Holiday Bonus Add an extra-special feature to your site, and get customers to indulge.
By Melissa Campanelli •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With the holidays just around the corner, now is a great time to add some special features to your website that will likely increase sales. There are four specific things you can do, according to the "2004 Shop.org/BizRate.com Online Holiday Mood Study."
The study found that the most successful website feature for driving sales during last year's holiday period was a gift-idea center (according to 56 percent of online retailers). The study, which polled 1,612 online buyers and more than 100 online retailers, also named these features as runners-up: a suggested-items page (32 percent), a clearance or sale page (32 percent), and a featured sale-item page (31 percent). Here's a closer look at how you can use each feature to benefit your e-business.
1. Gift-idea center: A gift-idea center allows consumers to browse for suggested gifts by gender, price or category. "When an internet-based seller presents me with information from a gift-idea center, it should increase my willingness to pay the e-tailer, since the company is solving a problem for me," says Robert Kauffman, a professor and e-commerce expert at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in Minneapolis.
