At the moment, January may seem a lifetime away. You are focused on your festive special offers and deals. Trying to find ways to meet the increased demand while all the time pushing for more. Doing your best to compete with the bigger companies while never losing the personal touch that makes small eCommerce business special, and pushing your business to be the best it can be.
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Ways to Keep Sales High After the Holiday Spike
January will be here before you know it. Those festive highs will be long gone, and you’ll be back to trying to boost sales and grow your business. You may find you continue to do well in January, but for a lot of companies, even larger ones, the start of the year is a struggle. Especially now that there’s such a focus on pre-Christmas deals and the January sales aren’t as monumental as they once were.
Still, there are many ways to boost your productivity in the new year. Instead of worrying about sales and focusing on the negatives, use it as a chance to give your eCommerce business a little TLC. A time to get back to basics and make sure you are going into the year on a high. See January as wiping the slate clean and building a firm foundation for a year of growth and success. Here’s a look at some great ways you can make the most of a quiet month.
Stock Take
No one likes a stock take. But, January is the perfect time to do it. You’ll have run stock and supplies down over Christmas, and you may have a few weeks before you need to start ordering up again. Count absolutely everything. From the products, you have to sell right down to the printer ink and paper supplies. Make sure you know exactly how much stock you’ve got and what you plan to do with it.
Even if you work from home, the importance of stocktaking shouldn’t be underestimated. It can cut costs on over ordering and help you to keep your systems up to date and organised.
Update Your Website
Updating your website, your software and even your phone is of crucial importance to your business. Without updates our systems don’t run at their best, we leave ourselves exposed to security threats and find that we’re not as productive as we should be. But, many of us ignore that little “update now” button.
Especially when it comes to your eCommerce website during the busy holiday period. With so much to do, it’s not a priority. Once things calm down, spend some time installing any updates that you need.
Refresh Your Designs
Changing the design of a website is a big thing. Especially if you are changing your logo or colour scheme as you’ll also have to make changes to your social media profiles, product labels, business cards, marketing materials and anything else that carries your branding.
Many of us spend months or even years not quite sure about our branding but worried about making the change. If this sounds like you, January is the perfect time to find branding that you love.
Focus on Security
Cybersecurity threats are becoming a much more significant problem, and unfortunately, as your business grosn, you’ll be at higher risk. Make 2018 the year that you do something about it. Install security plugins, double check that your customers are real with Netverify and check the safety of any computers you use.
Boost Your Social Media Presence
When we first start online businesses, we tend to spend a lot of time building a social media following. It’s fantastic free advertising after all. But, then as we grow and we get busier, we often just think we can leave them to it and that they will continue to grow.
This isn’t often the case. To use social media to its full potential you need to be active and engage with your audience. It’s fine to automate and schedule posts, but make sure you are also following new people, sharing relevant content from other sources and chatting with your audience. Spend some time in January putting together a social media plan and a set of goals for the year.
Plan Next Christmas
This might sound silly, but it’s never too early to start thinking about the next festive season. And January is the perfect time to analyse the last one, while it’s all fresh in your mind. Sit down and take a look at how you did. Write a list of everything that went well and things that you would change for next year. This is also the perfect time to think about your competition. Which campaigns impressed you? What can you learn from them?
The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to having a productive January is not thinking about it until it’s here. Start putting a plan in place now to ensure you can make the most of your time. 🙂
