The countdown is on for retailers looking to capture Mother’s Day spending with 10 shopping days left (11 if you are the same-day delivery type, if so – buy online, pick-up in-store is for you). According to the National Retail Federation, spending on Mother’s Day gifts is expected to be lower this year due to the economy, however, there are still dollars out there for retailers to capture. Similar to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day is also a gift-giving event well-suited for procrastinators thanks to the ease and speed of ordering flowers. The smaller lead time needed to place an order for flowers helps to drive the peak of visits to a custom category of Mother’s Day gift retailers (includes flowers, gifts, and jewelry) to occur during the week immediately before Mother’s Day. Last year, there was a lift in visits of 39% during the peak as compared to the previous week. The peak day was Thursday, May 8th and for the last 3 years, the majority of the visits have taken place on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday leading up to Mother’s Day.

During the peak week of Mother’s Day gift shopping last year, web-based email and search were the top drivers of traffic to the custom category of retailers. Together these sources referred nearly half of the traffic, reinforcing their importance for retailers trying to capture Mother’s Day sales. With email, for retailers that do not have an established relationship via email with potential customers may want to explore advertising options within the pages of email properties to broadcast a message around the email messages.

Looking back at search activity for Mother’s Day last year, 18% of the traffic to a portfolio of search terms related to Mother’s Day during the week ending May 10, 2008 was from paid listings. The search query with the highest share of clicks is ‘mother’s day poems’, followed by 2 variations of mothers day gifts. The version of ‘mothers day gifts’ without the apostrophe receives more clicks along with increased paid search competition.

Following a visit to one of the retailers in the custom category, the highest share of visits among Shopping & Classifieds websites was to freeshipping.com, a favorite promotion of nearly every shopper and may be necessary to attract restricted budgets.