Tips for Retail and eCommerce Businesses for the 2022 Festive Season

[Helen]

Making a (check)list, checking it twice…Read our checklist to help prepare for this busy time of year. Want to add something to the list? Join the Seller Community Retail and eCommerce Group and let us know: What’s the one thing you need to do so your business is ready for the holidays?

Get your Square Online Site in Shape 🏋

In the US, 60% of people prefer to shop online and 66% of people will do research online before they start their Christmas shopping (source). In the UK, according to recent research 51% of people prefer to do their gift shopping online in 2022.

Make sure your Square Online site is in ship shape by doing a ‘walkthrough’ of the site. Can customers discover and order gift cards easily? Is your return policy up to date? Can they contact you if they have an issue? 

Avoid Holiday Headaches: Update your Inventory 🧑‍💻

What item(s) will be popular in the next few months? What is likely to sell out? Can you give your customers advance notice – and a nudge – to place their orders now? Learn how to get your inventory in order in time for the festive season in our Support Center.

Prep your seasonal inventory

If you use Square for Retail check out our new Bulk Edit item feature* now available on Square Dashboard – save time making changes to your product catalog!

Build Your Social Media Calendar 📅

Start planning your social media content now. It can be as simple as making a spreadsheet and listing your ideas and pencil in the dates/times you’ll share the content. 

Square Small Business Evangelist @Pesso shared this advice about how he managed social media content for his ice cream store:

“Instead of randomly taking photos and posting them as we felt like it, we built out a schedule on a spreadsheet to keep our posts varied and engaging. We started out  posting every other day, and more recently we’ve started to post everyday. We set up our Instagram posts to automatically post Twitter too, to have a wider reach and impact with no extra work.”

Not sure what to post? Instagram has some great tips on their website Creative Instagram tips: How to make posts and reels stand out. Are your customers on TikTok? Read FAQs from Square sellers: TikTok Q&A: Ask us anything about the new Square TikTok integration.  

Join the Retail and eCommerce group.

[Abigails_stl]

Getting fully staffed and getting all of our holiday inventory checked in, priced and organized are our 2 biggest goals in October! But this list is great... helps to keep all of the other things in the forefront of mind.

[Helen]

Staffing is definitely top priority for the busy weeks and months ahead @Abigails_stl - thank you for adding that! 

[TCSlaguna]

We are really looking forward to the bulk edit item feature in Square for Retail. We are trying to combine some product categories to reduce the number of categories we have. Having bulk editing will speed this process up greatly. 

[LukeNieuw]

Great tips! Thanks for sharing this @Helen