What a fantastic idea from RedEnvelope.

On their home page they have a banner that advertises “Shop Now, Ship Later Service for the Holidays”. Clicking on the banner takes you to a page with the following message:

We are pleased to offer Holiday Shop Now, Ship Later service for many of our gifts. Order now through 8:30 PM ET, December 6, and for no additional charge, we’ll ship your gift to arrive between December 18 and December 22, in time for Christmas and during Hanukkah. To select this service, please choose the Shop Now, Ship Later shipping method during checkout. If Shop Now, Ship Later does not appear as a ship method during checkout, one or more of the gifts you have selected are not eligible for this service. You will not be charged for your purchase until your order ships.

Please note most perishable gifts are not eligible for this service via our website (most flowers, plants and gourmet gifts). If you would like to order a perishable gift for Shop Now, Ship Later; please call Customer Service.

This is a fantastic idea for people who happen to have time to shop now but it is too early to send the gift or for people who will be travelling during the typical shopping window!

Ecommerce sites should take note of this and if they cannot implement it for this holiday season, get ready to implement it for Valentine’s Day!

I know that many of you who read this blog already run an ecommerce site. We have optimized such websites for the search engines and created PPC campaigns for ecommerce clients….but we’ve never actually set up an ecommerce site from scratch.

We’re thinking about it and would do this in conjuction with online design specialists, Daricca Group. Our first step is to touch base with a colleague in the US who sells egyptian cotton sheets to see if she would act as our fulfillment base.

If she will, we move on to the next phase of our plan which is figuring out what the tasks are and dividing them up! Stay tuned to see if we go through with our plan ;-)