With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and then the upcoming Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas about to knock on your door — you need to be ready. Here are 5 tips to keep your store prepared for the influence of holiday sales.
Here we have 5 tips to help you prepare for the holidays.
Tip #1: Increase customer communication
Keeping your customers in the loop of new promotions through email, social media, and blog posts is essential during this potential high traffic season.
Running promotional coupons just for email subscribers is a great way to increase customer loyalty. This works by rewarding previous customers while also encouraging new customers to join your list, just make sure to advertise that this promotion is only available for email subscribers on social media so people know they need to sign up.
The closer the holidays approach, the more you should share your coupon information. Remind customers that there is only a certain amount of days less to save and you’ll see customers line up to add to their cart.
Tip #2: Pay attention to your shipping policies
During the holidays, shipping policies and prices are an important factor in the decision making of consumers. Free shipping is an essential for many stores, as well as offering discounted expedited shipping for those that are last minute holiday shoppers.
There are many stores that forget to offer shipment tracking or decide against it because of the extra cost. If this is you, we’d advise you to change that policy for at least the holiday season. There is nothing worse than a customer anxiously awaiting their package and worrying that it won’t make it in time for gift giving.
Provide shipment tracking and yield a happier customer experience.
Tip #3: Increase staff and production quantities
If you were so overwhelmed with sales and customer service requests last year that you ended up losing sales from unanswered emails and limited product offerings, starting to add to your production and staff in October and early November is the best way to get through the holidays stress-free.
Don’t wait until the last minute to get started beefing up your production and seasonal staff.
Tip #4: Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare your store
Having a limited edition holiday store design, setting up welcome images to promote new holiday sales, or increasing your website’s servers to account for an influx of new customers, you need to prepare your store for the holiday season.
Having a well-performing design to show your sales and featured seasonal products and gifts will help them sell more. We’d recommend having as many of these aspects available on November 1rst for shoppers that try to beat the rush.
Tip #5: Have a mobile friendly site
Mobile responsive designs are essential for the new sales landscape. With 64% of Americans owning smartphones in 2014 and stats from 2012 state that shopping on tablets and phones increased by 81% over the previous year — you need to be prepared.
To get started, request a free quote now. Our design queue is quickly filling up for the holiday rush so make sure to get your name in right away. Take advantage of the holiday shopping rush and up your average sales with the help of our team, a new design is a smart investment.
OCDesignsonline is here to help your store succeed this holiday season.
Did we miss any holiday tips? Let us know in the comments.