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Preparing Your Dropshipping Site for Christmas and New Year
December, with its pre-New Year rush, is usually the most profitable for online businesses. 40% of annual revenue in retail and e-commerce is generated in the last months of the year. Not only the number but also the size of orders increases. Those who prepare their business and their customers in advance for the upcoming Christmas and New Year holidays have a hard time in the hustle and bustle of these days. What needs to be done in advance? Who to agree with and what advertising budget will be required to successfully prepare your online shop or shopping website for the festive season?
Dealing with suppliers
Delaying and sending a gift later than expected or not sending it at all - what could be worse? A disappointed customer, conflict and a blow to your reputation. To prevent this from happening, talk to your suppliers in advance about product mix, delivery schedules and order processing times. Ask about possible quantity limits. Will they be able to cope with increased order volume? Connecting TONOP will allow you to continuously analyse demand and track sales results.
Contact your suppliers as early as possible, for example in October or November. Coordinate the promotional calendar with them. Find out if they are planning special offers for partners: reduced prices on certain products or categories, cashback or discounts for continuous cooperation.
After the holidays, customers may want to return or exchange items they've purchased. Discuss the entire procedure and terms of exchange or return with your suppliers in advance.
Assortment Update
What will be most in demand on your website before Christmas and New Year? Pre-order popular and profit-generating items from your supplier's stock. It's worth looking at products that are a perfect match for your online shop's sales hits.
Advertise popular and trending products on all pages of the site. Cross-selling techniques will increase the average cheque and increase customer loyalty. The more products you show visitors, the more likely they are to add them to their basket. The following recommendations work well: ‘Popular’, ‘Hits’, ‘Recommended’.
Promotions Calendar
A simple calendar of promotions will allow you to plan all the next steps in preparing your site for the holidays. Experts of TON OP company recommend to schedule in detail:
Create a separate section on your website with gift recommendations for different categories of customers: men, women, children, colleagues. This will make it easier for customers to choose and will be better received by search algorithms.
Delaying and sending a gift later than expected or not sending it at all - what could be worse? A disappointed customer, conflict and a blow to your reputation. To prevent this from happening, talk to your suppliers in advance about product mix, delivery schedules and order processing times. Ask about possible quantity limits. Will they be able to cope with increased order volume? Connecting TONOP will allow you to continuously analyse demand and track sales results.
Contact your suppliers as early as possible, for example in October or November. Coordinate the promotional calendar with them. Find out if they are planning special offers for partners: reduced prices on certain products or categories, cashback or discounts for continuous cooperation.
After the holidays, customers may want to return or exchange items they've purchased. Discuss the entire procedure and terms of exchange or return with your suppliers in advance.
Assortment Update
What will be most in demand on your website before Christmas and New Year? Pre-order popular and profit-generating items from your supplier's stock. It's worth looking at products that are a perfect match for your online shop's sales hits.
Advertise popular and trending products on all pages of the site. Cross-selling techniques will increase the average cheque and increase customer loyalty. The more products you show visitors, the more likely they are to add them to their basket. The following recommendations work well: ‘Popular’, ‘Hits’, ‘Recommended’.
Promotions Calendar
A simple calendar of promotions will allow you to plan all the next steps in preparing your site for the holidays. Experts of TON OP company recommend to schedule in detail:
- Dates and times of updating content and banners on your site
- Dates and times when promotional emails will be sent out
- Start and end dates of each advertising campaign for each promotion
Create a separate section on your website with gift recommendations for different categories of customers: men, women, children, colleagues. This will make it easier for customers to choose and will be better received by search algorithms.
Optimise the site
Update the site design. Add colourful banners and backgrounds with a New Year's theme. Make sure customers can easily find festive products through categories and search filters. If the search filters don't work, the user probably won't have the patience to search for the product, opening page after page, and will leave. It is important that the site loads quickly on all browsers, operating systems and is available in the right (target) countries.
Set up multiple payment options on the site for the order: card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Visa and Masterpass or cash on receipt.
Automatic reservation of goods for a certain period of time, for example, 10-15 minutes will allow you to temporarily reserve the goods.
Update the site design. Add colourful banners and backgrounds with a New Year's theme. Make sure customers can easily find festive products through categories and search filters. If the search filters don't work, the user probably won't have the patience to search for the product, opening page after page, and will leave. It is important that the site loads quickly on all browsers, operating systems and is available in the right (target) countries.
Set up multiple payment options on the site for the order: card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Visa and Masterpass or cash on receipt.
Automatic reservation of goods for a certain period of time, for example, 10-15 minutes will allow you to temporarily reserve the goods.
Advertising budget
When planning your advertising budget, consider not only the seasonality of your business, but also the promotional months in which advertising costs will increase. Use past data (if available). Usually in an e-commerce business, the advertising budget is a fixed percentage of turnover (5-10%) or gross profit (10-20%).
Divide the November and December advertising budget into parts. For example, at the end of November, you can allocate 40% of the budget for new customer acquisition, and in the first few days of December, you can allocate 60% for retargeting.
Identify peak shopping dates (e.g. 20-30 days before Christmas) and increase your advertising budget during this period.
Advertising channels
Spontaneous and time-limited advertising campaigns can fail to deliver results and drain your budget, while overly stretched campaigns are ineffective in the pre-holiday period. If your advertising budget is limited, don't forget about SEO optimisation, fill your website with interesting content and actively engage with your audience on social media. TON OP Bulgaria recommends choosing one or more advertising channels:
A link to a useful and well-written blog post can appear in Google search results for years, providing new potential customers. A new article is another page indexed by the search engine.
Don't send out the same emails. Segment your base by customer preferences or previous purchases.
To promote through context, you can set up traffic to each product group or prioritised product groups. Don't forget to include retargeting and Look-a-like audiences at each stage of the sales funnel (basket, visit, checkout).
New Year and Christmas is a good time to launch a social media advertising campaign. It is often the targeting advertising on Facebook and Instagram that is used at the start of festive sales.
This can be one of the most effective advertising options before the winter holidays. Retargeting helps bring back potential customers, those who have already been to your website. This is especially helpful around the holidays when many visitors are doing research before buying. Set up retargeting on Google and social media to remind users of products they've been browsing or offer special discounts to complete a purchase.
Test small campaigns
Before launching large-scale campaigns, test different advertising formats on a small audience. TON OP Bulgaria allows you to virtually test popular online sales techniques without having to invest real money. Users can select the target audience, adjust targeting parameters and monitor results in real time.
Don't go overboard with your pre-holiday advertising budget. A small online shop or a medium-sized company can't afford the budgets of online giants and large retail sites. You don't need it! Your task: to stand out from the competition - those who work in your price category with your target audience.
Happy New Year! What's next?
A drop in sales in the first few days of January is a common situation. Stop your advertising campaigns, but not for long. Holiday emotions have not yet subsided, and neither has online customer activity. After 10 January, remind yourself, have a sale, update your website, launch promotions for loyal customers, and don't forget about social media.
When planning your advertising budget, consider not only the seasonality of your business, but also the promotional months in which advertising costs will increase. Use past data (if available). Usually in an e-commerce business, the advertising budget is a fixed percentage of turnover (5-10%) or gross profit (10-20%).
Divide the November and December advertising budget into parts. For example, at the end of November, you can allocate 40% of the budget for new customer acquisition, and in the first few days of December, you can allocate 60% for retargeting.
Identify peak shopping dates (e.g. 20-30 days before Christmas) and increase your advertising budget during this period.
Advertising channels
Spontaneous and time-limited advertising campaigns can fail to deliver results and drain your budget, while overly stretched campaigns are ineffective in the pre-holiday period. If your advertising budget is limited, don't forget about SEO optimisation, fill your website with interesting content and actively engage with your audience on social media. TON OP Bulgaria recommends choosing one or more advertising channels:
A link to a useful and well-written blog post can appear in Google search results for years, providing new potential customers. A new article is another page indexed by the search engine.
Don't send out the same emails. Segment your base by customer preferences or previous purchases.
To promote through context, you can set up traffic to each product group or prioritised product groups. Don't forget to include retargeting and Look-a-like audiences at each stage of the sales funnel (basket, visit, checkout).
New Year and Christmas is a good time to launch a social media advertising campaign. It is often the targeting advertising on Facebook and Instagram that is used at the start of festive sales.
This can be one of the most effective advertising options before the winter holidays. Retargeting helps bring back potential customers, those who have already been to your website. This is especially helpful around the holidays when many visitors are doing research before buying. Set up retargeting on Google and social media to remind users of products they've been browsing or offer special discounts to complete a purchase.
Test small campaigns
Before launching large-scale campaigns, test different advertising formats on a small audience. TON OP Bulgaria allows you to virtually test popular online sales techniques without having to invest real money. Users can select the target audience, adjust targeting parameters and monitor results in real time.
Don't go overboard with your pre-holiday advertising budget. A small online shop or a medium-sized company can't afford the budgets of online giants and large retail sites. You don't need it! Your task: to stand out from the competition - those who work in your price category with your target audience.
Happy New Year! What's next?
A drop in sales in the first few days of January is a common situation. Stop your advertising campaigns, but not for long. Holiday emotions have not yet subsided, and neither has online customer activity. After 10 January, remind yourself, have a sale, update your website, launch promotions for loyal customers, and don't forget about social media.
Our Contacts
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TON OP DOO LTD
Address: 8 BORBA STR., PLOVDIV, BULGARIA, 4021
Mail: info@tonop.bg
Address: 8 BORBA STR., PLOVDIV, BULGARIA, 4021
Mail: info@tonop.bg