According to Oneupweb, a search engine and marketing company, the week of Halloween, Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, became the biggest for sales and conversion rates of the holiday season – indicating that customers began shopping even earlier. Returns, gift cards and after-Christmas bargains then led to small rises, between Dec. 28 and Jan. 4.

The study also revealed that while year-to-year sales fell almost entirely throughout the season, traffic and conversions increased – indicating that consumers browsed the Internet more than ever for gifts.

“Think of it in terms of a brick-and-mortar store – consumers will go into a store to view the merchandise, perhaps several times before making a purchase,” the study said. “This means retailers need to have all merchandise ready and available for them to browse.”

With this, the company gave a few recommendations to keep in mind for 2009:

• Plan ahead and follow through. Though Oneupweb declared Halloween as the start to the holiday shopping season in 2007, it now recommends that retailers implement holiday campaigns and discounts on the first week of October, and plan for campaigns following Christmas as well.
• Compel shoppers to make immediate purchases. After all, imagine if that increased traffic had been converted to sales. Perhaps the best time to do this would be early in the season, as Oneupweb suggests. And to appeal to those last-minute shoppers, offer free shipping.

The company’s report, “The 2008 U.S. Online Shopping Report – What the 2008 Holiday Shopping Season Can Teach Us,” is available as a free download from their official Web site.

Wholesalers are finding that in order to properly compete with e-commerce sites and online specialty shops, they have to source their products much earlier than in the past. It is true that Christmas comes in July–at least to the wholesaler. It is not uncommon to plan four or five months ahead of the holiday season. Of course, this doesn’t mean that buyers should only buy product during the pre-season window. In fact, merchandise is traditionally cheaper within the first thirty to sixty days after the holiday has passed, so for wholesalers looking for Christmas product, the best time to purchase might just be in January and February, when supplies are being clearanced. Some suppliers offer seasonal merchandise at a discount when purchased out-of-season, so it is best for companies to research that possibility before committing to a full-price purchase.

The worst time to source seasonal products is the thirty days before a holiday. As an example, if a company has not purchased its Halloween supplies before October 1, they will pay twice its intrinsic value. Bricks and mortar stores like Wal-Mart take advantage of this window to raise the price of their seasonal goods.

If sourcing products was as simple as studying the calendar, all wholesalers would meet with the same success selling seasonal merchandise. As it is, buyers must consider seasonal trends. What might be popular one year can fizzle out by the following season, leaving unsold merchandise all but worthless. Wholesalers have to play clairvoyant when trying to determine what, of all the products they can purchase, will be the most popular during the coming season. The goal is to purchase more of the popular product and less of those that have uncertain future. Fortunately, the clairvoyant has some help.

Online marketing firms such as Oneupweb conduct research that is useful to wholesalers and other sellers. Through the holiday season, Oneupweb keeps track of conversion rates, sales and web site traffic. By using Yahoo, MSN or Google, the firm can predict what is currently selling and what might be selling in the future. Sites such as Clickbank can also help wholesalers, because it provides buyers with information on a product’s popularity with other wholesalers, retail sellers or resellers. If others are making a profit from a certain product, chances are that there are still pieces of the profit pie available.

The Internet is a wholesaler’s best friend, not just because many of their sales are generated from e-commerce sites and through product web pages. The Internet helps generate sales for wholesalers in other ways:

* Through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which generate impulse buys
* By giving wholesalers a chance to evaluate online catalogs for an idea of what is selling
* By allowing access to Google and Yahoo page rankings, in order to see what sites are making the most in sales
* Through researching email marketing campaigns. By studying the subject of bulk messages, wholesalers can determine what products garner the marketing attention, and thus the largest probability of success.
* By providing resource web pages such as Quantcast , which can track traffic on a company’s website, and simple resources such as search engine rankings, which can show wholesalers what companies have the largest audience.

Tracking seasonal trends doesn’t guarantee a wholesale company vast riches, but by studying the market and sourcing products at the right time, wholesalers have a chance to capitalize on a consumer-market.