Christmas is here already, has it caught you off guard? Well, the truth is that it won’t do you any good to feel sorry for yourself, so get down to work as soon as you finish reading this post. Here are some tips you should follow to get your e-commerce ready for Christmas at the last minute.

#1 – Pay attention to key dates

It seems like everything starts on Black Friday and ends on Cyber Monday but let’s face it, this has never been the case. The Christmas campaign itself has its own key days and you’ve still got time to act. These dates have their own names:

• Green Monday: the second Monday in December and one that registers the most purchases of the year. There are still at least 10 days before Christmas so you’re under a bit of pressure. Green Monday 2017 is December 11^th; put it on your calendar, you’ve still got time.
• Stamp and Ship Day: December 14th is the last day to do your Christmas shopping and receive your items with standard shipping. Last call for those planning ahead.
• Free shipping day: the day of no shipping costs is December 18^th. Are you interested?

 

Don’t forget local dates, like Three Kings’ Day, that are widespread in Spain. The campaign doesn’t end on Christmas Eve.

#2 – Last minute sales

Once we’re in December we don’t have a lot of room to move around with people that plan ahead or those who make wish lists two months in advance (make a note to go for them next year).

Fortunately, we’ll always have the procrastinators, the super-busy, and the clueless. These users will need your services; how about last minute sales?

When I talk about special offers I don’t necessarily mean sales (obviously, they would help). You can lay out different strategies:

• Express delivery at standard cost.
• Free shipping for purchases over a certain amount
• Gifts with every purchase; these presents can be products you want to get out there.

 

#3 – Solutions for those who don’t know what to buy

Users are getting more complicated, they have more things and they make it hard to guess. A good strategy is to create gift cards for your e-commerce. You can send them by email, printed, and advance them with a code. Everyone’s happy: the customer buys a gift, you make a sale, and you have another potential customer who is closing. Good strategy, right?

#4 – Monitor in real time

This is the time when you have to manage everything in e-commerce. Keep watch of your stock, orders, and sales so you can adapt your offers to the demand. This includes your internal search engine because everything you’re unable to find there, with the right search volume, is a sales opportunity.

#5 – Shopping guides

If you start right now, you can still make a couple of Christmas shopping guides for your most important users. These guides have to pick up on the desire to purchase with the focus placed clearly on the gift.

If you do it right, next year you’ll have organic traffic on your landings, but this year the idea is to give gift ideas to users captured through other channels, which tend to be scarce. Gifts for women, for children from 0 to 18 months, etc. Use Google and you’ll get a few hints!

#6 – Learn from the past

I’m sure you’re doing a thousand things right now, but it’s worth putting important work on hold for a second to calmly look at how things went last year. This is the best way to evaluate how the situation is going and make short term decisions at the same time.

For whatever reason, if you see a consistent trend in when you convert the most, the last Saturday of December, for example, you may have to save a bit of your budget to focus more on recruitment.

#7 – Create Christmas content

The potential for the sale is good, many people love Christmas. Use your blog to capture traffic through your social networks and newsletters and give them what they want. This is a similar strategy to shopping guides but more segmented and faster to implement. You can always link your posts to products from your store and in the end, it’s always beneficial.

#8 – Extend the return period

You can do this right now: understand your user. Many buyers are getting gifts and don’t want to find that the return period has expired. If you give them a few extra days, you’ll be able to avoid an important obstacle. Remember though: you have to inform them so they know about it.

#9 – Get the sales ready

It seems like silly advice but if you find that you’re running out of time to get your e-commerce ready in December, try to line things up for January. Start planning your sales strategy now.