Holiday sales plan: a four week countdown for a small online shop

A holiday sales plan is decided about four weeks before the day, not on it. What gets an order delivered in time is stock you bought, a last order date you published and customers who heard first. Count back from your peak day.

Start the holiday sales plan four weeks out

Four weeks is enough if each week has one job and the order does not change.

A supplier may need more than a week, so the table is an order, not a guarantee. With less than four weeks, start with the last order date. More levers are in increasing online shop sales.

Stock what actually sold

Take quantities from recorded orders. They show only sales that happened; a customer who left because an item was out of stock is in no order, so treat a product that sold out early as a floor, not a ceiling.

Give gift wrap its own variant with its own count: with twenty boxes, order twenty-one is not accepted. Variant setup is covered in online shop inventory management.

Work out the last order day

The last order day is your peak day minus the carrier's transit days minus one safety day; take the transit figure from your carrier.

1. 1Ask your carrier how many days your farthest customer is away.
2. 2Add a day if parcels leave after payment, then one safety day.
3. 3Add the weekends or holidays the carrier skips.
4. 4If you confirm payments by hand, count to the last day you confirm one.
5. 5Subtract the total from your peak day and publish that date in your bio, a highlight and a pinned post.

Among US shoppers who abandoned a purchase in checkout, the Baymard Institute found 20 percent cited slow delivery and 40 percent extra costs. They shopped on websites, not in DMs, and could give several reasons, but the direction holds: show the delivery date and total cost early. See online shop shipping costs.

Tell past customers first

Message people who already bought before you announce publicly. Harvard Business Review reports that winning a new customer can cost five to 25 times more than keeping one, depending on the study; Bain & Company research found a five percent rise in retention lifts profit by 25 to 95 percent. Those ranges span industries: a direction, not a forecast.

Use a channel that still reaches them: Meta lets a business message someone only within 24 hours of their last message, so for older customers send a text to a saved segment. See online shop customer club.

What does not work: a late deep discount

A deep discount in the last two days does not work: the last order day falls days before the peak, so later orders will not arrive. You promise what you cannot keep or turn the customer away, and either way you paid for the discount.

The arithmetic is in discounts that do not lose money. If you still use a code, end it on the last order day, not the peak day.

Write four numbers afterwards

• Orders and average basket value.
• The share of orders from past customers.
• Products that sold out, and the day.
• Orders you declined because the date had passed; note these yourself, no report has them.

Where to start tomorrow morning

1. 1Open last season's orders and list the best sellers with quantities.
2. 2Ask your carrier for the days to your farthest customer and work out the last order day.
3. 3Create gift wrap as its own variant and enter its stock.