At Thanksgiving dinner, my sister-in-law proudly proclaimed that she was going home to sleep so she could start shopping at midnight. It was at that point where I knew some type of intervention would be needed to snap her back to reality.

But, there was no hope.

She had her sights set on what she wanted, where she was going, what coupons were needed, what time she needed to be in line at each store and when a 3 minute pee break was warranted.

That’s a little too intense for me.

Like most Black Friday shoppers, I’m sure she scored herself some good deals even if it involved losing sleep and driving around in the wee small hours of the morning.

The news Friday night was filled with stories about people sleeping on sidewalks waiting for stores to open and we can’t forget the bargain shopper who was so driven to grab all the deals she could, she pepper-sprayed fellow shoppers.

Once we were all tucked in, we woke up the next morning ready to celebrate Small Business Saturday. The American Express sponsored promotion, now in it’s second year, was designed to get people to shop their local home-town small businesses. Unfortunately, if you ask ten people about Small Business Saturday, you’ll be lucky if one of them knows what you’re talking about.

So on to Cyber Monday. The big day for eCommerce store owners.

I got the obligatory call from the local newspaper to give my interpretation of how the day was going to shape up. “It will be busy and people will be shopping online.” What else is there to say?

My in-box was filling up with Cyber Monday promotions beginning late Sunday night and continuing through the day on Monday. None were spectacular enough to make me want to buy. Sure there were plenty of percentage-off coupons and free shipping deals, but none got me to say “Wow!”

I talked with several eCommerce store owners who said their Cyber Monday sales were “good.” I got an “awesome” out of one of them. In this economy, I guess an “awesome” is pretty “good.”

The only other shopping day to note is Free Shipping Day which is coming up on December 16th. Close to 1,400 online stores are offering free shipping that day, which also happens to be the cut-off for Christmas delivery. I wouldn’t get overly excited about this one, as most etailers are already offering deals on shipping for holiday shoppers.

If you managed to get a good deal during any of these special shopping days, congratulations.

If your eCommerce store did better this Cyber Monday than last, good for you.

I’m waiting for the after Christmas sales.

With only a few hours left until the holiday shopping season shifts into high gear, I have to ask…. are you ready?

No, I mean are you really ready?

Here are some things that I thought of that maybe you haven’t in regards to getting your operation ready for the mad rush.

Customer Service:

• Adjust your customer service hours to accommodate early morning and late evening shoppers. This time of the year not everyone is going to be a 9 to 5 shopper. It may cost a few extra dollars to staff your customer service department a few more hours a day, but those extra hours should bring in extra sales.
• Make sure all your reps are fully trained on your store’s policies and they have a copy of policies in reach at all times. All reps should be “on the same page” with policies, a quick meeting with your staff to go over polices and get rid of any gray areas is also suggested.
• There will be one-off situations where you may have to deviate from policy. Make sure this deviation doesn’t become the norm by having such deviations approved and noted by a supervisor. It’s also a good thing to let the customer know that you’re making an exception for them as a one time courtesy.
• Attitude is everything! Your customer service department is going to be busy, so make sure you’re not overworking your reps to the point where they’re not providing courteous service to your customers. Make sure they have scheduled breaks so they can de-stress and prepare to get back to work. Providing motivation throughout the day goes a big way too, bring in some pizza, hop on the phone yourself to help out when it’s busy and don’t forget to acknowledge good service when you see or hear it.

Warehouse:

• Just like customer service, you are going to want to adjust your warehouse hours accordingly to keep up with the holiday demand. You don’t want orders sitting in a warehouse for two, three or four days because you’re not staffed properly. Your customers expect their orders to be shipped on time, so don’t let them down.
• Always make sure that express packages that customers are paying extra for, get out on time. You don’t want to be issuing refunds for shipping because the warehouse “forgot” to get air orders out before ground.
• Spot check packages to make sure the items inside have been packaged properly. You don’t want breakage – especially this time of the year! Pull packages that have been packed and prepared for shipment and open them up to make sure breakable items are wrapped properly, the right amount of dunnage has been used and any promotional material has been inserted with the items.
• If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to move your fast selling items to the head of your pick line. This saves lots of time and keeps your warehouse moving.
• Safety should always be on the top of everyone’s mind in the warehouse. While the pace of operations has increased, common sense should still prevail. Make sure no short-cuts are taking place that could result in injury and that your warehouse staff is trained on proper lifting and equipment use. And never, ever, let people operate machinery that they haven’t been properly trained on.
• Create daily goals for package output and accuracy – and reward your staff for hitting those numbers. A pizza party on Friday goes a long way and be sure to constantly motivate the guys and gals doing the heavy lifting! They’re the lifeblood of your operation and they’re literally busting their butt for you this time of year. “Atta-boys” all around!

Your eCommerce Store:

• What does your store look like? I hope you have a nice holiday header that’s free of flashing lights, blinking reindeer noses and falling snowflakes littering the screen. Just like department stores decorate for the holiday, you should have your store showing some spirit as well. But don’t go overboard! You want to put people in the holiday shopping mood – not turn the off.
• Create a gift buying section on your site broken down into categories that make sense to your customers. Gifts for Him, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Kids 12 and Under…. you get the picture. Don’t make customers hunt all over for gift items, lead that horse to the water!
• Make sure your polices are up to date – especially your return policy – and provide a link to your policy page in your order confirmation. One thing you don’t want to do is make your policies so restrictive nobody wants to buy from you. Returns are a part of doing business and you’re going to get items back, don’t look at returns as an enemy!
• Prominently post your customer service telephone number, extended holiday hours and any other contact information on your site for easy shopper reference. A telephone number should always be in the header of your website.
• If you’re using live chat, USE IT! I’ve seen way too many sites offer live chat but when you go to use it you’re prompted with a “sorry, we’re closed” message. Most live chat programs allow you the ability to use a different graphic when your chat reps are unavailable – take advantage of that. Don’t promote live chat when nobody is around to, well…. chat.
• Check your home page featured items. If they’re out of stock, remove them!

Is it me or does it seem like Christmas really does start in July?

When I worked in radio, we started playing the Christmas music on Thanksgiving day, and then it was only one song an hour. Now radio stations across the country are queuing up “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” before the Halloween candy is eaten in an attempt to be the first with the holly jollies.

It used to be that the day known as “Black Friday” was the big shopping day of the year for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving would see folks lining up at stores waiting for the doors to unlock at 9am to cash in on the best deals of the season. Now some stores are offering Black Friday deals all month long, while others are starting their sales not first thing Friday morning, but Thanksgiving night.

Not wanting to let the bricks-and-mortar stores have all the fun, the eCommerce world created “Cyber Monday” – the Monday after Thanksgiving (or the Monday after Black Friday if you’re keeping score) when the deals would flow for online shoppers. It’s also the one day of the year where at least one major etailer’s website will crash making them the top story on all the newscasts and cashing in on a butt-load of free advertising.

Just last year, yet another new shopping holiday cropped up – “Small Business Saturday” – the Saturday after Thanksgiving (or the Saturday after Black Friday if you’re not confused yet). This newly minted day of spending is aimed at supporting your hometown, locally owned, neighborhood business. The organizer of the event, American Express, encourages shoppers to visit Main Street USA instead of the big boxes on Small Business Saturday and spend (lots of) money at the mom and pops in your community.

Sunday, that would be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or the Sunday after Black Friday, or the Sunday after Small Business Saturday, or the Sunday before Cyber Monday, seems to be the odd man out in this trinity of spending. Or could it be that Sunday is being reserved as a day of rest?

All this hype and hullabaloo leads up to the big climax on Christmas morning when kids all across America will wake mommy and daddy up at 5am to rip open presents.

And then, like Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kris Humphries, it’s all over in 90 seconds.

Or is it?

Now it’s time for the “After Christmas Sale” where everything that was on sale on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Restful Sunday and Cyber Monday goes on sale again. Only this time it’s on sale for an extra 10% off.

Man, are we suckers.

A younger me, on the right, working the line in the Ferret Store's warehouse. Picture from July 11, 2005.

But alas, the days of me picking, packing and shipping orders are gone. But I do remember them. I remember them well.

When I owned TheFerretStore.com, a typical Monday would consist of about 300 – 350 orders. Once Black Friday hit, a typical Monday had us looking at 500 – 600. And we didn’t drop ship. All the product we sold was stocked in our warehouse, picked, packed and shipped by a staff of 50 before automation.

We had pickers that would grab an order, start at the front of the pick route and fill big plastic tubs up with that order’s contents. The tub made it’s way on a set of rollers to a packing station where someone would verify items and quantities, wrap the items up with care and seal the box. The box would then make its way to a shipping station where one person would do the weighing and shipping.

Then we automated things. Everything was barcoded for accuracy, the shipping station was eliminated and equipment added at each packing station which enabled the packer to verify, pack and ultimately ship the package. With automation we dramatically increased out output and reduced our headcount.

Even with automation, when the holidays rolled around, it was all hands-on-deck. Everyone stepped up to the plate when the orders were backing up. We had a 24-hour shipping guarantee that we had to abide by and that meant many late nights and weekends. Customer Service Representatives would help out after their shifts, all our managers were pulled into the warehouse and basically anyone who could breathe was enlisted to help.

While the orders were going out, stock was coming in, so we had to balance and work around stockers who would be in the aisles restocking shelves or relocating product for quicker picking. Normally restocking was done at night when the picking operation wasn’t going on, but during the holidays you did what you had to do!

The hustle-bustle of “the season” was fun and exciting, and in case you didn’t get it from this post – I miss it. I loved walking through the warehouse watching that big stack of orders start out inches high and get whittled down by the end of the day, then grow the next morning. I miss the excitement of hearing “150 orders to go and an hour to get them out” at three in the afternoon.

A lot of eCommerce store owners never had the “thrill” of warehousing product and and filling orders. As more and more companies started drop-ship programs the eCommerce store owner needs to just send their orders in and someone else does the work for them.

The stores I own today, are all drop-ship stores and well, aren’t very exciting this time of year! There’s no warehouse for me to walk through and count the boxes going out. There’s no busting on the FedEx or UPS driver who was off for 8 weeks because that 70-pound ferret cage he lifted resulted in a hernia. And there’s no late night or weekend shifts working to crank out the orders (everyone hated them anyway).

I waxed nostalgic in today’s post after receiving an email from one of my good friends who uses Solid Cactus for her eCommerce needs. She was showing off pictures of the orders leaving her warehouse like a new father would show off pictures of his newborn son.

I remember pictures like these too…. I also remember how bad my back hurt by the end of the day Friday.

Happy selling!

If you’d like to open your own eCommerce store and experience all the fun and excitement for yourself, be sure to call upon Solid Cactus. I’m not only a former owner, I’m also a customer. And an employee! They can help you get started on Yahoo! Store, Amazon Webstore, eBay Prostores or Solid Cactus eCommerce.

Then once you’re up and running, Solid Cactus can help with Internet Marketing, Call Center Services, Comparison Shopping Engine Management, accuRATEship Shipping Manager, and total automation with Cactus Complete Commerce.

Shameful, self serving plug is complete.