Veteran E-Tailer Reveals Most Popular Promotion For Lure Of Online Customers

Shipping that holiday gift across the country might not cost a cent this year...if you know where to shop. According to results of the 2007 eHoliday Study, conducted by BizRate Research for Shop.org and Shopzilla, free shipping offers will abound online this holiday season. The most popular shipping promotion will be free shipping with conditions, which the majority of retailers (78.6%) will offer this holiday season (Free shipping with conditions means that a customer must purchase a certain item or a certain number of or dollar amount of merchandise before receiving the offer).

There is a good reason for that. Of all the holiday promotions, from deep discounting merchandise to coupons, free shipping (with conditions) remains king in luring customers.

\"Conditions\", of course means a minimal amount of purchase, or on certain products, or a number of products, etc.

Though every online consumer, including me, would love it to be, \"Free shipping on every order of one penny or more. But consumers are more savvy, many having been in business themselves, and they understand that you can\'t \"give away the farm\".

However, many consumers in this day and age, have friends worldwide, thanks to ye old Internet. And many of those friends will be receiving gifts.

In my two stores, I decided to try just that, and started it last year. At first I just offered free worldwide shipping during the holidays. It worked so well, and the volume made up for any losses, I decided to keep it that way for both stores year-round. In my clothes store its a $50 minimum order. In my mega-gift-store, $100 minimum. Works like a charm. My prices are very competitive as well. Buyers shop around and are savvy. They know, and they appreciate when one does not insult their intelligence (for instance marking up products to make up for free shipping...big NO NO).

And though in my gift and collectible shop, I experimented with different promotions, I learned that since corporate gift-giving is growing by leaps and bounds, to offer $2 engraving of one\'s company name and URL on every gift (at my superstore only). At first I did it just during the holidays. Again, EUREKA!. It worked so well, it seemed pointless to not offer it year-round. And sure, it eats into profits, that is, if one is relying on the old volume of sales. But just these promotions alone, along with discounting several of my items (and these are not always duds), sometimes we purposely discount some of the bigger sellers and base it on the same theory that the volume will make up the difference.

Since I live in a part of the world where Wal-Mart is more of a deity than a corporation (Near Bentonville, Ar.), and that really is the Wal-Mart model, I felt, why argue with success? If it works for them, it should work for anyone who uses the same principle. And it does.

So combining these little goodies, that lure people to your store is a good thing. But keep in mind that one still has to offer quality products or services or it is all for nil. If one is offering up, say, an E-book that is really nothing new, but a rewording of so many others, they are insulting most Internet\'s users.

\"Yes, Virginia, we\'ve all read all the Ebooks from how to get rich in affiliation to how to make a fortune on Ebay, et al. Nobody wants it, or, if they do happen to order it in a weak moment, it generally only serves to anger them, and with word of mouth being our best friend, they are only going to badmouth us.

So think smart. Think like you are in a brick and mortar store and you are building a clientle Because really you are. Free shipping is just sound advice, year round. It is the biggest lure of all.

Rick London is a cartoonist and owns his own line of offbeat cartoon casual wear athttp://www.ricklondonwear.com and a cartoon mega-gift-store at http://www.LTSuperstore.comHe is also the creator of London\'s Times Cartoons http://www.londonstimes.us, the mostpopular and largest offbeat cartoon site on the Internet with over 7.8 million visitorssince Jan. 2005. He established his business in 1997.

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