Evolving Your Deals Program: Side Deals
The group commerce space continues on a dynamic and exciting path of growth and expansion. More and more, we are seeing deal sites take cues from traditional ecommerce sites and create shopping environments – more deals, deals organized around a theme or season, and deals running beyond a single day. Ultimately, high deal quality and solid promotions will continue to drive the most revenue, but by enhancing your current site with a new approach, you can maximize your revenue and growth potential in 2012.
While certainly not a new phenomenon, Side Deals now have a more distinct role than ever. The original motivator for having Side Deals was simply to give users more variety of deals than a deal-a-day could offer. The thought was more deals meant more revenue with side deals being an area to post deals that you knew weren’t Featured Deal quality but still wanted to run. Many sites that have tested Side Deals have come to the conclusion that Side Deals as their own category aren’t huge sellers. Rather, by using Side Deals as a way to extend the life of Featured Deals, they’re seeing much better results.
This also highlights a greater trend that 24 hours isn’t always enough time to maximize sales. For example, The Miami Herald had a recent successful deal in which 65% of deals were sold after the first day. They run their deals for a total of seven days – one day as a Featured Deal and six days as a Side Deal. This approach allows you to have more deals per day and populate the site with the same high-quality deals you approve as your Featured Deals. Moreover, this begins to lay the groundwork for another trend – the emergence of Seasonal and Category Stores.
