Tips to Get Your Retail Business Ready for the Holidays

We know how important the holiday season is for your retail business. Get your business and retail strategy prepped for the holiday season with these tips. Get customers streaming into your stores. And get products flying off your shelves.

1) Use analytics to tweak your holiday promotions
Run sales reports from previous holiday seasons to see how your previous holiday promotions and discounts fared. And look through your recent product sell-through reports to understand current product trends and how customers have been responding to your inventory.
Take the data from the sales reports and product sell-through reports to think about how you want to set up the new holiday promotions. Consider raising the perceived value of your promotions by including items that are trending, and attract more customers to your store. Or make use of the holiday season to move your dusty inventory by including stagnant stock in your promotions.

2) Optimize your staffing
If you have multiple stores, run sales comparison reports to look at sales performance across your multiple stores in the previous holiday seasons. If you have one store, run X-readings to look at hourly sales data for your store on a typical holiday season weekday or weekend.
Based on your past holiday season sales reports, decide where and when you may want to increase or decrease the number of store associates. And get precise holiday schedules set up with your staff as early as possible to maximise sales during the busy holiday period.

3) Create urgency in your holiday promotions
Set up promotions that are exclusive with criteria and limits that create a sense of urgency for your customers to come to your store.
Limit your promotion to specific time frames, days of the week or limit it to a certain number of redemptions a day, to create a sense of hurry for customers to come to your store. Or limit your promotion to certain categories of loyalty membership to make your promotions feel more exclusive.

4) Give customers convenient gift options
Many customers are overwhelmed during the holiday season with long shopping lists of gifts and presents to purchase for family, friends and coworkers. And the in-store shopping experience can be stressful with the myriad of choices available.
Help customers shortcut their gift-buying decisions and enjoy their shopping experience with convenient gift options such as having gift cards, gift vouchers and gift sets for the holiday season. These options are particularly appealing to busy customers and ones doing last-minute shopping.