We all love the Christmas season (apart from Scrooge and Tom!). It’s the one time of year where you can celebrate the year gone by and enjoy some well-earned time with family and friends. From a business perspective, it’s a great opportunity to get yourself prepared for the following year so your business has the best chance of starting on a strong foot. Alternatively, you may wish to focus on engaging with your customers and make the most of the festive season.
In this article, we’re going to discuss how the Christmas period affects different types of business, and how you can use the time effectively for you and your business.
How Christmas affects different types of businesses
There is a big difference between retail and other businesses at Christmas time, so we’ve split the two out to give a better indication of how you can expect Christmas to affect your business.
Retail Businesses
Christmas time is usually the busiest time for retail businesses. Because everybody is trying to get their Christmas shopping done, it leads to an increase in the number of customers for retail businesses – this year especially as last year many people couldn’t venture out of their homes due to COVID.
It’s to be expected that many businesses will find themselves busier as people are out and about completing their Christmas shopping.
Other Businesses
Other businesses, such as service-based companies, or B2B businesses, often find themselves winding down for the Christmas season. Many employees choose to take time off to spend with their families, which leads to a shortage of resources for businesses, which many prepare for by lowering expectations over that period. This happens to most businesses in this sector, leading to a quieter period for these types of companies.
Why is it the most important time of year?
Christmas is a time of year that brings lots of opportunities for your business. We’ll split this section into retail and other businesses again to highlight the benefits to each, and why Christmas could be the most important time of year for your business.
Retail Businesses
For a retail business, this is the time that you may expect to be the busiest. People are making the conscious decision to buy from smaller businesses, so it’s important to make yourself aware so that you can attract festive shoppers.
Once customers are in your store/on your website, providing an excellent customer experience is of paramount importance. Without it, your customers may walk away without any incentive to come back, however, if you make their visit memorable, you may gain repeat business and/or recommendations for long into the future.
Other Businesses
For other businesses who are preparing for downtime over the Christmas period, this is a great opportunity to do some ‘tidying up’. Perhaps you have a project that you’ve been too busy to finish, or you’d like to start a new one, or even get on top of the pile of paperwork that’s sitting in the corner. Over the Christmas period, you can invest time into these areas whilst other areas of your business are quieter.
If you’re not sure where to start, consider looking at how you want to start next year, and if there’s anything you can do to get a head-start.
How can I prepare to capture the most customers/clients?
Preparing for new business is a great position to be in, but it’s important to make sure you take the right steps to avoid any unwanted delays or hurdles along the way. To help you, here are a few things that will help you prepare for capturing the customers you’re after.
Training
If you have staff, making sure they are prepared for an increase in customers is important so that everything runs smoothly when you get busy.
Processes
Ensure your processes are up-to-date and clearly defined so that your customers don’t experience any unnecessary delays.
Capacity Planning
If possible, look at previous years and try to plan the capacity that you’ll need for your business to ensure you’re not underhanded.
Systems
Ensure the systems you have in place are fit for purpose and don’t cause any bottlenecks in your process. If so, it may be worth looking at updating/upgrading before you get busier or preparing for a quieter time in the future.
Marketing Efforts
One of the most beneficial things you can do is look at your marketing efforts and see if you can tailor them for the festive season. For example, by marketing a product as a ‘great gift for a loved one’, people are more likely to buy it as it engages with their reasons for purchase.
What to do in the lead up to Christmas
We all know that time flies and Christmas is no exception – it’s going to be here before we know it. Here are a few things to help your business in the lead-up to Christmas.
Get Festive
Prepare for the festive season with special festive decorations. This can be in-store, on your website, your packaging, or something else entirely. It can help you enhance your customer’s experience and enables you to connect with them.
Offer Special Deals
It’s the one time of year that everybody is out shopping, so make the most of it! Sometimes special deals are enough to incite people to part with their cash and can sometimes prove more profitable than charging full price.
Generate Excitement
People love buying presents for one another, and if they find something that they’re excited to give to someone else, there isn’t much that stops them from making that purchase. If you can get your customers excited about your products/services and tap into that emotional feeling, it often brings better conversion rates with it.
How Weave Studios can help you through the festive season
Christmas is just around the corner, so it’s important to be prepared. We hope the above has come in useful and gives you some ideas that you can implement into your business.
At Weave Studios, we specialise in helping businesses with their branding, websites, and lots more. Here are just a few examples of how we can help your business prepare for Christmas:
- Our Print Services can help you with Christmas-themed printed merchandise.
- Our Branding Services can help you create a Christmas theme of branding for your business.
- Our Website Design Services can help you start the new year with a fresh, fully functional website.
For more information, contact our team today and we’ll get your Christmas project started!