For many it can be the most wonderful time of the year...
But Christmas can also create major headaches for those eCommerce businesses that haven’t prepared in advance.
It might only be June, but now’s the time for online retailers to plan for festive success.
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Sean Brown is founder and chief executive of eCommerce and product marketplace platform Mercarto.
He explained: “Online retailers need to ensure that their whole operation can meet demand on busy days within their peak period.
“It takes time to look at the process from end to end and ensure your marketing and website are ready and that you can ship without delays.
“When the customer is inflicted with delays it ultimately affects your bottom line.
“That's staff time spent dealing with the delay, trying to figure out what went wrong and trying to placate an angry customer.
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“It's the combined impact of a customer, who will probably never buy from you again and could leave a negative review, plus the cost and time of dealing with the issue.
“The logistical fulfilment arm of a business needs to be watertight, or you could spend your peak period fighting fires rather than impressing customers.”
Mercarto is a free, one-stop platform which does all the hard work of building by taking care of web design, sourcing, storage, delivery and payment.
Mercarto manages every aspect of ordering and customer service, with store owners taking up to 40% profit on products sold.
All users have to do is name their store, select the products they wish to stock, and launch – they then drive sales by marketing the store through their own networks.
When asked what companies should be thinking about and doing now when it comes to ensuring their website’s fully prepared for Christmas, Brown added: “Think about getting all of the logistical parts of your business in place ahead of time.
“Ensure that stock levels are correct, the pick and pack facility is ready and that shipping prices are accurate, efficient and economical to the customer.
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“From a marketing perspective, you need to ensure your campaigns are solid and prepared.
“You can beat the noise by claiming those lower value pay-per-click (PPC) terms before the search volumes really increase.
“Crucially, make sure your retargeting is working well, so that existing customers are brought back in and are shown the deals you're running around busy periods.”
Brown added that the eCommerce platform online retailers use is “essential” when it comes to ensuring that a business is prepared for Christmas.
“You need to ensure your platform is coupled with a solid hosting infrastructure so your site doesn’t go down at key times.
“If you're using an open source eCommerce platform it might be stored on a single server with no failover or backup, so when that peak season traffic arrives it might not be able to handle it.
“When all that traffic hits, is your website going to be able to serve images quickly enough?
“Is your content delivery network in place?
“At Mercarto we have hosting built into our platform that’s designed to scale when traffic increases.”
But Brown doesn’t believe that those eCommerce businesses that are only starting to think about Christmas now have left it too late.
He concluded: “There's still time to get things ready for Christmas.
“If you're using the right tools and working with the right partners to get the product inventory and delivery right, you don't need to panic.
“Marketing campaigns should be starting around this time so make sure you're thinking about how you're going to approach that now - don't wait until autumn.”
Lawrence Jones, CEO of 海角视频Fast, says: "Whilst you may only just be thinking about getting the barbecue out and doing some gardening, not that the weather is conducive to either at the moment, for those of you with an ecommerce presence, now is actually the time to be thinking about tinsel and turkeys.
"Summer is an absolutely essential time for ecommerce businesses because it is an opportunity to get your ducks in a row for the busiest shopping period, Christmas.
"When you look at it logically, there are now just six months until Father Christmas hops onto his sleigh, which means four-five months until the shopping frenzy begins.
"That’s 16- 20 weeks to get organised. In that time you need to be looking at every aspect of your service – from shipping capabilities to stock, and just as crucially, your website.
"The last thing you want to do is invest huge sums into an incredibly effective marketing campaign and product range on a beautifully designed website, only to find that the backend infrastructure doesn’t hold up.
"Now is the time to speak with your provider to see how you can ensure you’re perfectly prepared to deliver a fast user experience. This gives you and your provider the time to design, develop and test any changes, rather than rushing to resolve issues once the sales begin rolling in.
"There are so many ways to manage an influx of traffic with clever technology to remove the stress completely. Often a chat with your hosting provider is all it takes."