How soon is too soon to start thinking about ways to maximize your ecommerce site's goals for the 2011 holiday season?  Ecommerce trends are already coming to light, so it is time to look ahead. 

Anticipating Deal Seekers

One of the trends noted in 2010 was that while both Black Friday and Cyber Monday were successful for retailers, shoppers remained focused upon scoring special deals on those days.  For the web vendor this means planning specific sales just for those two days.  Providing your customers with knowledge in advance of the sales will increase their inclination to shop with you.

Manage Your Back Office

Inventory control, site performance, customer service assistance and adjusted shipping offers are even more important than a flashy web presence.  There is nothing new in the idea that good customer relations increases sales, but online it is more difficult to develop a personal relationship.  Live chat is becoming an essential for successful websites.

Don't wait until November to institute these changes – start building up to them right now.  That way, when the big sale days come you are ready with stock, service and great shipping incentives.

Planning Takes Time

As mentioned above, any new plan takes time to implement.  For an e-retailer, it can be tempting to put things off until late in the year, but setting up supply lines, arranging needed financing or additional staff will all take a while.  Even if you don't know exactly what you want to offer merchandise-wise for the holidays, you can start making changes in anticipating of back to school events.

One trend that will definitely take time to accommodate will be mobile purchasing.  Websites that can be more quickly loaded are potentially accessible by an application, and connecting to a third party payment system, eliminating the need to enter credit card data on the move, will all make your store more appealing, especially to younger customers.

Stay On Top

Trends in merchandise change just as quickly as trends in ecommerce techniques.  While planning ahead for success, keep an eye out for advances in available technologies and services which will make your job simpler.  This might be a good time to switch to a more reasonably priced merchant account provider, find a new, less expensive wholesaler of your best products, and so forth.

Ecommerce simply moves too fast to rest on your laurels.  You must keep up with trends, or even better, lead the trends, if you want to end 2011 more successfully than you started.