Online retailers ready for holiday crush

While the Friday after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, online retailers are gearing up for heavier traffic beginning today - a day some industry watchers have dubbed "Cyber Monday."

The reason is it's not until everyone returns to work after the holiday weekend that the serious online buying begins.

"The following Monday is actually even more important than Friday. It's probably the busiest day," says Bill Brown, director of e-commerce and demand generation at Alienware, which makes PCs and accessories for gaming enthusiasts and other power users.

Alienware aims certain Web deals at post-Thanksgiving shoppers, but many of its promotional e-mails don't get read until people get back to work after the holiday, Brown says. "We have as many people shopping at work as we do at home. We're prepared for a lot of visit activity beginning Monday."

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While the Friday after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, online retailers are gearing up for heavier traffic beginning today - a day some industry watchers have dubbed "Cyber Monday."

The reason is it's not until everyone returns to work after the holiday weekend that the serious online buying begins.

"The following Monday is actually even more important than Friday. It's probably the busiest day," says Bill Brown, director of e-commerce and demand generation at Alienware, which makes PCs and accessories for gaming enthusiasts and other power users.

Alienware aims certain Web deals at post-Thanksgiving shoppers, but many of its promotional e-mails don't get read until people get back to work after the holiday, Brown says. "We have as many people shopping at work as we do at home. We're prepared for a lot of visit activity beginning Monday."

People at work are among the key contributors to the post-Thanksgiving online shopping surge, according to Shop.org, a retail association and division of the National Retail Federation (NRF). Shop.org and BizRate Research paired up on a study that found 37% of consumers plan to use Internet access at work to browse or buy gifts online this holiday season.

Looking back, 77% of online retailers saw substantial sales increases last year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Shop.org says. In anticipation of this year's onslaught, retailers have spent months gearing up for the season that can make or break fiscal expectations.

Pendleton Woolen Mills selected new order management and fulfillment software last year, but deliberately waited until after the 2004 holiday rush to begin putting the new technologies in production. It went live with the first phase of its CommercialWare implementation, for its catalog business, on Jan. 15, followed by rollouts for its Web operations in June and retail stores in September. Pendleton Woolen Mills manufactures textiles and apparel, which it sells wholesale as well as direct to consumers through its stores, online and catalog operations.

"I always think about how many fires we can fight at one time," says David Anderson, information services manager for the Portland, Ore., company. "Bringing all that up at one time is very difficult, so we brought it up one big piece at a time."

Ebates, too, got started early fine-tuning its Web site for the holiday rush. The online shopping portal used survey technology from WebSurveyor to poll visitors and find out how they used the site, and what types of coupons, rebates and other promotions are most important to them.

Ebates took data gleaned from the surveys, which it started running in April, and used it to fine-tune a Web site redesign, says Markus Mullarkey, senior vice president of sales and marketing at the San Francisco company.

"We did a site redesign on Oct. 1, which was deliberately done pre-holiday. It was important for us to get some of the feedback prior to the site redesign," Mullarkey says. "Now it's ready for crunch time."