Why Your Business Needs an Online Wishlist & Online Gift Registry

A gift registry is a compiled list of all the products from a particular store that you want people to purchase as gifts for special occasions. The most common type of gift registries are for weddings, bridal showers and baby showers. With the increasing growth of the online gift market however, an online gift registry is becoming an essential part of any ecommerce business, both big and small. More and more retailers on the web are getting creative and offering their customers an online gift registry for other special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries and graduation.

People generally like having the option of a gift registry, it makes life easier for both the gift giver and receiver. The gift giver enjoys a more hassle free buying experience as well as knowing that their money is well spent and that their gift is going to be appreciated. The gift receiver will never be disappointed.

A wishlist is a compiled list of products from a particular store that you have your eye on for a possible future purchase. Not all visitors to your website will automatically turn into a customer so having an online wishlist allows those people who do not make an initial purchase to do so sometime in the future. They already marked down everything they like and can easily go back to it at a later time.

You can provide your customers with the easiest shopping experience by simply reminding them of what they like. A visitor to your online store could have easily forgotten what it was that caught their eye the last time they were there. An online wishlist simply shows the user what they already picked out without having to go through the entire site again.

There are many reasons why a small ecommerce business site needs to use either an online gift registry, online wishlist or both to improve traffic and increase their customer base. Here are just a few:

• drive more buyers to your site and increase your web sales


• build customer loyalty


• keep customers interested and coming back for more


• use it as a promotional tool to capture an audience not yet familiar with your site


• distinguish popular items from unpopular ones

If you have an ecommerce store offering any products that can be given as a gift for weddings, bridal showers, baby showers or even birthdays, anniversaries and graduation, you can use an online gift registry to improve sales. Here are a few cool ways to promote your online gift registry:

• submit your site to registry directories


• participate in forums where people are asking for cool gift ideas for special occasions


• do offline advertising in related magazines, for instance bridal magazines for wedding registries


• use social media to find groups of people interested in creating some kind of registry

The best part of offering your customers the option of using an online wishlist is they will inadvertently help your business by advertising your products to people they know without costing you a dime to advertise. Here are a few cool ways to get your customers to help promote your site:

• teach your customers to add their wishlist to their Facebook


• encourage your customers to use their wishlist on sites like Elfster so friends will know what to get them over the holidays


• get your customers to link to their wishlist on sites like Evite when they are organizing special events such as birthdays

You can even track wishlists and take action when you see one that is relatively untouched. The visitor might have marked down items that they like a while back and forget it after a period of time, it is a good idea at this point to remind them. You can do this by sending out periodic emails, reminding them before specific holidays or when an item on their online wishlist goes on sale.

Adding an online gift registry and/or online wishlist to your ecommerce business should be seamless. The main features should be to have auto generation, a customer dashboard and tracking properties. Most importantly, it should be hassle free for the user as well as for the business owner.

#1 Rated E-commerce Solution for Selling Products Online

Start a store in minutes
No html knowledge needed
Choose from over 125 templates or design your own
Full range of continually growing features
Includes selling through mobile phones
Provides SEO and product submissions for search
Comes with superior support
Full scale online gift registry and online wishlist functionality

With over 13,000 customers and a 93% customer satisfaction rating, it is the best solution for your e-commerce website. Click here to get a free trial of the service for 15 days and see for yourself how easy it is to run an e-commerce site of your own.