Online Sales Were Up. Can Smaller Businesses Get a Piece of the Action?Online Sales Were Up. Can Smaller Businesses Get a Piece of the Action?

E-commerce sales were up 19 percent this holiday season as compared with last year, according to ComScore. That figure is less than the 26 percent increase seen for the same period in 2006, but it's still a lot of sales. Smaller businesses, are you making sure you're getting in on this?ComScore reports that nearly $28 billion were spent online by consumers from Nov. 1 through Dec. 27.

information quotes ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni: "For example, the day after Christmas saw online sales of $545 million, more than double the sales on the same day last year. This would appear to indicate that consumers were willing, and able, to take advantage of the attractive late-season promotions and price discounts offered by retailers this year."

eWeek notes that the trend could be partly attributed to the increase of homes with broadband. "In years past, the so-called Black Friday spike happened on Friday morning, as people reported back to work and used corporate broadband connections to start shopping. Now, more consumers can start in right after the pumpkin pie while still at home (or even hitting their Treo or iPhone while pretending to listen to a random in-law)."

The point is, more and more people are buying online and, as a smaller business, you can, and should be angling to take advantage of this trend. As the ComScore numbers indicate, promotions and discounts work to reel customers in. But there are other things smaller businesses can do. This Wall Street Journal article highlights how small online retailers that are using live chats to ramp up their customer service -- and their sales.

Writes WSJ writer Raymund Flandez: "Retailers of all sizes are using virtual chat technology on their Web sites to ramp up customer service and sell more products. But the programs can be especially helpful to small players with limited marketing and research budgets -- offering a relatively low-cost way to track consumer behavior and concerns and react accordingly. They also allow small online companies to mimic some of the personalized attention that typically give them a competitive advantage in individual bricks-and-mortar stores."

Live chats can involve hiring additional staff or outsourcing the work but the cheapest option is using automated chat technology. One company in the article, GourmetStation.com, started using automated chat software.

The result, according to the site's founder, Donna Lynes-Miller: "The automated-chat feature, she says, has managed to reduce the "abandonment rate" -- the rate at which people go into the site but don't buy anything -- by 10 percentage points to 40 percent. She adds that overall sales have grown 40 percent so far this year to $2 million, from the previous year, and she attributes 10 percent of that growth to the use of the software."

The big holiday shopping season is over but people keep buying things -- all year long. Your efforts to convert them into customers shouldn't stop either.