Planning for Holiday 2007: Is Your Search Campaign Ready?

Oneupweb in December 2006 conducted a study to determine trends relative to traffic, conversion rates and total sales among e-commerce sites during the holiday season. The resulting whitepaper, 2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends: A Study of the Consumer Behavior Online during 2006 Holiday Season, offers up some useful information for 2007’s sales season.

Based on its research, Oneupweb came up with five best practices for paid-search advertising:
1. Be ready by Halloween.
2. Back-to-school triggers testing.
3. Protect peak season opportunities, e.g., develop bid strategies with higher conversion rates in mind (to offset seasonally high keyword prices), and develop inventory strategies.
4. Prolong the season with e-cards.
5. Use milestones to predict peak volumes, e.g., multiply Halloween levels by four or double levels two weeks prior to Thanksgiving to estimate peak volumes .

Oneupweb’s projections included:
• Traffic and sales will increase as the holidays draw closer, dropping the week before Christmas.
• Conversion rates (the percentage of unique visitors buying) will increase as the holidays draw closer, dropping the week before Christmas.
• Cyber Monday will not be the largest sales day, but will mark a jump in trends.