Is your e-business ready for the holiday shopping season? It’d better be as the online holiday shopping season begins the day after Halloween.

Holiday web sales keep growing every year as more and shoppers go online. Online retailers that don’t get ready for the holidays can expect to loose lots of holiday web sales to their competitors.

Preparing for the holiday rush isn’t hard. You know it’s near and its time to start preparations. Even if you start preparing in October or November you can still get ready in time to get your piece of the holiday web sales. The peak of the holiday shopping spree online is between December 5 and 10.

The first step you need to take to get ready for holiday web sales is the most basic: get your website ready for the holidays. Just as brick and mortar stores decorate for the holidays, you should decorate your site with Christmas themed graphics like Santa Claus and Christmas trees. Remember it’s the holidays so remind your customers that the holidays are coming because they’ll need to buy gifts.

Do more than decorate for the holidays; offer your customers something special for the holidays to generate holiday web sales. Hold a sale or spotlight a special product that you only make available for the holidays. To drive holiday web sales consider adding products to your line just for the holidays. Take advantage of the power of bundling by combining some of your products into gift sets.

You can also help your customers decide what gifts to buy with the power of suggestion. Adding a list of great gift ideas with links to products in your inventory to your web site is a great way to drive holiday web sales. Organizing the list into categories like “gifts under $20,” “stocking stuffers” and “gifts for mom” can give people ideas of what to buy.

Generate holiday web sales without adding inventory or shipping expenses by offering gift cards and gift certificates. Gift certificates and cards are a great income stream you get paid even though you don’t have to deliver a product or deal with holiday shipping. Anybody who gets one of your gift certificates or cards is a potential new customer. Gift certificates and cards are great advertising because people receive them from somebody that they already know and trust.

Don’t forget to remind your customers about shipping during the holiday season. Go to the websites of the main shippers such as US Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx and get their holiday shipping schedules. Then post the schedules on your website to remind your visitors that the deadlines for shipping packages to arrive in time for Christmas are approaching. This can drive holiday web sales by creating a sense of urgency, by reminding your customers they have a limited time to place their orders.