There are two people in this world: those who secretly start planning for Christmas in August, and those (like me) who panic and leave everything until December 21st.

Now of course if you’re a Melbourne business selling just about any product, then I’ll bet Christmas is your super-busy time of year.

For a lot of businesses, 20% of their annual sales happen in December. Getting super-prepped for the shopping-frenzy could see those numbers climb even higher.

So I wanted to bring together some great ideas on how to prep your business for Christmas.

 

Online

Prepare Your Website for Christmas

Now’s not the time for a full rebrand or overhaul of your site. But it’s still important to make sure your website is up-to-date and showing your business in the best light.

Make sure your best products are being featured on the home page. Get some new product photos taken if you need to.

Go over all your shop policies and T&Cs to make sure they’re still current. While you’re at it, add details of your cut-off times for Christmas shipping and any special conditions you have for returns of gifts (not that anyone would want to return your amazing stuff).

Start Building Your List

If you haven’t already started a mailing list (tsk tsk) then make that a priority. You’ll be getting so many lovely new customers in November and December, and it would be great to be able to stay in touch with them in the future.

 Decide What Will Happen to Your Blog

If you’ve been blogging, you know it’s a great way to connect with current customers, have new people find you and generally share your brilliance with the world. Blogging regularly is hard at the best of times, but during Christmas madness it’s almost guaranteed to be relegated way down the list of priorities.

Think about what you will do now to manage the blog. You could write and schedule a bunch of posts now to go up during December/January. Or you could decide to take a little blog break – a friendly “sorry, but we’re busy filling orders for Christmas, but we’ll be back to producing awesome content in January” should suffice.

In Your Studio or Shop

Prepare More Stock Than You Think You’ll Need

If you’ve been prepping your online site to showcase your brilliance then you might just find there’s a shopping frenzy happening in store. And if not? We’ll you’ll have plenty of stock on hand for the start of the year.

Think About Your Promotions

Are you going to offer free gift wrapping? Special gift bundles? Extra-long returns time? Have a think about what promotions you can offer to make your business stand out and make the most of the shopping season.

Stock Up on Supplies

There’s nothing worse than having to stand in line for an hour at the post office to buy more shipping boxes. Make sure you have enough (plus extra) of everything you need to get your products packed/shipped/wrapped/or bagged.

I hope those tips help you get your business into tip-top shape for the busy Christmas period, so you can take an (extra) long break in January.

Need help getting your website up to scratch? Contact me now to discuss a fast website copy spruce up.