Strategies to Maximize Your Online Holiday Sales

To help capture those shoppers who screw up and miss last-shipping days, offer them the opportunity to send e-gifts. Here are some other ideas Freedman offered:

• monitor your site 24/7 during the holidays — you can't afford for it to go down during this busy time;
• send email alerts to consumers when products they've shown an interest in come back in stock; and
• send emails in January reminding consumers to “cash in their gift cards.”

* Use the weather to your advantage, said Davis. Recalling last December's blizzard that crippled much of the Northeast, Davis said these house-bound consumers made for a captive online audience. Kenneth Cole created timely offers to capitalize on this event, he said, generating added online revenue for those days. Timely offers work because people are living it at the time, Freedman added.