Christmas is the most wonderful time of year...for retailers! Each and every passing year, many stores (both in the online and physical world) seem to be getting more organised, setting their stalls out early – encouraging shoppers to organise themselves early in time for the busy season too. The fact that stores are starting to advertise their Christmas ranges early, is simply because they want to stay ahead of their competitors and get their foot through the door first. If you're an online store, you too must be able to stay ahead of the trend – if you miss the opening of the door, the room may be too full when you arrive and it'll be a struggle to introduce your products to the shopper.

At Advansys, we are eCommerce specialists who are able to advise and build bespoke eBay store designs for all manner of businesses. Christmas is an important time for retailers – make sure that you are in the room, getting attention from shoppers, rather than looking at a closed door.

How much shoppers spend online

According to figures from IMRG and Capgemini, online UK retailers took £24bn over Christmas last year – which made up almost a quarter of the total UK online income in the whole of 2015. The Christmas sales period (measured over eight weeks – from 1^st November onwards) saw sales rise by 12% from the same period last year – slightly ahead of the 2015 average of 11%. The collected figures also estimate that 27% of all retail sales now take place online – which will rise throughout the year. The continued rise is thanks in no small part of the popularity in mobile eCommerce, which grew by 42% throughout 2015.

These statistics show that online shopping is constantly on the rise – at Christmas the amount that is spent online will inevitably go up. This should suggest that any eCommerce trader should be looking at taking full advantage, making sure that they're visible amongst the many competitors during the busy season.

How my eBay store take advantage of the rising statistics?

As an eCommerce trader, you already know that it can be difficult to jump around that retail room, waving for attention – especially at Christmas when retailers big and small are all battling for attention on the high street and online. Speaking of online shopping - eBay offers a great way for retailers to sell their products to customers located anywhere in the world. Being the world's largest marketplace, eBay is the room that you should be seen in.

A major aspect in ensuring that your eBay store is able to capture the attention of shoppers – is its design. Here are some steps that you should take when thinking about how to present your store;

A professional Christmas facelift! Despite the obvious differences, shopping online actually isn't that different from shopping in the physical world. The only real difference is that online shopping allows you to do it from the comfort of your own home, rather than being outside, bumping into the crowds and getting cold! Physical stores like to deck themselves out in seasonal decorations to try and entice shoppers in – the decorations act as a reminder for them that they should be organised for the busy upcoming season too. So just like the physical world – online stores that sell during the season, should employ similar methods by making their design relate to Christmas, acting as a reminder to anyone who may be browsing the store.
Avoid using 'generic' templates. Many eBay stores just use its given template to design their stores with – this is something that won't stand out and would, in all likelihood, be considered 'lazy' by any potential customers. You need to set a unique look, something that the customer has never seen before – this will set you up to look like a professional business, rather than just the average seller that the generic template portrays.
Promote yourself! Once you've set up a unique and inviting eBay store design, you should start to advertise yourself. Social media is a great, organic (and free!) way of undertaking this – Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are great platforms on which to shout about your products and services. You'll find that by using hashtags and inviting images, people will be interested in what you post and will want to engage with you – this may eventually lead to a sale. A sale that you wouldn't have had without having a presence on social media – underlining its importance for brand awareness.
Building up trust. One of the most important aspects of buying on eBay is the feedback score of each seller. When a customer buys a product, they leave a score of how they found the service – the higher the score, the more you are able to trust the seller when you're thinking of buying a product from them. If you manage to nail down the service aspect – selling products as described, packaging quality and speed of postage – if you can also do the same with the design, then it will all play in to retaining a high feedback score. If new customers are able to see that you're a trusted seller – this will give you the edge over any competitors. What's more – if a customer has a positive experience, then they will be likely to return to buy another product.

Choose Advansys for help with your eBay store design!

Having helped numerous businesses over the years, we have constantly grown and changed with all the trends that the World Wide Web has presented. Aside from our ebay store designs, our services include the design and build of responsive, high-speed websites, as well as long-term ecommerce marketing tactics such as SEO and PPC. With a vast experience and many successful projects undertaken for business large and small, we know that we are able to help you to achieve the conversions that you require.

For more information on how we can help to improve your presence in a search engines' rankings, please contact us on 0838 050 2700 or send us an e-mail at sales@advansys.com