While Black Friday is traditionally the biggest volume day when it comes to retail sales in traditional brick and mortar store outlets each year, traditionally, the Monday after Thanksgiving day tends to be the busiest day for on-line shoppers. It’s called Cyber Monday. The term describes the busiest day for internet sales for the year. Who knows, maybe Webster’s Dictionary will soon list it as an official new word. The computer and everything related has added many new words to the English language over the past decade.
Like most retailers, Amazon.com claims that the 4th quarter is the most busy quarter every year. According to the National Retail Federation 44 percent of shoppers made an online purchase last year. Some incentives that on-line stores offer are free shipping and large discounts for Cyber Monday purchases.
The automotive equipment industry is no different. While we do offer traditional outlets for purchases, including catalog and phone based sales, internet sales account for a large portion of our sales, and the percentage has grown every year.
The reasons cited are easy to understand. Making life easier is the main reason given time and time again when internet shoppers are asked why they purchase online instead of heading out to their local malls. You don’t have to deal with the traffic and the crowds. Time is money. Many consumers just don’t have the necessary time to fight the traffic.
And with modern websites offering close up images, as well as 3D images along with videos and owner’s manuals as well as dimensional drawings for many of their products, you can get a pretty clear idea on what the product is all about. We try to top all of those handy shopping aids with one more thing that we feel helps immensely – customer pictures and testimonials. Nothing helps our customers understand the product better than a customer testimonial topped off with a picture or two submitted by the customer. This also aids us in gaining the trust of new customers. If they can see how other customers experiences were, they can establish a pattern. We recommend asking any retailer you’re not familiar with for references. Especially with such large ticket items like auto lifts.
With business taking off already from Cyber Monday, the 4th quarter of 2011 is sure to be the biggest ever for internet sales.