Manage Your E-commerce Like a Boss This Holiday Season

The holidays are just around the corner, and people have already begun to cross off their holiday lists of gifts for loved ones and friends. You may be ready for the holiday rush to begin, but there's also a lot to do with e-commerce holiday management while it's all happening and after it's over.

How to Effortlessly Run Your Online Shop During the Holiday Rush

To provide a fantastic client experience from beginning to end, several more measures must be taken. Here are a few e-commerce holiday management pointers to help you stay on top of things.

Make shipping a pleasant experience

Ensure that delivery and shipping go without a hitch. Accordingly, deliveries must be made on schedule, orders must be accurate, and customers must ultimately be satisfied with their purchases once they are received. There are a few ways to improve the shipping process for online purchases:

• Partner with more than one carrier, such as major shippers like UPS, or utilize 3PL and third-party fulfillment services.
• Provide live tracking so you and your customers can check the shipment's status.
• Update customers along the way so they know what to expect.

Provide excellent customer service

No matter how busy your online store becomes during the rush, customer service must always be top-notch. There are a few crucial strategies to stay on top of client enquiries and issues, whether you're managing your business alone or with the help of a customer support team:

• Have up-to-date, straightforward contact information on your website.
• Make an email inquiry form and use automation to notify them when a response will arrive.
• Create a chatbot for your website and make sure it is constantly watched when it is in use.

Clearly Display Your Return Policy

Strategize and create a seamless return policy that's straightforward for customers. If the process is hassle-free for the customer, the chance of repeat business is much more likely. Here's what you can do:

• Be transparent and clearly state what you're able to accommodate (and what you're not)
• Provide all the information and steps necessary to complete the process
• Offer flexibility in how returns can be reimbursed, i.e., full refund, replacement, store credit.

How to Clean Up Your E-commerce Store After The Holiday Rush

After the holiday shopping frenzy winds down, you still have work to do to ensure everything runs smoothly throughout the process. Here are a few ways to clean up your online store:

Remove All Holiday Content

You don't want to end up with Black Friday sales or holiday messaging on your site after the new year, so remove any special content you've added. Don't forget to check the following:

• Your store's homepage graphic
• Banners announcing sales or ship times
• Social media or other channels

Audit your inventory.

An impromptu audit is helpful after the holiday rush because details can get lost when an online store is overloaded. You will also be able to:

• Compare balance to capital.
• Check for differences in quantity.
• Identify the top-selling items

Reevaluate Your Store

Once you have updated reporting, you can begin to study your overall analytics, which will help you figure out what worked best and what didn't. That way, you'll be prepared based on your experience when the next holiday rush comes around. A few questions you could ask yourself are:

• Was my store's pricing on point? Should I lower them or raise them?
• Should I reconsider product offerings?
• Did customer service, shipping, and other services run smoothly?

Need Help with Your Online Store this Holiday Season?

With everything from updating your website, managing order processing, providing customer service, or analyzing data, your workload will likely double during the holiday season. To stay on top of it all, consider hiring a freelancer. The talented freelance community at Fiverr can help with everything you need. In fact, there's an entire category dedicated to e-commerce business management.