Business Tips to Gear Up for the Peak Holiday Season

Small business owners who’ve been in business for some time understand what it means to gear up for holiday season.

It is a time when your store is a buzz of activities, prospects and customers are visiting and sales are at their peak. So you don’t want to get caught unaware or miss the whole point of setting up a shop or ecommerce store; to maximize profits.

End-year festive season is a one-time money heist you don’t want to miss. But your counterparts can rake in all profits and grab even what’s yours if you watch the clock countdown and holiday seasons near without a well-thought-out strategy.

When drafting this year’s plan, businesses should seek to learn and improve from last year’s performance.

Here’s how to prepare your small to medium business for holiday season

1.      Ask for employees’ suggestions: Because we are growing from last year’s mistakes, staff input is an excellent way to gain valuable insights. Ask them what they noticed last year and their recommendations for this year’s peak season.

2.      Maintain order:the influx of visitors and customers can cause confusion if you don’t plan ahead. You saw what happened last year; if your current staff base or the way doing things does not hold up during holiday season then you need to make the necessary adjustments this time.

3.      Prepare your website: Too much traffic can cause serious breakdowns if you don’t prepare your website for peak season. This is the time to upgrade your website to support more visits, check for and eliminate error pages, and optimize its user-friendliness so that customers enjoy a smooth journey from visit to checkout.

4.      Review and revise existing policies and processes: streamline the customer’s journey and your customer service, offer free shipping campaigns to attract more shoppers and eliminate any process that slows down the checkout stage without compromising on security and customer experience.

5.      Develop a marketing strategy: Be creative with your holiday marketing campaigns. This is the time to implement a unique approach; a strategy that will ensure you stand out from your competition.

6.      Use promotions: sales are high during holidays and so are customer expectations. Festive moments are a time when people gift and appreciate each other. How about you gift you shoppers with discounted goods?

In Conclusion

These six tips can help you gear up for holiday seasons. Remember to learn and improve form previous peak sales spree mistakes because some challenges recur year after year.

Author bio: Michael Hollis is a Detroit native who now lives in Los Angeles. He is an account executive who has helped hundreds of business owners with their Business funding solutions.

He's experimented with various occupations: computer programming, dog-training, scientificating… But his favorite job is the one he’s now doing full time — providing
business funding for hard working business owners across the country.