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In the Spotlight
Last-Minute Ways to Move Holiday Products

Now that you've stocked your inventory for the holiday sales rush, how can you maximize December sales and minimize January clearance? Here's a collection of best practices to help you succeed this winter.

1. Promote gifts and holiday-themed items on your home page. Gift ideas should be up front and easy to find.
2. Create your own gift guide. Help holiday shoppers find exactly the right gift for each person on their shopping list with gift recommendations sorted by price, type of gift, and type of recipient. For maximum convenience, you may wish to create individual section pages to display different categories of gifts.
3. Preempt questions with clear product descriptions and photos. Holiday shoppers want to know that they're buying something worthy of the recipient - and everyone appreciates a good value. Be sure that your product descriptions are accurate and enticing.
4. Send a holiday email newsletter. Contact past and potential customers who have opted to receive communications from you to promote holiday gift items and special offers. Make sure your email content promotes the latest holiday products on your site, with links directly to the item pages for those products. If you haven't already set up email marketing, click the "Email Marketing" link in the Store Manager to get started.
5. Drive traffic with holiday coupons. Include these coupons in your email newsletter to promote specific gift packages or offer promotional discounts on holiday items. To create a coupon, click the "Coupon Manager" link in the Store Manager.
6. Offer Internet-only discounts. If you have a bricks-and-mortar business, encourage purchases from your web site, which can go straight from your distribution center to the customer, without being stocked on retail shelves.
7. Deliver gift-with-purchase incentives. Gift-givers need perks too!
8. Include accurate estimates for shipping times. Whether it's for Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa, holiday gift givers want to know their gifts will arrive on time. Consider creating a page with small gift items that can be express-shipped for last-minute shoppers. (Also, see our Store Building Tip for more advice about shipping guarantees.)
9. Beef-up your customer care. Along with the holiday sales volume come holiday returns, shipping problems, and other headaches. During this time of year, dedicate additional staff to the important task of addressing customer concerns. Whether you add extra personnel to a team of customer care representatives or just increase the percentage of your own time that you spend on this worthy endeavor, your excellent customer care at the holidays can lead to satisfied return shoppers year-round.

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Store-Building Tip
Ship It on Time for the Holidays

Holiday shoppers expect their gifts to arrive on time. If you want to guarantee on-time deliveries for the holidays, it pays to know what you can count on from outside shippers.

To help you predict shipping times and delivery dates, major shippers compile holiday shipping schedules. For example, UPS has put together special peak-season shipping schedules for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. The UPS web site also features packaging tips to help you get products there in one piece and reduce returns.

You may wish to offer additional shipping methods to ensure that customers have express delivery options. To change your shipping methods, go to the Store Manager's Order Settings section and click "Ship Methods."

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Feature Update
Things to Consider Before Upgrading to Merchant Solutions

For an easy upgrade to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, please consider the following issues before you upgrade:

• Upgrading to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions has important implications for the custom domain name(s) you currently use with your store. Learn more.
• Find out how upgrading to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions affects participation in Yahoo! Shopping. When you upgrade to Merchant Solutions, you'll need to complete new product information fields that Yahoo! Shopping now requires. For more information and complete instructions, click here.

E-commerce on the Web
Links to Sites, Features, and Stories

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