We all know that for the majority of ecommerce businesses, the back-to-school season starts around June, while everything for the holiday season must be in place by Labor Day.

And while ecommerce sales, according to Forrester Research, will continue to grow nicely for the next several years, but at a decreasing rate, I don’t think there are going to be many retailers who can afford to not start working on next year’s initiatives now. Leadership and finance teams are not going to let their marketers and merchandisers grow their businesses at slower rates than this year―at least that is not what they are going to tell you.

So what can you do?

First, take a look at what you have planned for 2014 and see what you can start doing now.

Next, my guess is that the demand generation tools you have used are not going to work for you as well as they have in the past, especially paid search. Shop.org reported in a recent survey that ecommerce brands are spending 40% of their marketing budget on paid search (the number one demand generation channel), but 27% of responders said pay-per-click advertising has become less effective than it was last year. This is an issue that you want to get in front of, especially with ecommerce growth rates expected to decline in 2014.

With demand generation softening, you need to adopt new marketing technologies that include more revenue generation solutions, more specifically browser-side solutions that allow you to monetize the visitors you receive from demand generation vendors likes Google, Facebook, affiliates, ad networks, email service providers, and more.

And the results speak for themselves. According to an Econsultancy survey done earlier this year, ecommerce companies focusing on site revenue generation (not site analytics) are growing at a year-over-year rate of 19% compared to the rest of the market growing at around 15%.

Make your 2014 number… today!