6 Preparations You Can Make Now to Prepare for Christmas

01/10/2019 | Share:

Christmas time and the lead up to Christmas is one of the biggest spending periods of the year and for online retailers, this usually means an opportunity to increase sales and revenue. However, in order to make this happen and keep up with the competition and demand, you’re going to need to do some preparations now.

Here are just a few recommendations from Ogden on how to prepare your business for Christmas:

Is your website ready for Christmas?

Most online stores change their look (to varying degrees) in the run-up to Christmas. This is something you should consider doing, to give the storefront a festive, seasonal and refreshed feeling. If the site looks the same, people may even question whether your site is still running!

If you’re going to a lot of trouble to make this a successful festive period in terms of sales, it would be a shame if it was all for nothing. You need to make sure that your website (and your business overall) is optimised for a potential increase in traffic. If the website crashes or has a confusing user experience, it will deter potential customers at a time when people are looking to buy.

Have your ad campaigns ready

Whilst you have the time now, make sure you are chipping away at your advertising campaigns. Whether this is on social media, Google or another platform, you can be creating your ad text and gathering your assets together, ready to hit the button closer to the time.

Calculate your promotions

Planning a Christmas Sale (or even Boxing Day Sale) is a great way to encourage people to purchase from your store, however, you need to make sure you’ve fully calculated your costs (including ads) and profit margins. Doing the maths now can save you time later on.

Work out your time frames

One of the main concerns for customers, especially those for last-minute shoppers, is whether it will arrive in time for Christmas. Working backwards, calculate when your cut-off date is for Christmas orders. If you can deliver on Christmas Eve, how many days before this must a customer place an order?

Once you’ve calculated this with your courier, ensure you add necessary and clear disclaimers to your online shop to avoid customer complaints and unexpected returns.

Christmas themed products

If you plan to sell Christmas themed products, for example, Christmas jumpers, you need to make sure you’ve got these coming into stock soon or you can dropship them successfully.

Extra stock

If you are expecting increased sales over the Christmas period, you may need extra stock to avoid being sold out, extra storage or even extra help to deliver larger volumes. By holding stock, Ogden Fulfilment can help you to avoid costly unavailability and speedy shipping costs. Take a look at our Services page to see what we can do to help you avoid disappointed customers over the Christmas period.