu, Demandware Client Success

We've all seen the headlines: Just as the retail sector overall is hemorrhaging, even growth in the ecommerce market has come to a standstill. According to the latest statistics from comScore, growth slowed considerably this summer and dropped to just 1% year-over-year in October. Many are predicting even worse for the remainder of the season.

But it's in times like these that leaders emerge, take market share and set themselves up for future success. In Demandware's own client base, we see more than a few companies continuing to post strong growth even up through last week. In a no-growth environment, every site visit is critical, each ad placement a precious investment. So the question for today is, are you prepared to engage in close-quarters, site-to-site combat for consumer market share this holiday season?

Now, more than ever, online retailers need a comprehensive competitive strategy and detailed tactical plan that focuses on retaining existing customers and winning new ones from competitors. The strategy part starts by understanding:

• Who are our target consumers and where/how do they shop?
  
• What is our share of wallet among these customers, in relevant product categories?
  
• Who are our leading competitors? Why would these customers spend their money with these competitors and not with us?

Tactically, retailers need a plan going into the holidays that anticipates and prepares them to respond to the marketing tactics (e.g., campaigns, offers, promotions) of their competitors. Not just planning what campaigns you will launch, but also:

• What will the key competitors do?
  
• How might they respond to our tactics?
  
• How should we respond in turn?

This is all about "war-gaming," thinking through different scenarios and being prepared to launch new campaigns and offers on a daily basis. Pulling this off successfully requires work to be done before the holidays begin, to strategize and develop a tactical plan for key dates in the season. It requires you to have processes and tools in place to monitor what competitors are doing in the marketplace, and to measure how you're faring in comparison.

And, importantly, it requires that you have a flexible technology infrastructure that allows you to prepare different campaigns, offers and promotions ahead of time, and then launch them on a moment's notice when and where needed.

Is your organization prepared to engage in site-to-site combat this year?

If you missed part one of our Countdown to the Holidays series, be sure to check out Part I: Getting the Basics Right.

By Julian Chu, Demandware Client Success

As we approach the beginning of the holiday season, it surely would be wise—if you haven't already—to review your ecommerce site experience and take care of those "good hygiene" issues that you've been meaning to take care of all year.

I've recently written a white paper and a couple of articles (The Ultimate Online Shopping Experience, Part 1: Strategy & Design and Part 2: Features & Functionality) that explore the essentials of designing superior online shopping experiences—the key things that online retailers should and should not do. Have a look at these more detailed articles, but here's also a brief summary:

First, while crafting the customer experience strategy (i.e., deciding what to change), keep in mind the following important steps:

• Articulate your top brand, business and customer experience goals
• Define the customer experience around personas
• Review the shopping experience end to end
• Build the strategy using multiple perspectives
• Keep things simple
• Test your assumptions by observing real customers
• Consider analytics and tracking requirements as part of the design process

Of course, at this time of year most companies don't have time for a detailed site redesign. But even a high-level review of key aspects of the online shopping experience can help identify some easy-to-implement changes that could result in that crucial extra 25 to 50 basis points in conversion. Do some test shops on your site (or better yet, ask a ‘fresh set of eyes' to do this), paying attention to the following:

• Will a customer feel safe shopping on this site?
• Is there anything important "below the fold"?
• How else can we save the customer time and effort?
• Are all the tasks or workflow processes on our site clearly explained and easy to follow?
• Do we offer multiple ways of viewing or sorting information on the site to suit a given customer's personal preferences?
• Are product recommendations presented in a way that motivates browse and purchase?
• Does the site provide explicit feedback in response to customer actions?
• Is the checkout process as efficient and easy-to-use as possible?
• Does the site provide clear, detailed and context-relevant "help" wherever needed?
• Are the toll-free number and/or live chat options prominently displayed throughout the site?

In today's market environment, it's more critical than ever to maximize the return on all the hard work and money spent driving traffic to the site. You must ensure that the online shopping experience on your site is easy, enjoyable and efficient.

For more on delivering superior online shopping experiences, download the "Designing Superior Online Shopping Experiences" best practices guide authored by Julian Chu. 

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing

No, not really, the holidays are still on as scheduled, but with all the doom and gloom reports about the economy; I am starting to think the Grinch may be running The Fed. Yet even with all this noise, retailers are reacting quickly to the economy and the ones who manage to go on offense early will be the most likely to succeed.

Believe it or not the holiday shopping season already began. While many retailers may not label it quite yet as holiday shopping, retailers are making a big push early with major discounts....take a look at an email I got last week from Jos A. Bank.

And rest assured this is not the only email I got today about upcoming sales.

It is not even just an online only phenomenon, even in-store retailers are trying to move customers into the holiday shopping mode quickly. For instance, being the last minute shopper I am, I went to Target one night last week to find a Halloween costume, only to find employees taking down most of the Halloween section and in its place a holiday wonderland appeared. This was 4 full days before Halloween, and I know I am not the only last minute shopper out there!

That said, retailers need to be aggressive this year, and those caught behind the curve may struggle.

Online retailers in particular, need to be able to adjust quickly and need to be in full control of their site. In a tough economy the opportunity cost of waiting a day for a simple change is too high. Merchandisers, marketers, and web developers need to be on their toes not only to react to competitors but more importantly to strike first with great content, product information, and most importantly promotions.