Preparing Your E-commerce Store for Christmas

If you run an e-commerce store, Christmas is probably going to be your busiest time of the year. Organization and preparation are key to a successful and stress free-period. Get it right and you could well see your business continue to grow throughout the new year. These tips should help you get started.

Write a Plan

What are you hoping to achieve over the festive period? Do you have a sales target? Set yourself some goals, then think about how you’re going to meet them. Consider any special deals you might want to offer on the approach. If you don’t feel you can compete with some bigger firms, maybe hold off until January. Instead offer small incentives such as free delivery or a free gift wrapping service.

Design

Add a few festive touches to your website design and all your social media profiles. You don’t need to go overboard, just inject a little festive spirit. Consider Christmassy profile pictures, and perhaps some festive graphics. You might want to add a Christmas countdown to your home page. These little changes can get people feeling festive, and feeling like shopping. This is the time to show your fun side.

Marketing

It’s all well and good having a plan, and some great products, but you need to make sure people know about them. Advertise on your social media profiles. Comment on other people’s pages and share relevant links to your site.

Stock Levels

Make sure you’ve got enough stock in to deal with any growth in trade. You’ll need to do this as soon as you can if you haven’t already; Christmas shopping is very much underway. Try to find a balance between being realistic and prepared. You don’t want to run out of any key products. Also, always be realistic when it comes to delivery dates. This is more important than ever at Christmas time when customers are waiting for gifts. They need to be able to trust your promises. If something does go out of stock, update your website and share on social media immediately.

Payment Options

People shop online for its convenience. You need to make sure your site is incredibly efficient or this convenience is lost. One way to do this is to offer a range of payment options. To set up for card payments, look into High Risk Pay. PayPal is widely used, so you’ll want to offer that. Also, consider something like Amazon Payments, which allows uses to pay with their existing Amazon accounts.

Check Your Site

You’re going to have massively increased traffic to your site, so, you need to make sure it can handle it. Check speeds with your host, as well as your mobile optimization and customer experience. Go through your whole site as if you were a customer to double check everything.

From a gift-wrapping service, to easy payment options, try to remove as much stress from Christmas shopping as you can. Your customers will remember all these little details, and keep coming back to you all year round.