A Holly, Jolly Holiday for Online Retailers

Online retailers are gearing up for the holiday season and plan to increase their digital marketing and advertising and offer online promotions earlier as their key strategies to increase sales.

"We've seen online shopping start earlier in the holiday season the last few years, and consumers have become much more active on mobile devices. While Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in 2015 according to our same-store sales data, consumers were much more active on Thanksgiving than past years," said ChannelAdvisor Executive Chairman Scot Wingo.

"It's increasingly competitive for retailers to earn their share of consumers' wallets, and this survey shows that retailers are being proactive by offering up more promotions, boosting ad spend and beginning their holiday promotions right now."

The Ecommerce Holiday Season Survey 2016 indicated the holiday season is absolutely critical to retailers and revealed several key findings:

• An average of 52% of annual sales for these businesses is dependent upon the holiday season. 
• 48% of respondents anticipate that 2016 will bring an increase in online sales. 
• To increase holiday sales this year, 38% of ecommerce executives plan to increase their digital marketing/advertising budget. 
• Within digital marketing, 40% of respondents use Product Listings Ads (PLAs) such as Google Shopping; 35% use both PLAs and paid search/text ads such as AdWords. 
• 51% worry about filling orders on time, while 28% worry about failing to respond quickly enough to competitor activity. 
• 30% indicated that their cut-off date for guaranteed on-time Christmas/holiday deliveries is December 20th; however, nearly one in five businesses are now willing to guarantee dates as late as the 22nd or later.