
With the holiday shopping season quickly approaching — or already here, depending on whom you ask — consumers will be going online to purchase gifts for family and friends. Is your brand positioned to capture those customers? Gifting represents a $200 billion market, with the average consumer buying more than 20 gifts annually. It's an opportunity that retailers must be prepared to capitalize on.
To help them, Roy Erez, co-founder and CEO of Loop Commerce, a SaaS solution that fully integrates with retailers’ online stores to make every product giftable, offered tips and insights during a session yesterday at the Shop.org Digital Summit in Philadelphia.
A Different Experience
Shopping for yourself and shopping for others is a completely different experience, noted Erez. Therefore, retailers must treat it as such. Gifting is a much more personal and emotional experience for the shopper and gift recipient. To illustrate his point, Erez played a clip from “Seinfeld” where Jerry gave Elaine cash for a gift, which turned her pre-gift excitement into bewilderment.
Retailers must be aware and compensate for the top reasons why gift shoppers abandon a cart, Erez said. Those reasons include being worried about buying the wrong size; being worried about the hassle of trying to return the gift; being worried about the gift getting there on time (e.g., a birthday, holiday); and being worried about choosing the wrong color. Here are some tips to help:
- Add a gift guide to your site. This should be in addition to offering e-gift cards, Erez said. In fact, consumers spend, on average, two times more on gift purchases than they do on e-gift cards. Seek to personalize your gift guide as best as possible, enabling shoppers to filter results by gender, price, product category, size, among other variables.
- Send last-minute emails. Despite the reports of holiday shoppers starting earlier and earlier every year, which are true, there's still a segment of the population that waits till the very last minute to purchase their gifts. Target this segment of your customer base with emails promoting last-minute deals. And if you offer expedited delivery to make sure their gifts arrive in time for the holiday, market the heck out of that, Erez said.
- Clearly explain your returns process — and make it easy. Consumers unsure that they're getting the right gift want to know that the recipient can return it easily.
- Provide gift receipts without the price of the item on it. Sounds simple enough, Erez said, but a lot of retailers aren't doing this.
- Promote one-size-fits-all items. If your products are "sizeless," use this to your advantage. Apparel retailers that you're competing with for share of wallet don't have this luxury.
- Don't stop on Dec. 25. Holiday gift buying occurs beyond Christmas Day, Erez said. Be prepared to serve these customers with special deals and offers. Furthermore, gifting is a year-round opportunity for retailers, Erez noted. In fact, Christmas is no longer the No. 1 gifting occasion; birthdays are, he said.
- People:
- Roy Erez
- Places:
- Philadelphia

Joe Keenan is the executive editor of Total Retail. Joe has more than 10 years experience covering the retail industry, and enjoys profiling innovative companies and people in the space.