Prepping your Online Shop for the Holidays

The holiday season is right around the corner and I want to help make sure that your shop is ready for any and all orders that roll in over the next few weeks! Regardless of whether you’re selling on Etsy or on your own website this holiday season, there are a few things you can do to prep your shop so that it’s ready for holiday sales!

1.Make sure your shop is updated…

• Give your product descriptions a refresh, update old listing photos, and double check your prices to make sure you’re profitable (be sure to take into account your material costs as well as the cost of your packaging and shipping supplies).

• Add links to related items in your product descriptions.

• Check your product tags and titles to make sure they’re up to date.

• Double check your shop policies and make any updates as needed.

• Clearly and visibly state your processing times for your products and shipping cut-off dates (I’m padding mine even more this year for any potential shipping delays).

• Feature your most popular items at the top of your shop.

2. Check your supplies

• Make sure your product inventory is stocked and your shop quantities are correct.

  • If you’ve got product ideas, but are trying to find good vendors, be sure to check out Biz Birthday Bash’s A-Z Directory! It’s a comprehensive directory of print and production vendors for everything from stationery to mugs to packing supplies (and keep your eyes out for a Black Friday sale! That’s when I joined last year and the membership has 1000% paid off).

• Double check your marketing materials and make sure you have enough on hand to include with orders (business cards, thank you notes, etc.). If not, place a reorder ASAP!

• If your items come packaged, make sure you have enough packaging supplies on hand, like bubble wrap, tissue paper, bags, boxes, etc.

3. Prepare for Shipping

• Ensure that you have enough shipping boxes on hand.

  • Did you know, you can order shipping supplies for free on usps.com?!

  • You can also schedule package pickups so you don’t have to lug everything to the post office! (this is especially great for people like me who live in an urban area and don’t have a car!)

  • For those looking to reuse and recycle, start saving any and all boxes that you receive so that you can reuse them to package up your own orders!

• Use a digital scale to weigh packaged items so that you can accurately calculate shipping rates.

• If you print shipping labels at home, make sure you have enough ink and paper or adhesive labels (one day, I’ll invest in a dymo ).

• Have plenty of bubble wrap or packing paper and packing tape on hand.

4. Consider your customer

• Have a thank you note drafted, saved and ready to email to every customer (you can set up a default one to include in the shipping notification in Etsy!).

• Build customer loyalty by rewarding them with a coupon code for future use.

• Include a hand-written thank you note with your orders.

5. Plan your promotions

• If you’ll be hosting a Black Friday / Small Business Saturday / Cyber Monday deal or any other holiday sales, plan out your content calendar and how you’ll raise awareness / drive traffic to your shop.

• Set your promotions by determining what your goal is first (for example, is it hitting a certain number of sales, selling old inventory, encouraging customers to purchase more than one product or reach a certain order amount?).

• Then decide how you’ll run your promotion. Will it be a % off? Free shipping on all orders? Free shipping on orders over x-amount? Free gift included with purchase?

• Don’t forget, promotions don’t mean you have to lose money! You can incentivize people to buy with other types of offers.

• Regardless of what your promotion is, make sure that you’re still profitable and you’re still covering all of your costs.

Looking for tips on how to have a successful holiday launch? Check out my friend Shaochen’s post over on calligraphyceo.com!

*This post contains affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase using my link, I earn a small commission. I only share about companies and products that I truly believe in and that I think will be of benefit to you and I never promote anything that I haven’t tried and loved myself! Plus, purchasing through an affiliate link is a nice way to say “thank you” to creatives who are sharing their knowledge for free 😉

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