The year -end holiday is not a trivial matter. We all know that for almost everyone, this is one of the busiest seasons of the year: preparing for big meals, shopping, decoration and countless activities for friends and family members. If you are a business owner, preparation for holidays is not just purchase and packaging gifts. It is about preparing your business, online or physical stores for holiday shopping. You may want to know:
Is it worth spending time and energy to prepare my e -commerce store for the holidays?
What do I need to do to ensure that my e -commerce business has been prepared for holiday shoppers?
Let’s take a look at every problem and explore some ideas and resources to ensure that you are prepared.
Holiday preparation: Is it worth working hard?
The simple answer is
affirmation . It is worth spending time and energy to prepare e -commerce business for the holiday shopping season.
In the past 40 years, Black Friday and Internet have become the main shopping activities on Monday. Black Friday shopping became a national event in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was born around 2005 on Monday.
In the past ten years, the online retail sales have increased in index level -it is now on holiday shopping The main channel. The Black Friday has expanded to the entire shopping weekend, including small companies on Saturday and Internet Monday, and special shopping days throughout December.
At present, in the United States, we participate in:
Black Friday
-Woody after Thanksgiving.
Saturday
-Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Monday on the Internet
—— Monday after Thanksgiving.
Network Week
-The full week after Thanksgiving.
Free delivery date
-The date is different, but usually around mid-December.
Super Saturday
-The last complete Saturday before Christmas.
The total sales of each year increased, followed by the amount of shopping through e -commerce. 201In 8 years, online sales on Monday have reached a record $ 7.9 billion. Among them, US $ 2.83 billion came from mobile device purchases, of which 2.2 billion US dollars were purchased from smartphones. Black Friday and small companies also have a large number of online sales days on Saturday, with online revenue of US $ 6.2 billion and $ 3.02 billion, respectively.
The number will not lie! Prepare online stores for holiday shopping to make you get a cake in this huge cake.
Prepare for holiday shoppers
Preparation for holidays not only has enough inventory -there are some considerations on the front and back of the website.
Make sure your website is ready
Make sure your website and shopping cart runs smoothly.
It is confirmed that all the pages on your website are running normally and quickly. You want to make sure your website can handle customers with higher than normal numbers without interruption. Sign in with your web designer or platform custody website to ensure that you are ready to welcome more website visitors. In addition, do not plan to perform any major upgrade of your website during the holiday shopping season -these operations before or after the holiday shopping season.
Pay attention to the response design.
With the increase of people using mobile devices online, the key to responding to the website. Customers want to shop easily at their time and place, including on their smartphones. Make sure your website is easy to read and navigate on a smaller screen, and customers can check out from their mobile devices.
Formulate a clear and easy -to -understand return policy.
Publish your policy in a place where customers can easily find and explain as clear as possible -in the long run, this will save everyone a lot of time and trouble. If you do not accept the return, make sure you also clearly explain. If you are not sure how wording, Google’s return policy prompt is a good starting point.
Provide gift guidelines on your website.
This is a good way to help your customers decide what gifts to give. You can subdivide it according to price, interest, age, or any creative theme that you can think of your products. Messi Department Store has a good example, explaining how to provide some gifts for those who are difficult to buy.
Plan your marketing as soon as possible
Establish a reliable marketing plan before starting.
The holiday is the ideal timing of re -positioning customers and bringing them back to your store and attracting new customers through holiday promotions. Sending email activities is a good way to promote your products and any discounts you will provide during the holidays.
Let your designer handle your graphics as soon as possible. Honestly, you can’t start too early, especially if you are shooting and designing advertising campaigns and you don’t want them to look like it is afterwards. Many companies began to produce marketing advertisements in July or August to ensure that they have enough time to create and modify them.
Don’t forget social media. People roll around their Instagram summary regularly throughout the day. Show them the image of the products you are using can help them imagine themselves or they are using your goods to shop. When people browse Instagram, the purchased posts are also a good way to promote online sales.
Use Google shopping ads to help people find your product. You don’t have to start using Google shopping ads. Having said that, you don’t want to use them one week before the holiday shopping season! Starting from one month to two months before the holiday shopping season, their work is best to allow them to get attractive.
Do not forget the back end
Ensure the needs of your personnel.
If you have the power outage date they cannot cancel, and you expect your employee needs to communicate with your employees in advance during the holidays. This is the best time of the year. You can also help them survive the busy season by providing lunch or bringing additional snacks on your busiest day, thereby expressing some additional employees.
Do not use the inventory. If you have a good -selling product, please prepare the quantity to avoid using it. If people are in a tightening state and you are out of stock, then they are likely to leave your online store and choose to choose competitors with the same product and prepare to ship.
Prepare additional transportation and transportation deadlines
Learn for your delivery deadline and convey it to it Your client. Holidays are the busiest period for shipping companies in the year; you must ensure that not only you and your team know the deadline for delivery, but also customers know. Poses them in your entire office, let them always be placed in the minds of employees, and make sure they are clearly posted on the Internet, so that your customers can see online. Create one for your customersSpecial holiday login page so that they can easily access the date and create a message, displayed in their shopping carts at the checkout.
There are sufficient transportation and packaging supplies on hand. Contact your supplier and set up additional delivery date for all the transportation and packaging supplies required for transportation. Pre -assembling your transport box is also a good way to help packaging and transportation processes on your most busy transportation day.
View other transportation options. Considering more transportation methods than standard transportation methods during the holidays. If you usually only provide standard transportation, consider 2-3 days of transportation, or even transport the next day. Most customers can pay additional fees during the holidays to speed up transportation. Contact your carrier, they will be able to help you find the choice that is most suitable for your business and customers.
Although this seems to need a lot of preparations, don’t worry! You don’t have to wait until November to start preparing. Set the timetable for you and your employees and start preparing as soon as possible, even as early as summer, so that you can ensure that your marketing activities have been completed and prepared to start immediately when advertising began in late October and early November.
to ensure that everything is ready before the shopping season, not only will you make you and your employees more more more more more Happy, you can also make your customers more pleasant. They will rest assured that their orders for their loved ones will be properly handled and will give them more reasons to shop with you in the future.
Establish a reliable marketing plan before starting. 
Ensure the needs of your personnel. 
Holidays are the busiest period for shipping companies in the year; you must ensure that not only you and your team know the deadline for delivery, but also customers know. Poses them in your entire office, let them always be placed in the minds of employees, and make sure they are clearly posted on the Internet, so that your customers can see online. Create one for your customersSpecial holiday login page so that they can easily access the date and create a message, displayed in their shopping carts at the checkout. 