Valentine’s Day: The New BIG Online Holiday
By Jamila White, “The E-Commerce Diva”
If you think your big holiday rush is over, think again.
Last year, Valentine’s Day shoppers spent a whopping $3.9 billion on the web alone – a 30% increase over 2004. If you’ve got an e-commerce web site and you aren’t taking advantage of this market, you’re missing out on BIG sales: shoppers spent an average of $144 online for Valentine’s Day gifts in 2005, according to a report from online payment processor Verisign; and February 1 was the biggest single shopping day of the period.
Some of the biggest winners came from these retail categories:
- Greeting cards, up 50%
- Jewelry, up 34% (diamonds up 130%)
- Flowers, up 16% (purchases on February 14 up 349%!)
- Candy, up 2% (chocolate up 49%)
But you don’t have to be in one of those industries to get a piece of the Valentine’s Day pie. Practically any product or service can be positioned for Valentine’s Day sales:
- A night out – restaurant, limo, tickets, clothing/shoes
- Spa/massage/beauty/makeover (including a romantic couples’ massage)
- Travel for two
- Stuffed animals
- Lingerie
- Love songs
- Photo albums and frames – anything sentimental
- Personalized keepsakes
- Relief from burden: maid service, babysitter, etc.
- Anything for couples
- Anything red
- Anything heart-shaped
- Anything gift-wrapped in red
5 Tips to Boost Your Valentine’s Day Sales:
- Group gift
items together and promote them heavily on your home page and
via email.
- Make it
easy to select the “right” gift: organize your offering
by category, recipient, and/or price range.
- Start early
– begin promoting right after the new year.
- Offer expedited
delivery for last-minute shoppers, and highlight this feature.
(Be sure to make your turnaround times and deadlines perfectly clear.
Don’t make any promises you can’t keep – it will be
hard to placate a husband whose furious wife didn’t get her gift
on time!)
- Think beyond “sweethearts” – nowadays, people shop give Valentine’s Day gifts to parents, children, teachers, children’s classmates – even pets!
But why stop at Valentine’s Day? With a little smart e-commerce marketing, you could easily be ringing up the gift sales all year ‘round.
© Copyright Jamila White. All rights reserved.
About the Author:
Jamila White, "The E-Commerce Diva™", helps small business
owners attract new customers and sell more products on the Web. Get her
free “Sell More Online” newsletter at http://www.ecommercediva.com/newsletter.html.
[NOTE: You are welcome to forward this article or "reprint" it
on your own web site or newsletter as long as it remains complete and unaltered
(including the "about the author" info at the end and the copyright
notice, but not this note), and you send a copy of your reprint to articles@ecommercediva.com.]
Article Downloads for Publishers:
- "Valentine’s Day: The New BIG Online Holiday" - plain text version
- "Valentine’s Day: The New BIG Online Holiday" - HTML (web) version
