It’s that time of year again – it’s time to start thinking about Christmas!

It’s that time of year again – it’s time to start thinking about Christmas!

It might feel a little bit early but trust us when we say that you need to start preparing your business for Christmas sooner than you think! Here are just a couple of ways that you can get your small business ready for the festive season.

Look at last year’s data

Before doing anything, you should have a good look at your data from last year. There are a couple of really helpful questions to ask yourself. What was your best seller? Did you run out of anything? When did your customers start buying in earnest? While this won’t act as a blueprint for this year (you’ll probably have some new products or services now), it can help guide you. Don’t repeat any of last year’s mistakes!

Start stocking up

Once you’ve examined last year’s data, you can then start thinking about this year! Do you need to stock up on certain items that sold out last year? Do you have enough packaging material like envelopes and boxes? Thinking about this and preparing will help save time during November and December. They’re busy months – you don’t want to spend unnecessary time re-ordering materials or panicking about running out of stock!

Know your dates

Christmas isn’t the only day that you need to think about! It’s a good idea to mark other important dates in your calendar, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Another date that is particularly important this year is the last shipping day – aka the last day that customers can place an order in time for Christmas. You don’t want your products to arrive after the big day!

Update your website

Next, you should absolutely make sure that your website is up-to-date. Your email and phone number should be accurate and easy to find. If you have a FAQ on your website, check it to ensure all the details are correct. If you haven’t already, think back to the questions you were asked last December and add those! This will help you and your customers save time.

If you sell products via your website, these should also be checked over. Have you added your newest products? Do all of them have clear and pleasing photographs? Do they all have at least a small description?

Finally, you should also ensure that your website’s SEO is up-to-date! You can do quick changes like adding titles to your pages, optimising your photographs, and updating your blog. (Your blog could include a festive gift guide, information about any events that you’ll be attending, or how buying locally will help the community!) Making sure that your website is compatible with both desktop and mobile users is extremely important: over half of web traffic comes from mobile! Your website should also load as fast as possible – according to Website Setup, 53% of mobile users will leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load!

Schedule your social media

Finally, it’s so important to use marketing during the festive season – this is often the most profitable time of the year! It’s also one of the busiest, so you should use all of your pre-preparations to help create and schedule your social media posts. You might think that you’ll have the time during November and December, but you need to be realistic! Crafting a great social media post can take more time than you’d think.

Some post ideas could be:

• A Black Friday or Cyber Monday discount
• A carousel post of your favourite new products/services
• Practical details about shipping dates and how to contact you
• A carousel post of gift ideas (e.g. best gifts for dads)
• Behind-the-scenes photos of your shop or office that’s decorated for Christmas
• A reel or video of you packaging up your products in beautiful wrapping paper

There are so many things that you could be doing today to get your small business ready for Christmas – and we can help you with lots of them! Get in contact with us today if you’d like us to create social media posts, check your website’s SEO, craft Christmas blog posts, or more!