The Holiday season is fast approaching and it is time for you, as an eCommerce business owner to unveil your bag of tricks. Also, as the holiday season is marked by the increase in the number of sales unit, you should also shift your focus to ensure smooth operation of your website. This would require equal attention towards dispatching, & inventory management as well as handling the onslaught of traffic during the holiday peak period.
In this post, we would focus on various online sales strategies to help out with your eCommerce business during this holiday season.
eCommerce Holiday Checklist
Creating Holiday sales forecast
During the holiday season, you should always be ready to handle any customer visiting your eCommerce website. By creating a forecast, you can anticipate how big, the holiday week is going to be, and plan your time and resource accordingly. To create an apt forecast report, you should take into consideration the sales report from previous years, and take into account the current trends and market condition to create a realistic prediction.
Ensure ample staffing
Holiday season is synonymous to soaring sales. So you must have ample staffing and man force in hand to tackle the delivery from your eCommerce business. But being the holiday season, many of your staff might opt for a holiday. Thus, shortage of staffs and increase in the number of items to be delivered can be met by altering the staffing schedules. You can sanction early leaves or leaves for part of the day, and continue rotating shifts to meet your objective.
Confirming inventory
Let’s assume a scenario. A user checked out an item from your eCommerce store and completed the transaction successfully. But when it came to delivering the product, you came to know that the exact order was not available in your inventory. And thus you end up cancelling a perfectly valid transaction. One thing’s for sure, however politely you respond to your customer about the fault, you would definitely create a negative a vibe. So the best bet is to check your inventory from time to time and as a failsafe measure keep ample inventory to fuel the holiday rush.
Refurbishing your store
Just like a brick and mortar store, your online web store too requires some festive refurbishing, during the holiday season. As the traffic is bound to increase during this period, you must take measures to ensure optimum performance of your website. Also, you need to change the look and feel of your website and add festive templates and banners to enhance the WOW factor of your site
Time management
Managing time properly is something that explicitly doesn’t need to be propagated to you. You should advise your team to be efficient and manage time properly. You should also account for unplanned hurdles while shipping or making deliveries. Also, you should help your can participate during this period of rush and delegate responsibilities to your stuff and assign responsibilities to get work things done in a jiffy.
Reduce stress among team members
We are all familiar with the idiom, All work, and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And the same applies to your team members as well. If they are busy all day, tireless making sure that your deliveries and other operations revolving your site is going smoothly during this peak period, it might take a toll on their productivity and efficiency. So it’s better to lighten up the mood with some fun and frolic. You can organize some team building activity or competition, and also award them as a token of your appreciation. This will instill trust and increase bonding amongst your employees and also towards the company.
So, the best holiday eCommerce marketing strategy would be to stay prepared and manage your resources and time effectively. As holiday season accounts for over 20% of your annual retail sales, such strategies should be taken seriously during this holiday season. So plan well, avoid pressing the panic button and welcome the great sale with open arms.
