You get one bite of the apple. Each holiday season presents a wealth of opportunity…are you going to run with the big dogs or sit on the porch this year? There are quite a few things you can do that are not expensive, but can help put you over the top this holiday season.
1. Free Shipping Works!
It seems silly and obvious, but folks just seem to love getting free shipping. Make sure you can afford it and then just simply create a discount code that you can promote on your front page and also perhaps via a newsletter. Just go to Store > Commerce > Discount Codes and create a new code by clicking on the link that says Create: Add A New Item. Create an ID (perhaps something tricky, like ‘free_shipping’), Set it to Non Expiring Discount and then in the Discount Code Value input box, just put the word FREESHIPPING. Then set the Active Status to ‘True’. Now it’s up to you to promote this to returning customers and on your front page. Once you no longer want to run the special, simply return to the same place and set the Active Status to False.
2. All The News That’s Fit To Print…
Put on your creative thinking cap and get in front of your customers. This is the time of year when people have their mailboxes blow up with promotions from everyone, their brother and their cousins. Take some time and create some content that doesn’t only promote your products, but also provides your customers with an interesting read. Perhaps you start in early December and offer some specials that folks don’t need to brave the elements and other crazy shoppers to take advantage of. Use that discount code system (explained above) and get creative. Remember, every product you sell and clear off of your shelves doesn’t have to be inventoried in 2015! If you have writing chops, create a multi-chaptered story that spans each Friday until Christmas and offers a different set of specials each week. Keep it light and fun and your readers will have fun with it. Also remember to put the name of your business in the title of the newsletter so you don’t get lost in the shuffle.
3. Easy To Pay, Easy To Play
Make sure you offer your customers several ways to pay. Remember that you now have multiple generations using the Internet. Not everyone feels comfortable plugging their credit card information into the computer…it’s always good to offer options like “Call Customer” or “Pay By Check” to your arsenal. Certainly these are not as convenient for you and also require a little bit of follow through, but if you secure extra orders or income over the holidays, it’s probably worth it. Always also good to have Paypal Standard as a choice. For people who don’t have their credit card sitting beside the computer, Paypal is an easy and quick solution that is also secure for you because it makes use a a payment form that is protected by Paypal.
4. Featured Products Are Fun!
Change your first row of Featured Products to ‘Holiday Specials’. ClickCartPro and EuropaCart 8 both have a wonderful new Featured Product Slider option that puts your favorite products right in the spotlight on the front page. You can be very creative with these and open up 5 different rows of Featured Products in whatever flavor you want. This presents your best holiday specials to customers who may not be familiar with your offerings and they don’t even have to click their mouse one time. If you’ve never used the Featured Products sliders, there is an excellent tutorial on this feature located here: Click Here
The important thing to remember is that you should keep it fun and keep it creative. Black Friday was just an idea in someone’s head that no one ever thought would work…until it did!
Enjoy your holidays.
