Thoughts of Christmas (From Salisbury Journal)

Thoughts of Christmas

9:44am Monday 29th January 2007 in Your Computer

You might think I'm crazy for mentioning Christmas at this time of year but if you are responsible for selling on-line via the web, then now is the time to start thinking about it.

Every year, Christmas sales massively exceed the previous year. On-line sales at Christmas in the UK were up 54 per cent this year over last year and have more than doubled in the last two years.

The first thing to consider with Christmas sales is that most people buying over the web will be in a hurry and will probably find a web site via one of the major search engines, Google, MSN or Yahoo with Google having the lion's share at the moment.

Google takes up to 9 months to list a new web site and can take many more months to move that site to a prominent position. This has become known as the "Google Sandbox" and is believed to be a deliberate policy to discourage companies from creating sites which are designed for short term gain.

So take a look at the effectiveness of your web site right now if you want to gain from the expected surge in sales at Christmas.

Chris Stanbury - Cravenplan Computers (specialists in web design and web marketing) - www.cravenplan.co.uk Chris also acts as an expert witness on IT cases - www.it-expert-witness.co.uk