E-commerce: Four Lessons Learned From Holiday ’06

1. Be ready by Halloween. Consumers start thinking about the holidays in October, making this holiday a good milestone to keep in mind, the whitepapers’ authors note. During the final full week of October (23-29) in 2006, retail site traffic went up 14.2 percent, conversion rates grew 15.7 percent and sales rose by 9.8 percent. These rates didn’t drop to pre-Oct. 23 levels until the final week before Christmas. In order to determine if your Web site can handle the Christmas volume, “whatever volume is occuring Halloween week, prepare for four times that during peak weeks,” Oneupweb officials write.