The first step to ensuring a successful holiday sales season is to optimize your eCommerce site. But the next step – converting those website visitors into customers – is equally important and can be even more difficult to achieve.

A recent survey about holiday shopping trends by PriceGrabber found that 88 percent of respondents plan to research their holiday gift purchases in advance to find the best deals. Of those respondents, 38 percent plan to spend three to six hours researching holiday gift purchases online.

That means that, even if a customer visits your website, chances are they’ve visited many others as well. After working with more than 10,000 small to medium-sized merchants over the years, I’ve put together the following list of best practice tips to help you turn your website visitors into customers.

Design Promotions

It is important to design promotions that are consistent with and enhance the company’s brand’s image. Take time to review the success or failure of each promotion to determine the value and focus of future promotions.

Whether it’s free shipping, rewards programs, or special offers, sales incentives are necessary to compete. – href="http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/11/ecommerce-turn-website-visitors-into-buyers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SmallBusinessTrends+%28Small+Business+Trends%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers by Fred Lizza

name="googleone_share_1" style="position:relative;z-index:5;float: left; margin-left: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 10px;">