Below is our ecommerce to-do checklist that you can implement leading up to the busy holiday season, will help increase your sales this year, and gain you more visibility to have continued sales in the next year. As you begin planning, keep these e commerce holiday checklists bookmarked as a reference.
How were your sales the previous year?
Have you ever heard the quote “you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been”? Well that applies to sales as well. How were your sales last year? This will help you understand what you can expect for this year, as well as the necessary adjustments to make
Become familiar with upcoming holiday dates?
Knowing the exact date of the holiday allows you to prepare when you’ll release your promotions, when and how to market, and helps you plan for the influx of new orders you’ll receive. Here are some of the most important end of year holidays that you should be aware of:
- Black Friday [2022: Friday, November 25]
- Small Business Saturday [2022: Saturday, November 26]
- Cyber Monday [2022: Monday, November 28]
- Giving Tuesday [2022: Tuesday, November 29]
- Christmas Day [2022: Sunday, December 25]
- New Year’s Eve Day [2022: Saturday, December 31]
- New Year’s Day [2023: Sunday, January 1]
Business goals for the holiday season
What sales goal do you want to achieve this year in the months of November and December? Write this goal down so you’ll know how to strategize to make sure you accomplish it.
Create a holiday promotion calendar and automate this on your e commerce website
Based on your revenue goal for the holiday season, what sales, special deals and promotions can you offer to customers this year? What holidays do you want to offer them? Create a calendar that’ll allow you to see this plan by filling in what promotions will go into effect on before, during and after these holidays.
Is your website ready to go?
This is one of the most important and critical pieces to this checklist. Your products are being viewed, purchased and processed online. The experience your customers receive and their first impression when they land on your ecommerce website will dictate if they’ll do business with you or not. A poorly performing website can immediately decrease your sales. Here are a few details to give attention to on your e comm website:
- Make sure your website is visually appealing to your audience. A poorly designed e commerce website doesn’t feel trustworthy to new customers
- All products should have categories for online shoppers to easily find products they’re looking for
- Repair any functional issues that can occur when a customer is checking out or entering their credit card information
- Allow customers to make purchases with different forms of payment such as credit card, Paypal, Google Pay, Klarna, and other e commerce payment types that fit their needs
Automation saves you time and money
Automate your processes as much as possible so you can focus on managing orders. E commerce automation eliminates repetitive tasks that you typically do manually for each customer, but allows it to be completed in the same way and according to the same criteria. Here are some of the most important e commerce automation processes you’ll need to have set up:
- Sync your customers to an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp
- Gather feedback after a purchase by asking for reviews
- Automate your inventory management so you know when a product is low in stock
- Send abandoned cart email when a customer abandons their car
- Print shipping labels and send out tracking numbers with one click
Can your products be found online in google search?
Optimize your SEO on your website and product descriptions for the holiday season. For those that aren’t familiar, this means using specific keywords on your website that users will use to search for your product. Do this on every page of your website, and create static landing pages for each holiday season so they can be published live when ready. Your products being found online by customers is one of best ways to significantly increase your sales.
Get Creative With Your Sales
If you sell single products, see how you can package some of them together to increase sales. For example, if you sell candles don’t only sell them one by one. Bundle some of them together. You can create a “mood candle package” and sell bundles of candles based on the mood your customer is in, or would like to be in such as relax, cleaning, refreshed, etc.
Cybersecurity is Serious
Look, customers are entering their personal information on your website with the trust that none of their information will be breached or hacked. You need to ensure that our website is fully, 100% secure.
Technical Support
It’s technology people. Something can always go wrong. It’s best to plan and be prepared to have someone on hand that can fix any technical issues quickly and efficiently. Holiday season is busy but it’s a very small window you have, and any hiccups need to be troubleshooted and fixed immediately.
Final Checklist Thoughts
Planning is critical to your success. All information within this article has been proven, yearly, to work seamlessly. If you have any questions or need any assistance, our team of digital marketing experts will provide you with a strategy that fits your holiday season business goals at no cost. Just contact us on the form below and we will get back to you within 24 hours.
