❄️ Seller Community Festive Season Guide 2021 🎄

isabelle — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 23:29:37 GMT

Hello Seller Community! 🇨🇦

One moment it’s summer and the next thing you know, storefronts are being decked out with festive lights and decor ✨

In this post, we’re continuing our tradition of sharing resources to help you promote, manage your business and boost sales this festive season. Don’t hesitate to ask questions or share your top tip for surviving this busy time of year in reply below!

Below are some suggestions for creating the BEST online holiday shopping experience for your customers:

1. Update your design

The first step is to customize your design for the holidays. Take advantage of templates that make this quick and easy. Choose a template that complements your brand, so loyal customers will still recognize the business they know and trust. During the holiday season, shoppers may be browsing several store websites, so you want to grab their attention immediately.

2. Personalize your customer experience

Customers want to feel valued, and one way you can do that is with personalization. Nearly three-quarters of customers are frustrated by website content that’s not personalized.

When you personalize an experience for your customers, you increase brand affinity. An easy way to do this is through your email messaging, using the information you gather during sign-ups to address your customer by name.

3. Make gifting easy

In addition to your regular product categories, consider adding gift sections to your online catalog to help shoppers search for the perfect present. These are also opportunities to take advantage of online holiday shopping trends. For example, you can have them broken down by recipient or price range. Also - allow customers the option to add a gift message, get a gift receipt, and even pay an optional gift-wrapping fee.

4. Add details to product pages

Be sure to give customers as much product information as possible. If they’re unsure about an item, they’ll likely click away and find something else instead of trying to get answers.

5. Highlight gift cards

If you aren’t already offering gift cards on your website, you’re missing out on an essential stream of revenue.

Plastic Gift Cards: Keep in mind it can take 5-7 working days to receive plastic gift cards so consider when your customers will need to purchase them from you and work back from there.

eGift Cards: You can configure and sell eGift Cards in seconds. It’s free to set up eGift Cards and with a free eGift Card website you can promote that you sell digital gift cards on social media too. Check out these threads to learn more about using Square Gift Cards:

6. Provide clear shipping information

Speedy and reliable shipping is extra-important during the holiday shopping season. This is especially true this year when more shoppers might have to send gifts to loved ones, rather than deliver them in person. Create a holiday shipping schedule that is posted in a prominent place on your website. For example, set purchase dates that guarantee delivery if sent by standard shipping, two-day shipping, and overnight shipping. Today’s customers expect to receive their purchases fast.

Find new ways to accept payments to accommodate more customers!

You can prepare yourself for bigger crowds while reducing contacts by offering multiple ways to pay. Here are just a few:

Food & Beverage: Create QR codes with Square Online to allow your customers to order online and minimise contact with staff.
Retail: Connect your Terminal to your Square Point of Sale to facilitate customers paying on a separate screen. You can also review these products to help you take payments at a distance.
Here are some more methods you can implement to take payments without making contacts.

Promote your offers on social media and with Square Marketing

If you haven’t already, consider creating promotions for specific holidays. You can offer discounts for items on your Square Online site by creating coupon codes. Or you can create discounts that can be applied from your Point of Sale.

You’ve put a lot of effort into creating the perfect holiday offers and sales — now it’s time to tell your customers about it. You can use Square Marketing to send pre-designed or custom email campaigns. Not sure how? Checkout our get started guide for Square Marketing.

Best practices and resources for running email marketing campaigns

Below is a Holiday Marketing checklist!

Take an analytical approach

Your sales data is always available at your fingertips. From your Square Dashboard, you can track sales and see which items have sold well in the last year, check inventory and make sure you have enough of your popular items on hand. Knowing what you have on your floor and how much each product you expect to sell can make all the difference.

You can also think about creating a gift guide for the Christmas season based on past sales trends and summaries.

Boost sales with rewards

With Square Loyalty, you can set up reward programs to help incentivize customers to return and build a relationship with them. If customers feel valued, they will recommend your business to other people which can in turn lead to more sales, more signups for your loyalty program and a potential increase in profit.

Get Started with Square Loyalty

Additional resources

Below are some additional resources from the Square Editorial Team that may be of interests to you this festival season:

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Share your tips to survive the festive season or ask questions below. Wishing you all a wonderful festive season. Stay safe.

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