Quick After Christmas Sales Tip #5:
Offer Fast, Flexible Shipping

By all estimates, this will be the busiest holiday season ever for online retailers. Forrester Research has predicted that online after Christmas sales will grow and increase over last year!

But there's still one thing that continues to scare people about buying online: late delivery. There's nothing that drives customers offline and out to the shopping mall faster than the idea that their kids' Christmas presents won't arrive until the 28th of December!

If you use a major nationwide delivery service such as UPS or FedEx, you'll want to feature this information prominently on your web site and ordering pages. People will feel much more comfortable ordering from a site that uses one of these services than one that ships through the mail.

Also, be sure to tell your customers that they MUST order by a certain date in order for you to guarantee delivery time. This will save you a lot of headaches when disgruntled customers call you wondering why the products they ordered haven't arrived yet!

If possible, offer to ship your customers' purchases directly to the gift recipients. This saves your customers the hassle of waiting to receive the package from you and then sending it out to someone else. This is a great way to add value to your service without any additional cost to you!

If you do offer to ship gifts directly to the recipient, I can guarantee that you will have people asking if you offer gift wrapping. This is another way to give your customers a little extra attention without much additional cost to you. Of course, if you are expecting thousands of orders and you work by yourself, this may not be a practical option!

You can also offer your customers the option of adding a holiday card to the package that you send out. Simply ask them what they want written in the card, and then include it with the package. You can charge an additional fee for this or offer it as a free service.

Each package that you send out as a gift from someone else should include a flyer, brochure, or coupon from your company. After all, the recipient of this gift is the perfect potential customer!

Because this person has already seen that you offer great products and prompt shipping, you stand an EXCELLENT chance of converting that person into a paying customer -- but only if they know where the product came from! Always be sure to include some information about your company in gift packages.

After Christmas sales gift certificates can be an easy way to boost sales for sites that sell products and services to niche markets. Here's an example: Joe knows that his Uncle Frank is a serious camera buff, but Joe doesn't know anything about cameras himself. Joe wants to spend $50 on a gift for Uncle Frank, but has no idea what Uncle Frank would want or need for his camera at that price.

So, if Joe finds his way to your photography web site and sees that you offer online gift certificates as after Christmas sales, his problem is solved! He knows that his uncle will love the chance to spend $50 on camera equipment, and this way, Uncle Frank will be able to pick out exactly what he needs.

And the best part is that you haven't just made $50 from Joe -- you've also acquired Uncle Frank as a customer! Offer him good value on products that he needs, and you can bet that he'll be back again when he needs to shop for more camera equipment.

If you are selling a service online, Christmas sales gift certificates are a great way to turn your service into a gift! No matter what you're selling -- it could be spa packages or landscape design -- I can guarantee that your service would make the perfect sales gift for somebody out there.

Plus, you can remind your customers and subscribers that since gift certificates can be delivered electronically, they make great last-minute gifts. Personally, online gift certificates have saved the day for me a few times!

At this time of year especially, it's important to remind people why your product would make a great gift idea. Of course, sites selling products like neckties or ornaments won't need to worry about this as much, but what if your site is selling something like office supplies?

Write a quick article about why your product or service would make a practical or unusual gift. You might want to tell a story about how people who received your services as a gift last year couldn't stop talking about how unique it was!

You may also want to consider putting together a quick "Sales Tips Guide" for your visitors. This can be a great resource for people who visit your site to buy a gift for someone but don't know much about the products you sell.

For example, if your site sells wetsuits, you might offer information about how to choose the right wetsuit as a gift. That way, people who know nothing about them won't end up buying a waterskiing wetsuit for someone who needs one for scuba diving.

One of the biggest problems encountered by some online businesses is that they suffer from what I call a after "Christmas sales Hangover." Not only does business fall off in the month BEFORE the holidays, it also suffers during the month AFTER, when people don't have any money left!

Because of this, it can be a real challenge for some businesses to get revenues back on track in the New Year. One of the best ways to deal with this is to motivate your customers to purchase your product or service NOW for the New Year in exchange for a discounted price or value-added bonus. You'll be able to rest a lot easier over the holidays if you know that you've managed to line up a ton of business for January.

The after Christmas sales season is a make-or-break time of year for many online businesses. And just because you haven't found the time to set up a comprehensive holiday marketing strategy doesn't mean that you can't turn a great profit over the next couple of weeks.

But you do need to take the time to implement some of these after Christmas sales tips IMMEDIATELY. And I mean within the next 24 hours! Stay up late... lock yourself in your office this weekend... do whatever it takes to get your site ready for the holidays NOW. Every day you wait is another day of missed opportunities and lost profits!

The great thing is that all of the tips I've just given you can be implemented quickly and easily. Most of these should only take you an hour or two to set up on your site, and the results will make you wish you had started much sooner.