Truth be told, I am not a fan of the lines and chaos that accompany holiday shopping. Although I will make a few trips to Costco this year, for the most part, I will find myself looking for holiday deals and shopping for friends, family, and associates at home, online.

And I am not alone. The online shopping season officially kicks off on "Cyber Monday," a term coined by Shop.org in 2005 to define the Monday following Thanksgiving. In my opinion, Cyber Monday is an amazing marketing platform benefiting consumers and retailers — all at the 'warehouse' of online deals known as cybermonday.com.

According to Shop.org, on Cyber Monday itself, more than 400 special offers will be available on the site, some of which will be exclusive promotions only available at the website. Offers will include free shipping specials, "doorbuster" deals, discounts, and free gifts with purchase. Retailers participating this year include Barnes & Noble.com, circuitcity.com, eToys.com, and Sears.com. How popular is the site? Last year, more than 300,000 people visited CyberMonday.com on Cyber Monday.

And it incorporates a charitable cause. In addition to providing consumers with special promotions, when shoppers make a purchase through CyberMonday.com, retailers provide a percentage of that sale to Shop.org, which will then be donated to its Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund to help students pursuing careers in eCommerce.

Sales are up online
According to results of the 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org, more than half of online retailers (56.1 percent) expect their holiday sales to increase at least fifteen percent over last year. While this is still down from 2007 projections, it shows online sales are doing much better than storefronts. In addition to a rise in online sales, the Internet will have a large impact on overall sales this holiday season. According to a BIGresearch survey conducted for Shop.org, the Internet will influence 30.2 percent of holiday sales this year, up from 28.9 percent last year.

How are online store retailers bringing in sales? This year, the majority of retailers (78 percent according to Shopzilla's 2007 survey) plan to offer free shipping with conditions at some point during the holiday season. In addition to free shipping promotions, many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience— features like improved site search, which Shop.org says 42.9 percent of retailers have added or improved since last holiday season to help customers navigate sites more easily. In addition, Shop.org states that retailers continue to experiment with social networking, as nearly one-fourth of online retailers added a Facebook page this year.

For some shoppers, like me, it’s convenience...
What motivates consumers to buy online? In a 2007 pre-holiday survey conducted by Nielsen Online, shoppers cited convenience as their primary motivator. Out of 1,000 respondents, 81 percent, indicated the ability to shop anytime during the day was why they choose to shop online during the holiday season.

By contrast, a survey conducted by The Conference Board later that same year revealed that perks such as free shipping, exclusive online incentives, and bargain hunting were at the top of online holiday shoppers' lists. Ninety percent said that free shipping would entice them to spend more online during the 2007 holiday season and 73 percent said special offers and deals not available in stores would drive their online holiday spending.

This year, other top reasons for buying online instead of in stores include not wanting to fight crowds, easy price comparisons, and high gas prices.

Increasing your holiday sales — is it too late?
Physical storefronts put their Christmas wares out before the Halloween candy is even off the shelves. In fact, I have noticed extra stocks of toys high up in the rafters in one major retailer where I live for months now. But if you are a company with an online storefront, is it still too late to drive holiday traffic to your site?

Holiday keyword research should have been refreshed a couple of months ago, but there is still time to do a few key things to push more shoppers to your site, such as refreshing your title tags to help improve your search engine positioning or pointing links to your site from third parties, such as bloggers, twitter, or press coverage. Consider also having those organizations you give to point back to your site, i.e. if you donate product or your services to a non-profit, ask for some link backs in return. Do you have an RSS feed? Pump it up with keyword headlines targeted toward holiday specials.

Find out more
Cyber Monday, Green Monday, Black Friday - - whether you shop online, offline, on a Monday or a Friday, or at all - - I hope your holidays find you and your business healthy. For additional information on the retail industry, including useful links and upcoming events and conferences, return to the Global Communicator.

Sources:
National Retail Federation
Shop.org
Nielson.com
The Conference Board