Are you prepared for Black Friday? Here are five things e-tailers should have on their holiday wish list.

By Ralf VonSosen

The holidays are the most important selling season in e-commerce. Because of this, you should give yourself (or your favorite e-tailer) the chance to make the most of it through "gifts" that increase online sales. Get your wish list out, because the following tips could make the holidays much brighter.

1 SEO DAY SPA PASS
If you haven't noticed, things are drastically changing again with search engine optimization. Google's Universal Search is a major part of this. Content of all types is now an important part of natural search results. While it takes time to see SEO benefits, there are still some things you can do to improve your rankings before the holidays. Consult with an SEO expert for at least a day to find out what you should be doing. The following are some basic areas to look into when getting started.

• Site structure. How you build your site can have a significant effect on your rankings. If search engines can't index your site properly, your rankings may suffer. Be sure that "spiders" from search engines can crawl your site easily to find out what you're about.
• Content. Good content will always be king when it comes to getting good rankings. Make sure you aren't just cutting and pasting manufacturer text onto your product pages. Speak to your audience and provide valuable content they can't find elsewhere.
• Links. Show search engines that you're not only the place to go to buy products, but also to find out about them, as well. Be the expert, get people to link to you and watch your rankings climb.
• Trust. How long you've been around in addition to your standing in the product community you're involved with are important. Search engine spiders will know if you're a fly-by-night operation.
• New rules. Content from video sites like YouTube, blogs and other social media sites now have a more prominent place in rankings. Look at ways to take advantage of these sites and drive traffic to your product pages.

Get it, got it, good... HiFi Sound Connection, which sells car audio equipment, is just one e-tailer that has used SEO to its advantage over the past year. Through its focus on this area, the company has seen an increase of 243 percent, 220 percent and 822 percent for Google, Yahoo and MSN unpaid traffic, respectively.

2 CANDY THAT SWEETENS THE ONLINE BUYER'S EXPERIENCE
There are many ways into customers' wallets this season. But improving the buyer experience is one that can be very effective for both near- and short-term gains. By making it fun to shop and easy to buy, you create a place that buyers will always come back to.

• Fun to shop. Rich web applications that use AJAX are making dynamic, personalized shopping more commonplace. New applications also enable you to give buyers better control over purchasing through product packaging--regardless of the channel they're buying in. Building a community around your website and enabling customers to give feedback on products are also important.
• Easy to buy. There's a lot to be said for streamlining the checkout process. Fewer steps play to the convenience factor and increase your conversions. Adding options for checkout also should be on your list. Google Checkout is just one option for doing this. It allows your customers to skip inconvenient data entry steps and buy from you faster. Also consider boosting buyer confidence through companies like buySAFE that offer third-party bonding for your products.

Get it, got it, good... Visibility Unlimited, which sells dive equipment, is an e-tailer that uses some unique product packaging technology in its eBay listings. By letting customers configure the exact equipment setup that they want, the company has seen orders (and profits) double in size.

3 ONLINE MEGAPHONE
Traffic is not going to magically appear this holiday season. One thing that you should be very proactive about is e-mail marketing. If you haven't already, find a solution that works for you and build a good house list. When you're ready to execute on a well thought-out holiday promotion, think about the following:

• Segmenting your list. You should be separating customers and prospects. Create different offers based on this. Further segment your list by product types, regions, etc. The more you can narrow down and target these groups with unique promotions, the more successful you'll be. Remember to balance segmentation efforts with expected return on investment. It's about hitting the right person, at the right time, with the right offer.
• Building a campaign. A one-shot e-mail blast is not going to do much for your overall online sales. Think about how you can entice buyers through themed messages that tie together. A strong campaign with a compelling promotion can help you be at the forefront of buyers' minds when they look for holiday gifts. Make sure that you spend some time on the "sexiness factor" for each e-mail--including the design, layout and copy.

Get it, got it, good... Dallas Golf, one of the largest golf e-tailers online, has made it a priority to know who its customers are and to proactively communicate with them. By doing this, the company has increased repeat business. This has helped to improve both online and offline revenue.

4 E-COMMERCE GPS
Just like in the brick-and-mortar world, you not only have to show up, but show up in the right places. To get to the right place revenue-wise this holiday season, you should look for ways to expand your market presence. There's no better way to do this than to break into new comparison shopping engines and online marketplaces.

• Where to start. Breaking into new selling channels can be daunting. A good rule of thumb is to start with your high-margin products. Also use products that have proven to be your most popular. Once you've done this, be sure you closely monitor what's selling and what's not. Not all channels are the same. After a few weeks, see what you've got and expand your plan for each channel.
• Doing it well. If you don't automate your channel expansion, you're asking to be overwhelmed. Set up automated feeds to comparison shopping engines and put time into optimizing them. See what you can do to merchandise from a single location so you don't duplicate work on a product level. As you find out what's working and what's not, don't hesitate to make adjustments so you're not wasting money.

Get it, got it, good... Expert Gameroom, a specialty e-tailer in the billiards and gameroom industry, has made its presence known across multiple channels. By expanding to new places like Amazon and various comparison shopping engines, the company has been able to greatly increase its number of customers and to diversify revenue across selling channels to protect its future success.

5 CLONING MACHINE
The holiday season in e-commerce is no time for a breakdown. While you might often wish there were ways to clone yourself, you can do the same thing by automating internal processes. Doing this fairly early in the season will help you be prepared for the rush. The following are some areas to look at when you think about automation:

• Inventory. Do you enter your entire inventory in a single place or is it spread out across selling channels? Not centralizing this aspect of your business can create real headaches in terms of fulfillment, reporting and employee time. Look at changing your processes and technology, if necessary, to simplify this aspect of your business.
• Merchandising. The same goes for merchandising. At the very least, you should have a central database for inventory and a short list of options to remember for each selling channel. Again, technology can make it a lot easier by automating merchandising option selections when selling on various channels--all without you having to constantly worry about changes that are happening in each channel.
• Web presence. While your website may be the envy of competitors, if that polish and flash doesn't carry over into your other online selling channels, you're hurting sales and your ability to fully capitalize on the work you've done in terms of branding. At the very least, you should have listing templates that match your website set up and ready to go for the holiday season.
• Order fulfillment. So what happens when you build it and they actually come? If you said, "I don't know," you're in big trouble. As with inventory and merchandising, have a central place where you gather all order information. Look at bottlenecks in your fulfillment process now to prevent full-blown disasters come rush time.
• Customer management. The biggest thing to look at here is if your customer relationship management and e-commerce platform are integrated. This affects many areas of your sales cycle--from effectively addressing buyer questions and better segmenting e-mail lists, to planning for future marketing efforts.
• Reporting and analytics. If your life is full of month ends and endless spread sheets, you probably are expending way too much energy. Again, look to technology here to gather online sales channel data for you. You should know at any point where to sell your high-margin products, what your competitors are doing in key marketplaces, and what pages on your website need to be optimized.

Get it, got it, good... Myron Global, one of the fastest growing e-tailers in consumer electronics, recently increased revenue by 25 percent. The company did this through implementing an e-commerce platform that enabled it to automate internal processes and centralize many channel selling activities.

WRAPPING IT ALL UP
Don't be overwhelmed by this list. Start by taking a look at the things that will have the biggest impact on your bottom line. Many can be addressed by researching and implementing off-the-shelf technologies, while the rest is a matter of thinking more strategically as the holidays approach.

Ralf VonSosen is vice president of marketing at Infopia--an award-winning e-commerce technology company that focuses on creating solutions for eBay PowerSellers and online retailers. As a veteran technology executive, he has worked with several leading companies, including Siebel, SAP and Nextance. VonSosen also shares his unique insights and experience at industry events throughout the year.