It’s Monday, 01 December 2008, the Monday after Thanksgiving. For the past several years, news outlets have referred to this magic day as Cyber Monday … the unofficial start of the online shopping season. CNN Money has predicted that sales will be down this year (but is that really news?).
Unfortunately, it is to me when I’m shopping for my niece’s Xmas gifts.
Gap and Old Navy are temporarily down for site maintenance.
Oops! Someone in the marketing department is up the creek w/o a paddle… particularly as they sent many emails about today’s sale.
One of my great joys as an experience planner is to prevent outages such as this one. My recco for Old Navy and Gap (and, by extension, Banana): Do not close your doors on an important opportunity. Holidays and sales are among the gold standards of promotions. These holidays often are a yearly occurrence (exception: Leap Day) and can and should be planned for in advance.
Consider your online presence as crucial as any other channel. We see that brick and mortars get much love (although, we do see that more and more companies are moving more and more resources to web), but often consumers are researching online … or even just looking up hours and other store information. The web property should be consistent w/your stores and offer up to date information, of course … but, can we bring more of the “experience” of the holiday shopping season into the digital channel. The web property should be ready to sparkle — it should not only visually communicate “holiday sales,” but it should also work like a well-oiled machine.
One of my clients is in the baby category. Two holidays that I get to love and cherish: Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Our site maintenance/updates are scheduled to launch 3 to 5 wks prior… b/c you don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with your users, particularly on an important day.