Christmas Preparations: 19 Steps To Start Taking Today

Ho-ho-ho! Christmas is coming!  It’s time for Christmas preparations that would make your ecommerce store ready for the holiday season. This is the magic time of year when you can make up to 40-50% of your store yearly sales!

People want to create a feeling of celebration around them, but often do not know what to buy or simply do not have enough time for this. Your task is to make everything easier for your customers.

Here you can find useful tips for Christmas preparations that will help you turn your store into a storehouse of gift ideas and create a perfect holiday for your clients. Keep reading to boost your sales! 🙂

Start your Christmas preparations with an ecommerce store checklist

The first thing we need to take care of before the Christmas season is the store appearance and working order.

• Stay in touch

Christmas is a stressful time, so it is important to establish convenient communication with customers to reduce their worries. You can achieve this with the help of WhatsApp or other social networks or messengers where you can quickly respond to messages. Customers want to have contact with the store and keep everything under control.

• Have a mobile-friendly store

You are working hard on your store and we are sure that the last thing you want is to lose sales due to some small things. So, test the usability of your site in advance carefully and do not forget about smartphone users. Statistics show that more than 72% of customers make purchases from their mobile devices. Your store should be optimized for smartphones and tablets. Making the buying process as easy and seamless as possible is the key to maximizing your sales.

• Add more reviews

93% of customers study reviews about the store and products before purchasing. So, take care of this in advance. Start collecting reviews after your customers have made purchases and have already evaluated your product. When a store has plenty of great reviews, consumers are likely to spend 31% more, so this is definitely worth paying attention to.

• Introduce Christmas design

A good-looking Christmas-themed design will be a great way to inspire shoppers to buy from you. Remember that Christmas preparations don’t mean you have to do a complete website redesign! Just change your logo in a Christmas-inspired way a little and create themed banners. This will help create a festive atmosphere and motivate consumers to buy.

• Create Christmas offering

Make Christmas-focused category pages. Thanks to this, your potential customers will easily navigate through your store and find all the best offers.

Don’t forget to add Christmas products such as Christmas clothes (sweaters, socks, soft slippers, Santa Claus outfit) and Christmas decorations (LED strings, wall signs, party supplies, tree, pillow covers, etc.): they will definitely keep your customers’ attention.

Try to use the right keywords for your headings, title tags and descriptions of pages, e.g. “Christmas gifts”, “gift ideas”, but remember that they should not compete with each other, so try to use different options.

• Take care of stock & delivery

This is an important item on your Christmas preparation list. Make sure that your customers are aware of their packages’ delivery status as this increases their confidence level. And remember that during the Christmas season, there is an increase in shopping activity and some of your suppliers’ items can go out of stock unexpectedly. Thankfully, with the AliDropship plugin (or a ready-to-go store built with its help) you will experience none of these troubles! The plugin deals with tracking and product info updating automatically, keeping you safe from management worries.

• Offer discounts

Don’t start offering discounts too early. You will have time to get the full price for your products, because some experienced customers expect the maximum price cut. Give yourself a chance to earn more.

• Plan out your return policy and additional payment options

Christmas is the time to think carefully about a more loyal return and exchange policy because it will help you be more competitive. Furthermore, now would be a perfect time to add new payment options for your store. This will help you increase your conversion rate and revenue easily.

Christmas preparations in dropshipping: what about marketing?

Don’t panic and prepare in advance! To get through this Christmas season easily and effectively, make an event calendar and mark all the important marketing events for boosting your sales. Which ones? Our checklist will help you out. 😉

• Provide guidance on gift-giving

Everyone has faced the problem of choosing gifts for family, friends and soulmates.

You need to eliminate the client’s pain. As a part of your Christmas preparations, create several blog posts with different categories such as gifts for parents, for a boyfriend, for a girlfriend, for friends, and include your products with detailed benefits. And believe us, sales will not be long in coming. You will not only increase the conversion rate but also help customers with their choice.

• Level up your social media activity

During this pre-holiday season, you can post whatever you want. The brighter your social media, the better. You can tell about your best offers, ask for customers ‘ opinions, discuss interesting Christmas facts, organize contests to attract a larger audience and share useful information. Don’t forget about the gorgeous Facebook video cover and you will be on top of these sales.

Don’t forget to use Christmas hashtags on your social media platforms. Various thematic hashtags are the best way to find and engage with your audience. Furthermore, using hashtags you can easily track the statistics of your campaign and get a better understanding of the result. Many brands use the holiday period to incorporate different unique hashtags in their social media posts. Don’t get left out and incorporate your own hashtags to help improve your campaigns.

We’d like to highlight that this is something that you should include in your social media marketing strategy. However, make sure the hashtags represent your brand and the campaign you are running.

Ultimately, choosing the right hashtags can lead to much larger brand exposure and increase your number of followers.

Besides publishing bright posts and asking questions about the holidays, try to engage your visitors. Increase sales through social media channels with the help of promo codes and special offers. Moreover, make sure to stay in touch 24/7 and answer any questions of your customers because they are going to come in dozens, and clients don’t tend to be patient at these times.

• Upgrade your email marketing

What do you imagine when we mention Christmas email marketing? Are you going to write about SALES and convince the readers to buy children toys from you? Yes, these are the first things that usually come to mind. Unfortunately, such promotional emails are often considered as a grab for money. That’s why we offer you to stand out. 🙂

First of all, there are three types of emails you can use. And we’d recommend you to start with blog emails. Once you complete your guides on gift-giving, don’t hesitate to share them through emails. You can send your subscribers a list of articles that you wrote or include some abstracts from your articles in the letters, and give people the opportunity to learn more about gifts and your products as well. 🙂

Then again, we shouldn’t forget about those promotional emails. However, make them holiday-themed: use Christmas colors, elements of design, and make sure you understand what your customers feel. Most likely, they are overwhelmed with the holiday hassle. So, don’t try to sell something specific, but include some of your bestsellers that will be a good present to a boss, mom, friends, and so on. Tell your customers that you’re running a Christmas SALE and assure them that they will get the items on time (but be honest!) without staying in huge lines and fighting over them in brick-and-mortar stores.

One more thing that most of us may forget about is saying thanks to our subscribers. If you want people to trust you, don’t underestimate these small gestures. Send your clients warm emails about the passing year and give them promo codes as a “Thank you’. Also, wish them Merry Christmas and fantastic holidays, and please, don’t include any promos in this email. People love sincere things. 🙂

• Create ads in context

According to eMarketer, Christmas day itself isn’t the only date you should consider. The upcoming days are the top spending days, so you shouldn’t miss this opportunity, huh? And the best way to take advantage of it is to launch Christmas ads.

It’s vital to make sure that your ads are creative and really special. Use holiday stickers, Santa figures, idioms to set up the mood. Remember that video ads are the kings of engagement and reach, so don’t hesitate to use this format of advertising. You can include some carols, songs, and anthems in your video ads:  music is really something that makes people feel Christmassy! 🙂

As for targeting strategies, there are 2 options for you to choose from. For example, if you prepared some specific categories for Christmas, you can promote them using special interests: ‘Christmas’, ‘Christmas Market’, ‘Christmas Decorations’, ‘Christmas Gift’, ‘Gift’, etc. Moreover, Google Trends shows that people have started preparing for Christmas since September, so why not start right now?

However, those are not must-have interests if you want to reach your target audience. Some people already know what they are looking for, so if you promote a trendy bag, you can easily use the ‘Fashion Accessories’ interest in your holiday ads. Still, if you’d like to narrow your audience down to those who are interested in gifts, that is also possible. Choose a broad interest that engages lots of people, and then narrow it down with the help of the interests we mentioned above. Ta-dah, you have people that would like to purchase your product as a gift! (Make sure there are enough people to target, otherwise, it won’t work as planned, though). If you feel insecure about designs or ad targeting, you can always ask professionals to do that for you. 🙂

• Increase advertising budgets

As old fairytale villains say, everything comes at a price. If you’d like to enjoy this Christmas season as a dropshipper to the fullest, get prepared to pay for advertising to reach more potential customers. And strategically speaking, as we prefer to think ahead in AliDropship, we recommend reviewing your annual budget and tweaking some ‘slow’ months in favor of the upcoming holiday season.

• Don’t forget about retargeting

Asking Santa for a higher conversion rate? One of the most efficient marketing strategies is to advertise your products and then use retargeting on those visitors who interacted with your website. This strategy doesn’t go only for a short-term period and is more than just a Christmas preparations tactics. You can use retargeting on those who visited your store a couple of months ago. Maybe someone saw a nice piece of clothing for a party or a cool gift for a kid, so now you can offer them to buy it with an awesome Christmas discount. Those people, probably, will not only buy this product but also be grateful for such a suitable reminder.

In addition, don’t give up on this strategy after the holiday season. Retarget your Christmas customers in January. They may become your loyal clients if you manage to satisfy their holiday needs.

• Use the opportunity to attract returning customers

Once you have invested so much in advertising, this is a good time to magically turn your visitors into repeat customers (dropshippers’ bread and butter) or at least your subscribers. Use pop-ups, lead magnets, and loyalty programs to give yourself a chance to interact with your visitors or customers again with such a nice free tool as email marketing.

• Prepare gifts for your customers

Christmas is one of the most magical times of the year and we always give to or do something nice for our family, friends, neighbors… So why not do something nice for customers as well? Partner with your supplier and offer your customers a small gift (Christmas decorations, gift cards, etc.) and they will be touched and remember your store for much longer than your competitors’. One more cool idea is to offer free gift wrapping, if possible, because most people aren’t good at this and it would be nice of you to take care of your customers in advance.

• Create a holiday contest or giveaway

Running a holiday contest can be an effective way to build and even grow your business. This is a great way to increase engagement among your followers and even attract new ones. Moreover, this kind of contest can boost the loyalty of your existing customers, promote awareness and demonstrate that you really care about them.

To take full advantage of a social media promotion, you need to choose the type of content that best suits your business. Think of a special prize idea and promote your contest through all your channels, like your website, social media platforms, and email.

Now, let’s look at some examples of content ideas that you can benefit from!

• 12-day giveaway

For some people, the 12 days of Christmas is an exciting time where they want to participate in various activities and contests. During this time, you can provide your potential customers with a unique opportunity to purchase your products at high-discount prices and at the end of the giveaway offer the ultimate prize.

This is a great opportunity to increase your sales during the holiday season, as well as your website traffic, number of subscribers, and engagement. Moreover, it is a great way to let your customers familiarize themselves with your product offers since they can purchase at much lower prices.

• Run different quizzes

While we are on the topic of Christmas day, holidays, and free gifts, we think that it’s the perfect time to host some random Christmas carol trivia quiz.

It’s a fun, entertaining, and interactive way to engage with your followers. Moreover, by introducing a small prize you will encourage more people to participate in these contests.

• Run a comment contest

Engaging with your potential customers is extremely important and comments can especially help boost your ranking. And as a result, even boost your sales!

Ask your followers about their favorite Christmas moments and memories. Positive-minded questions can help generate positive feedback. Think of questions and topics that resonate with your target audience that will cause them to engage with your posts and share their experiences and thoughts on the topic.

Don’t forget about a potential prize that will be of interest to your audience. A good idea is to give away samples of your products. It will introduce your customers to your brand and help them estimate what you have to offer.

• A Christmas challenge

If you already have an established audience base, and you want to start a more competitive challenge, a good idea is to carry out various holiday-themed puzzles, riddles, and guessing games.

This can easily increase engagement among your existing followers and create a sense of urgency for people to test their knowledge on any given topic. Remember to prepare a prize for the winners of this challenge.

• Christmas giveaways that generate likes, comments, and followers

Another awesome idea is to offer a discount coupon or a gift card for online users who like, follow, and comment on a post on your social media platform. Your potential customers receive a free coupon that they can spend how they like for basically nothing! And you attract a few extra followers and boost your engagement and rankings. It’s a Win-Win situation for both sides!

Make sure the competition lasts several days, to increase the number of followers and the level of engagement!

• Utilize push notifications on your store

Let’s be honest, Christmas is the time of year when everyone is surrounded by a plethora of information coming out of, well, basically everywhere.

Thus, it’s a great time to install push notifications on your website. It creates a direct line of communication with your subscribers. This means that you can notify them about practically anything! Whether it’s a sale, last call for purchase, etc. It’s up to you. However, you have to remember that you shouldn’t overload your potential customers with too much information. They can get annoyed and turn your notifications off very easily.

• Create an after Christmas campaign to increase your sales

After the Christmas period, there is a time when people return to their work. This is the perfect chance to pump out some extra sales!

During this period, people aren’t as active and stay in a relaxed mood, often looking for a sale that will be beneficial to them. Provide them with that chance and offer a flash sale with heavy discounts on popular products you’d like to sell.

Overall, it is a great way to pump in some extra sales and generate some extra income.

Summing up your Christmas preparations

So, to wrap up, preparing for the Christmas season in advance is essential if you want to attract more customers and keep them hooked with exceptional service.

If you are worried about your marketing, you can always get the help of our team with your holiday promotion. So, good luck and we wish you to have happy customers that will be glad to shop with you in 2023, too. 😉