Craft Venture: decking your halls

Welcome to Craft Venture "" business and marketing tips for indie online business organization owners, just like us! Im Brenda, owner of Phydeaux Designs on Etsy and 1000 Markets. Last week, we talked about advertising online for the holidays, part of our serial on the holiday season. This calendar week, nosotros are talking most decking the halls – I mean your shop(s) – for the holidays.

Welcome to the start of the 2009 vacation shopping season! This week, the malls and stores will be full of vacation decor, gifts, food, cards, wrapping paper, etc. What about your ain shop(s)? Are you going to spruce up your imprint, announcement, and item descriptions for the holidays? I hope your answer is "yes," and here are some reasons to exercise so!

Terminal holiday season, I completed 100% of my Christmas shopping online while working on vacation orders! The yr before last, I was so busy with my day task that I did nearly all of my vacation shopping online. More and more people shop online for their holiday gifts and many of those folks will cease their shopping past Thanksgiving weekend.

With online shoppers, you have scant seconds to attact their attending before they click away to see something else. We've talked about optimizing your online presence in the past, via your imprint, annunciation, policies, detail descriptions, tagging, etc. Now is the time to kick everything up a notch! This is likewise an opportunity to necktie your holiday "decor" into your particular branding (and vice versa). If my shop banner didn't have any relation to my shop at all (east.k., kawaii cuteness rather than my detail way of manus knits), the disconcerting clash could transport away both my regular and new customers. Instead, my banner uses my logo, holiday and winter colors, and one of my popular designs with overlaying snowflakes.

What might work for your ain shop or website? Y'all  might be able to make a simple addition of snowflakes or holiday colors to your existing banner or images. Or y'all may want to have a holiday banner designed (or make one yourself!) for you. You should be able to use the same banner for a number of holiday seasons, just like your own beloved holiday decorations. If zippo else, consider a small modify or addition to your existing banner or graphics. A subtle alter may be the perfect fashion to help entice holiday shoppers to stay awhile longer in your online shop.

Many online venues let you to create some kind of shop or store announcements:  a section for y'all to convey crucial information. How will you employ this department for the holidays? Yous will take important information to share with holiday shoppers, including aircraft deadlines, special sales, your render and exchange policy, your ability to accept custom requests or wholesale orders. Rather than try to fit all of that into your announcement section, consider directing visitors to a policy or other section where y'all detail your holiday-specific policies.

About retailers accept specific return and exchange policies for the holidays. Putting yourself in your client's shoes, include what you lot would demand to know about returns and exchanges for your own gift giving. We'll talk more well-nigh this, forth with club fulfillment for gifts, in coming weeks. If you don't have items for render or exchange, exist certain to make this very clear to your shoppers.

If you commonly ship beginning class, you can increase your holiday sales by offering priority and even limited aircraft. I oftentimes hear from boyfriend sellers that customers won't pay for more expensive shipping options; withal, I know from experience that customers will nearly definitely pay for expedited shipping! Practice your aircraft research this week and add your deadlines to your shipping policies (and club your priority mailing envelopes and boxes now, to avoid the last minute rush!).

If y'all offer complimentary gift wrapping, permit people know! I love buying gifts that are already wrapped. There are so many creative ways to inexpensively brand a package pretty. Add together something to your item descriptions about souvenir wrapping, as well as your policies section. And please, oh please, practice a superb chore with your wrapping. It would exist heartbreaking if your package was poorly wrapped, costing you echo sales from your client.

If you're an active participant in your venue'due south community, consider hanging some tinsel on your avatar equally well! Yous could add a snowflake that matches the snowflakes in your banner. Use 1 of your shop'south holiday creations for your image or one of your nearly popular items against a green or ruddy background! Experiment and play with this!

Terminal and past no means least, consider holiday-themed photos of your items. You could add snowflakes or other embellishment to existing photos using the magic of Photoshop. You could have new photos confronting a backdrop with Wintertime or holiday colors. Add a photograph showing your item gift wrapped, or partially unwrapped! If you use models for your items, have them decorate a tree or make a snowman or brand snow angels – anything fun, unique and eye catching that says "holidays" or "wintertime."

You don't have to spend a lot of money or go bezerk with your shop(s)' holiday decorating. Y'all should do something, unless it's just not appropriate at all for your shop's items or themes. For virtually of us, this is the fourth dimension to really piece of work on our shops – I want all of you to achieve resounding success this holiday season!

Is this your first holiday flavor in concern? Are you a seasoned pro? If the latter, what tips and advice can y'all share in the comments for both new and established sellers? If the former, what was most helpful for yous in this post and what else would y'all like to acquire virtually?

Allow's as well talk most our experiences as customers! What do you look for when you're shopping for holiday gifts:  free aircraft, gift wrapping, returns/exchanges? How important is a "decorated" shop to y'all? Do you look for expedited shipping, especially equally the large days arroyo?

Images:  Crimson Striped Ornament by Ashley Anna Dark-brown; Glitter array of Christmas tags by Made by Jackie; Ceramic ornament – discussion stars – past Newspaper Gunkhole Press

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