Cyber Monday: The Last-Minute Checklist

Since 2005, when the concept was invented by Shop.org, Cyber Monday has been the second largest celebration of shopping madness in the U.S., taking place right after Black Friday. In 2012, all records of online spending in a single day were beaten on Cyber Monday, with sales reaching $1.46 billion, according to comScore. In fact, Cyber Monday sales have increased every year since its inception (even in 2009), and Adobe predicts that total online spending on Cyber Monday this year will reach $2.27 billion, surpassing Black Friday online sales by almost 50 percent.

Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are extremely important for any online retailer. It can make or break your year, so it's essential to get ready to attract both new and previous customers to choose your store over your competitors. We're sure you've been preparing for the holiday rush, but some double-checking can never hurt. Although there's less than a week until Cyber Monday, you still have some time left to ensure that you get the most out of the largest online celebration this year. Let's go through the checklist to make sure you're ready.

1. Ensure you have enough stock. There's hardly anything more frustrating than having consumers being unable to fulfill their requests because you're out of stock and can't handle their orders until the desired date (usually it's Christmas, but it really depends on what you sell). Widen your product range and expand to new online marketplaces before the holiday season. Now it might be a little too late to do that, but the least you can do is stock up or, if you're drop-shipping, ensure that your suppliers have enough inventory reserved for you. Sure, there's only five days left, but most suppliers try to be as flexible as possible during this time of year as well, so you just might be lucky.

2. Arrange some tempting special offers. Amazon.com will do it, Staples will do it, Wal-Mart will do it, your competitors will do it. Basically, you might be losing sales if you don't offer something very special during Cyber Monday. It's all up to your imagination: discounts, free shipping, buy-one-get-one-free offers — anything you can spare really. If there's one date in the year when special offers truly work, it's Cyber Monday.

3. Let everyone know what you're preparing. I wrote about the importance of having a marketing plan for the holidays in July this year, so I believe you've already planned all your Cyber Monday communications. In case you haven't, there's still plenty of time to prepare some newsletters and social media messages. Even the most loyal of your customers might forget you if your competitors do a better job in marketing their Cyber Monday efforts. Let the world know that you're still here (and better than ever). Just don't get carried away; spamming might result in a completely opposite effect.

4. Make sure you can handle the traffic. If you're running your own website, you have to ensure it's ready to welcome all the extra visitors coming to shop. If you use a reliable hosting provider, there should be no problems here, but don't forget to make yourself (and your team) available as well. More visitors usually come with more inquiries about your products, shipping terms and unsuccessful transactions. You have to answer all of them in the quickest timeframe possible. If you don't, you'll lose sales … plenty of them.

5. Ensure you're accessible by phones and tablets. PFS Web projects that traffic from smartphones and tablets might amount to as much as a quarter of all Cyber Monday traffic for most e-commerce websites. In addition to that, around 20 percent of sales might come from users accessing your website with mobile devices. It's as true now as in any other time of the year, but the prospective loss of sales is much higher on Cyber Monday, so test and test again to make sure it's possible to comfortably buy from you using all types of mobile devices.

If you feel confident that you've taken care of all the above issues, there are hardly any reasons for your Cyber Monday not to be successful. If you don't, you still have some time to make the best of it. Either way, I wish you a long and weary Cyber Monday — it's definitely better than a quiet and boring one!

Jagath Narayan is the CEO and co-founder of Ordoro, a platform that streamlines the back-office workload of ecommerce merchants. Jagath can be reached at jagath@ordoro.com.