The deck Presented by Alyssa Zaremba and Heath Bertini: For the 2017 holiday season, NetElixir has predict slower than average e-commerce growth (See NetElixir's research and forecast covered by MarketingLand). As the online market becomes saturated and dominated by larger players, online businesses need to stay ahead of the curve in order to thrive. Join Alyssa Zaremba and Heath Bertini of NetElixir for online marketing best practices, insights, and actionable recommendations that will help your business gear up in time for peak season.

1. DOS AND DON’TS:
ONLINE SELLING DURING
THE HOLIDAYS
October 12, 2017
netelixir.com/holidays

2. AGENDA
• 2017 Holiday Trends & Forecast
• E-commerce Dos
• E-commerce Don’ts
• Resources for Your Business
• Q&A

3. 3
2017 HOLIDAY
FORECAST

4. Holiday ’17
NetElixir Forecast
NetElixir’s 2017 Forecast:
• Number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas is higher
than past few years. Retailers can get creative to maximize
sales during this period.
• Voice search led purchases (mostly through Alexa) will
experience 1.5-2x Y/Y increase.
• Despite having more time for planned gift purchase, a higher %
of consumers will wait till the last min. (Dec 20-22)
• One day shipping and order online and pick up in store will
play an important role for this customer group. And so will the
local + mobile combination.
• Purchases made from mobile phones will cross 30% of all
online purchases.
• Post Christmas purchases (“Me Buys”) will experience
substantial Y/Y increase.

5. NETELIXIR PREDICTS SLOWER THAN USUAL
ONLINE SALES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
10% Y/Y GROWTH

6. SLOWER ONLINE
HOLIDAY SALES
GROWTH
COMPARED TO
PREVIOUS YEARS
Source (2013-2016): Actual ecommerce data from comscore
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017(Projected)
Y/Y Holiday ECommerce Growth

7. US ECOMMERCE REVENUE
(PROJECTED)
10% Y/Y GROWTH ~ $84 B
INCREMENTAL $ GROWTH ~ $8 B
LETS DO SOME MATH…

8. AMAZON’S SHARE
WILL GROW TO 34%
(FROM 30% IN 2016)
• 2017 Amazon Holiday Sales
Projection:
34% x $84 B = $28.5 B.
• 2016 Amazon Holiday Sales:
30% X $77 B = $23 B.
• Amazon’s incremental holiday
bounty: $5.5 B.

9. THE REST OF ONLINE RETAILERS
(AGGREGATE ADDITIONAL ONLINE HOLIDAY SALES: $8 B-$5.5 B)
$2.5 B

10. EST. # U.S. ONLINE RETAILERS = 200K
$2.5 B / 200K =
$12,500 EACH

11. 5 DO’S

12. • Go for a mobile-responsive design, not an M-dot site
• Google’s Key Metrics & Benchmarks:
– Page Index Speed = 3000 ms or 3 seconds (on 3G)
– Page Weight = 1.0 MB
– Total Requests = 75 requests rendered
• Core Problems:
– Non-optimized images
– Non-minified resources
– Too many requests
• Optimize for “near-me” searches
– SEO local listings + paid search ad personalization
DO: MAKE SURE YOU ARE MOBILE-OPTIMIZED

13. • 21% of shoppers said Free Shipping is the most important
factor when choosing where to buy a holiday gift.
• Free shipping is just another promotion lever you can opt to
pull – can place a spend limit. (i.e. Orders over $49 qualify)
• Look at your marketing campaigns from a high-level and
decide which tactic will yield the highest ROMI.
DO: CONSIDER SHIPPING PROMOTIONS FROM A
MARKETING PERSPECTIVE – NOT A LOGISTICS
ONE

14. • Holiday newsletters / seasonal links
– Increase frequency of newsletters (If bandwidth allows)
– Pre / Post Black Friday & Cyber Monday Updates
– Important updates to promotions for publishers (i.e. emphasis
on expiration dates for links and deals)
• Promo / vanity codes
– Provide promo / vanity codes to publishers far in advance of
code activation date, giving them ample time to build out
landing pages if needed.
– Communicate expiration dates directly with vanity code
publishers, not just in newsletters
• Performance incentives
– Encourages more activity from publishers without paying up-
front slotting fees
– Conduct individual outreach to top publishers to see if a
performance incentive would help increase activity
– Types of Performance Incentives
• Tiered commission structure
• Flat pay-out for exceeding # or $ sales threshold
• Temporary increased commission rates
DO: COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR AFFILIATES

15. • Ad Customizers – customized messaging for higher
engagement
– Ex.) RLSA and display remarketing promo codes for cart
abandoners
• Targeting
– Create hyper-targeted campaigns for top-selling SKUs
– Re-visit Dayparting & Geo-bids – shoppers are more
aggressive during the holidays and your audience changes
to your customer’s gift-buyer.
• Avoid wasting ad spend
• Upload product feed regularly (at least once a day –
avoid peak hours!)
DO: PAID SEARCH

16. • Make sure you have no broken links
– Avoid conversion-killing 404 errors
– Make sure links are directing to a working page – be especially
mindful of your top performing pages
– This is a time when businesses may be swapping out products
for seasonal items and internal page linking may become
mudded in the process.
• Create seasonal content
– Research what kind of content is highly searched for during the
holiday season and optimize for those key words/phrases.
DO: SEO

17. 5 DON'TS

18. Avoid Website Outages / Account Outage
• No major changes during peak hours!
• Auto-tag new ad copies 2-3 days before offer goes live on
site.
• Do not push new feeds during peak hrs.
• Budget control for top selling products – setup automated
rules for budget control before and after peak hrs.
DON’T: MAKE WEB CHANGES DURING PEAK HOURS

19. • Have at least 3 days worth of ad spend
– An issue can occur on a Friday evening that can cause
huge loss to your business
• Be mindful of your card expiration date
DON’T: FORGET TO HAVE A BACK-UP CREDIT CARD

20. • HTTPS – check your SSL certificate expiration date
• Google will be triggering notification warnings to Chrome
users visiting non-secure sites
– Beginning October 2017
–  Bounce Rates Increasing
DON’T: TAKE DATA SECURITY FOR GRANTED

21. • Shoppers tend to be under more stress during the holiday
season
• Dedicate extra hours to social media comments and
complaints
• Expect higher call volume regarding website inquiries
• Set up your support team so that they may answer
customer questions promptly.
DON’T: NEGLECT CUSTOMER SERVICE

22. Accurate & Updated Inventory:
• Follow up with suppliers & shippers to ensure they can meet
increase demand levels
• Avoid losing out on crucial selling days due to ill-prepared
holiday supply chain strategy.
DON’T: FORGET TO COORDINATE WITH SHIPPING
PROVIDERS / SUPPLIERS

23. RESOURCES FOR YOUR BUSINESS

24. FREE SEARCH MARKETING
RESOURCES
• NETELIXIR.COM/HOLIDAYS – HOLIDAY RESOURCES: PAID SEARCH + SEO
• NETELIXIR.COM/BLOG – SEARCH MARKETING INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE
• LXRMARKETPLACE.COM – PAID SEARCH + SEO + ECOMM TOOLS/APPS
• LXRSEO.COM – SEO WEBSITE GRADER
• TESTMYSITE.THINKWITHGOOGLE.COM – MOBILE SITE SPEED GRADER
• SEARCHENGINELAND.COM – SEARCH MARKETING INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE
• SEOROUNDTABLE.COM – SEO KNOWLEDGE
• PPCHERO.COM – PAID SEARCH KNOWLEDGE

25. 25
DOWNLOAD OUR HOLIDAY
READINESS WORKBOOK
FOR
20 PROVEN HOLIDAY
SUCCESS STRATEGIES
www.netelixir.com/holidays

27. QUESTIONS?

28. CONTACT US:
ALYSSA ZAREMBA
ALYSSA@NETELIXIR.COM
HEATH BERTINI
HEATH.BERTINI@NETELIXIR.COM