4 Ways to Merchandise for the Holidays
Fall is drawing close and that means holiday season isn’t far behind. To maximize your sales, it’s best to plan early for holiday merchandising. You want to make it easy for customers to find the perfect gifts. Presenting your products in a gift guide format also gives you some built-in search engine optimization and landing pages for your ad campaigns. Here are some ways to present your wares:
1. Under $25.00, $10.00, $5.00
Everyone’s on a budget, sometimes we even get into Secret Santa pools with set budgets we have to stick to. That’s why it’s a good idea to present merchandise by price. It immediately allows a site visitor to peruse products within his or her budget. Clicking products just to see prices can get frustrating. I’ve abandoned more than a few sites for this reason alone.
2. Gifts for Him/Her/Kids
Help your customers find something perfect for everyone on their shopping list by breaking items down into categories for gift recipients. Be sure to think about different groups like co-workers, men, women, teens, children, babies, mom, dad, grandma and grandpa.
3. Gifts for Artists/Foodies/Runners
If you have items in your inventory that appeal to niche interests make separate gift guides for those people. This type of categorization is fantastic for search engine optimization. Such specific phrases tend to convert well and have lower levels of competition. Think about all the different specific niche audiences out there who might enjoy your products and do a gift guide for each one.
4. Stocking Stuffers
Small, inexpensive products are perfect for categorizing as stocking stuffers. Think of items like notepads, buttons, hair accessories and other fun little items people can fit into a stocking for a low price.
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I’ve been meaning to ask you, as someone going into their first major holiday season doing online sales, how do you figure out holiday shipping deadlines, etc, and how do you best communicate those to your customers? Do you base it solely off of whatever USPS or your shipping company says or is there another method that works for you?
Comment by Mallory - Miss Malaprop — August 18, 2010 @ 8:12 am
Mallory, I wrote about some of this in today’s post. I post a page with my order cut off dates and link that page on EVERY page of my site.
I do not just go by USPS because I need to allow myself extra time to get orders packed. USPS is also slower than normal at holidays because they’re so busy. International is especially unreliable so it’s important to be aware of that.
I give pretty conservative cut off dates for my ecomm site because I know the kind of hell we’ll get from customers if they order late and do not get their packages in time.
Comment by Meredith — August 18, 2010 @ 11:46 am
Awesome, thank you so much! I just saw your post – very helpful!
Comment by Mallory - Miss Malaprop — August 18, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
[...] new navigation scheme made space for me to merchandise products in more ways. Customers can now browse by collection, color, gift guides and popular [...]
Pingback by Smaller Box :: Blog :: My Site Re-Design Part 1: Doing More With Less (Space) — August 31, 2010 @ 8:03 am
Excellent post — great info on holiday merchandising ideas; some of these I did, some I forgot and some are new — I needed all these ideas!
I started my shop on Etsy last Nov, toward the end of the online holiday shopping season.. I’m now gearing up for this season and already feeling unprepared!
Thanks for giving me some get ‘er done motivation!
Sheryl
Comment by Sheryl — September 3, 2010 @ 9:55 am
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Pingback by Favorite Links : The Selling Sisters: — September 7, 2010 @ 10:57 am
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Pingback by Smaller Box :: Blog :: Etsy Shops and What they Mean For Your SEO — September 8, 2010 @ 9:38 am