Stress-free Selling During the Holidays

The shopping season is nearly here, and it's never too early to get ready.

Black Friday kicks off an exciting time for your shop. It's the time of year when you get to meet new shoppers and be a part of holiday giving. It can also be busy and stressful. Your top priorities should be to keep things running smoothly, drive traffic to your shop, and respond to any customer's questions.

But that doesn't leave much time for other things like managing social media or adjusting your shop's settings. Here are some ways to take care of the dirty work now, so you can focus on more important things when it gets busy.

Using social media

Use social media to your advantage to remind busy shoppers of your can't-miss sales. Schedule tweets and Facebook posts to be automatically shared through a service like Buffer or Hootsuite. This way, you can promote your holiday sales without needing to write and post the updates while you're busy with other tasks. As you schedule a batch of tweets, take a couple extra minutes to look at your messaging and fine-tune your marketing.

For more ideas, read Buffer's Social Media Automation Strategy.

Automating your workflow

Use Zapier or IFTTT to automate various tasks and workflows. With minimal setup, you can get a lot more out of your shop by connecting to tons of services and apps. This can do everything from automatically tweeting your latest Instagram photos to subscribing new shoppers to your email list.

Sending emails

If you have a newsletter, prepare it as soon as possible. Even if you plan to send it out the day after Thanksgiving, or sometime over the weekend, that doesn't mean you need to wait until then to write it.

Set up an auto-responder for your email address. This lets shoppers know you received their message and will get back to them as quickly as possible. If you're getting lots of emails, don't by shy about admitting that replies may be delayed. It helps put people's minds at ease if they know you won't forget them.

Supporting shoppers

Be proactive. Answer questions in advance with a frequently asked questions page on your shop, and be descriptive when you list your products so shoppers know exactly what they're buying.

Test your checkout now. Whether you're using Stripe, PayPal, Square, or some combination of all three, iron out any kinks before shoppers are ready to hand you their money. If you want to give shoppers the most flexibility with payment options, be sure to enable Stripe, which now supports Apple Pay!

Go ahead and plan on a special discount or two. You want to convince buyers who are on the fence to hit that buy button. You can offer something pretty standard, like 10% off for your newsletter subscribers, or something more specific, such as free pickup for local shoppers. Whatever you want!

Making time for you

Take a break. The holiday shopping season gets hectic, and there may be some bumps in the road. There might be questions, returns, or complaints. It happens. Do your best to take care of yourself above all else, and your customers a close second. Whatever you do, keep your head up and keep working hard. We believe in you.

Too many things to keep track of on your to-do list? Bookmark our Holiday Rush Calendar to stay up-to-date on all the key dates you should know. And remember, we're always here to help. Our support team will be available to assist with any questions you might come across, so get in touch if you need us.