AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwired - November 15, 2017) - ShippingEasy, an innovative provider of the leading cloud-based shipping, inventory management, and customer management solutions for e-commerce sellers of all sizes, has released its annual Holiday Guide, a must-read for online retailers to start early to prepare for holiday season growth. While most holiday guides include only cut-off date reminders, this 13-page publication is comprehensive, providing everything an e-commerce merchant needs to produce a successful shipping and selling holiday season. ShippingEasy's FREE Holiday Guide is available for immediate download.

"The holidays are the time of year when a positive customer experience offers e-commerce merchants an opportunity to build their brand, increase revenue, engender customer loyalty, and acquire new and repeat customers," said Katie May, CEO of ShippingEasy. "To do that, online retailers need to start earlier than ever, and develop a strategic holiday plan. ShippingEasy's free Holiday Guide serves as a blueprint to follow for successful shipping and selling leading up to, including, and beyond the holiday season."

The National Retail Federation reports holiday sales in 2016 increased 4% to $658.3 billion.

• 54% of consumers began researching their holiday shopping in October or earlier
• 74% of consumers shopped online on Black Friday
• 36% of consumers shopped online on Thanksgiving Day
• More than 122 million consumers planned to shop online on Cyber Monday, with a quarter of them purchasing from a mobile device

In addition to key shipping advice and direction, ShippingEasy's Holiday Guide also provides marketing and operations tips to help online businesses increase sales beyond January.

To complement the Holiday Guide, ShippingEasy has also produced a detailed synopsis of important carrier cutoff dates.

ShippingEasy's Holiday Guide includes:

• Shipping service levels: How to think about different rate structures (e.g. flat rate and free shipping), free returns, weekend shipping and delivery, and shipping carrier cut-off dates.

• Shipping operations: How to optimize the supply chain, physical space, equipment, people, workflow, and technology, as well as how to get carriers and other partners aligned with plans early to ensure smooth operations through the holiday season.

• Marketing: How a shipping function can help increase brand awareness, new customer acquisition, loyalty, and repeat purchases. ShippingEasy even shows how to find marketing opportunities in holiday returns!

• Holiday gift-giving: How to determine the gift options to offer, including gift wrapping, shipping to multiple addresses, turning gift recipients into customers, and what to include and exclude on the gift packing slip.

• Post-Christmas selling: How to think about if and when to ramp down holiday-specific initiatives, along with the post-holiday opportunities to go after.

For each topic mentioned above, ShippingEasy provides:

• Strategic decisions e-commerce merchants need to make now
• Preparations online businesses need to make before holiday shopping gets into full swing
• Specific actions e-commerce merchants must take to execute strategies to ensure they are functioning as planned -- and to measure success

About ShippingEasy - ShippingEasy is the easiest cloud-based shipping platform on the market. With ShippingEasy, online merchants of all sizes can ship fast, with the best rates, and grow orders. Our powerful integrations with leading online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Wal-Mart, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and many others, allow customers to manage orders, automate shipping, track shipments, and notify recipients -- in one easy-to-use platform. Complete with email marketing, customer and inventory management features, along with our industry-leading phone, chat, and email support -- tens of thousands of online merchants partner with ShippingEasy to ship fast, cheap, and to grow their businesses. ShippingEasy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stamps.com (NASDAQ: STMP). For more information, visit https://shippingeasy.com