Of course, “good” is a relative term.  Forrester Research is predicting that online sales in November and December will increase 12%. They describe this as a “significant slowdown.” Yes, it’s a slowdown from years’ past. But, compared to the 2.2% growth NRF forecasts for overall retail it’s pretty good.

And, earlier this week, Amazon provided their own insight into the holiday season. Their Q4 guidance is for between 6% and 23% revenue growth. That’s quite a big range, but expected given the volatility of our economy.  I would expect that the range for most retailers’ projections are equally wide.

So what can retailers do to push their sales to the high range of their forecasts besides hoping for fewer headlines about the Dow plummeting and layoffs?  This won’t be a popular suggestion, but my recommendation is to offer free shipping (of course, not everyone agrees with me on this). The rough economy is pushing people to shop online looking for savings. If the savings are cancelled out by shipping costs, customers will be disappointed. Maybe they’ll go to a store, which isn’t bad if you have stores, but maybe they’ll decide not to buy at all.

Of course there are many other tactics and strategies retailers can employ. To hear a dozen plus of these ideas, Shop.org members should carve out an hour and fifteen minutes on November 12 to plug into the “14+ Specific Things You Can Do To Make More Money Next Week (and Improve Your Holiday Sales) webinar.  This Webinar will also feature an economic overview presented by comScore’s Gian Fulgoni. 

If you can’t wait until November 12, feel free to download (members only) the “24+ Specific Things You Can Do To Make More Money Next Week,” presentation from the Annual Summit.

Shop.org Members should also check out the Holiday section of the Shop.org Web site, which includes a great overview of recommendations for holiday 2008.  Written by Fiona Swerdlow, Shop.org’s head of research, the 2008 Holiday Planning and Strategy Guide is chock full of data points and recommendatoins based on the learnings from last year’s holiday study.