What you need to know about wholesale dropshipping in the holiday season
The holiday season is upon us once more. Most people are busy preparing for Christmas at this time. People go shopping for food, gifts, and other necessities for the holidays. However, this is also a time when many family households are missing some of their loved ones who are celebrating Christmas away from home on their own. This is the ideal time for entrepreneurs to seize the opportunity to profit from dropshipping business methods, since everyone is out there buying and giving gifts. Many dropshippers can launch discounts, promos and offers to encourage purchases and in return enjoy not only profits, but customer loyalty as well.
Families who are spending the holidays apart from their loved ones frequently use dropshipping as their last resort of being able to give and receive the warmth of the season through mail and packages. This is a period of rapid growth for e-commerce, with dropshipping on the rise, but this also means increased competition. So, in order to become a top-rated dropshipping institution, you must first prepare, and now is the time to do so.
In this guide, we are thoroughly eyeing at everything you need to know to get you ready in making this holiday a magical one.
Tips for Preparing for the Holiday Season
Each year, retailers and shoppers rely on the holiday season to make a heavy portion of their annual income. In order to stay ahead of the competition and be able to make this your strongest leading holiday season yet, here are some tips and tricks you need to know.
1. Get ready for incoming traffic
The holiday season brings more shopping, which results in greater traffic to your online store, particularly on peak shopping days. There’s nothing worse than a site outage during one of these peak times.
Make certain that your inventory (or your seller’s inventory) is well-stocked. Increased traffic necessitates increased inventory requirements. Contact with your suppliers immediately to ensure you’re adequately stocked, especially for likely gift items, to avoid long wait times and frustrated customers finding out their must-have gift is out of stock or on back-order.
Check your reliability. Your website must be scalable and stable in order to handle increased demands on your web infrastructure. Despite increased traffic, your site must be available when you need it. Check with your e-commerce provider for up-to-date statistics so you will know how well you are protected.
2. Be able to create a smooth and hassle-free customer experience
Today’s holiday shopper wants to be able to get what they need as quickly and easily as possible. That means your website must offer options tailored to their specific needs as well as a smooth path to checkout. Is your online dropshipping store up to the challenge?
Let’s look at some of the most important ways you can update your site to meet — and exceed — customer expectations and deliver that sweet holiday magic.
Help them find what they need and address their questions. Customers often ask a lot about their orders, their mails and packages, and other items they sent. They will ask about processes and policies of dropshipping and it is your job to make sure that they will get the answer they want in as little time as possible and that it will help them get the enlightenment they need.
You also must be able to let the shoppers be able to choose what they want and have the mental ease they need in terms of sending products they have purchased. Being able to gain your customer’s trust is one good thing you should consider, because that will encourage them to shop from you once again!
3. Manage to establish satisfaction with shipping and fulfillment options
To put a great customer experience strategy into action, you’ll need a clear plan for where to sell your products as well as how to ship and fulfill orders.
Decide how you will handle shipping and fulfillment. You will most likely see an increase in orders during the holiday season. To prepare for the increased traffic, you’ll need to figure out how you’ll handle shipping. There are three main choices:
- Ship and fulfill orders in-house.
- Use a third-party logistics provider to handle shipping and fulfillment.
- Use a dropshipper to handle shipping and fulfillment.
Regardless of which path you take, you’ll want to automate your shipping process. Shipping software allows you to compare rates, print labels, manage orders, print shipping labels in bulk, and reconcile shipping bills all from a single dashboard. You can also configure shipping rules to automatically select the best rate, fastest method, and so on.
Make the packaging and unboxing experience memorable. Ecommerce stores often have more than just a “brand,” but also a deeply rooted story. This story reminds the customers why they don’t buy the item from a discount store or a large marketplace, but rather go directly to your website for your products.
Yes, telling this story on your website, email communications, and social media channels is critical, but there is no denying the power of physically seeing and reading a message to make it stick.
Don’t forget about tracking as well. Customers want to be able to track their order from the moment they click “buy” until it is delivered to their door. With Narvar, you can provide your customers with an engaging, on-brand shipment tracking and messaging experience — and help to alleviate any concerns about lost or delayed shipments.
Establish a clear return policy. According to one survey, 96 percent of consumers will return to companies that make returns and exchanges as easy as possible. During the holiday season, how can you create the ideal return process?
- Include instructions on how gift recipients can return items using the original shipping package.
- Consider including a return label with each shipment so that the gift recipient can return it.
You risk losing a sale if your return policy is too strict during the holiday season. When it comes to returns, the holidays are a time when you should be a little more flexible and provide convenience for your customers — simply because things happen. Sizes are ordered incorrectly, a product is defective, expectations are not met, and so on. The most important thing for you to do is to establish trust by ensuring that your return policy is completely transparent and fair.
4. Be able to make strategic holiday marketing and promotions
Whether it’s new technologies or marketing strategies, merchants have had to adapt their stores to a slew of unexpected changes this year in order to sell their products as efficiently as possible.
That is why it is critical to ensure that your store is fully optimized and prepared with campaigns and promotional strategies prior to major holiday spending periods.
Here are some key planning points to ensure your store is fully optimized and prepared for the holiday selling frenzy.
Adopt promotional strategies to engage with your customers. There are numerous ways to modify your promotional strategy for the holiday season. Consider using gift cards to upsell at the checkout, providing seasonal services such as free gift-wrapping or shipping, or creating limited-time offers to create urgency.
Integrate your marketing efforts. Keeping a steady stream of content flowing is an important part of developing a holiday marketing strategy.
This can be accomplished through social media channels, blog posts, video content, and so on. Any web search traffic that leads to your website is good traffic. Customers will be drawn towards your store and thus boost your holiday sales if your content is original, up-to-date, and relevant to the holiday season.
5. Advance and enhance customer service and support
The holiday season is quickly approaching, and in order to be successful, both your company and your customers require adequate support.
Create a solid customer service strategy. Your store is backed by a dedicated support team. You must now look after your customers. The holidays are unquestionably a busy and sometimes stressful time of year. Prepare to deal with any questions or concerns, and make information readily available.
Have dedicated support and respond to inquiries as soon as possible. Even if something goes wrong, a positive customer service experience can result in a loyal customer. You should have a dedicated phone, email, and social media support, and be able to respond to all inquiries within 24–48 hours.
Customers should be asked for feedback. You can also offer a special one-time discount or free shipping to encourage your customers to leave a review. Feedback and reviews can help you broadcast trust to new customers in addition to helping you improve your products and services.
6. Address and talk to suppliers in advance
Managing the status of your inventory may be the most difficult but crucial aspect to manage. If you suddenly receive a large number of orders and your supplier is unprepared, you may lose customers or, worse, provide a poor customer experience.
Order delays, unavailability of a product even if it is listed on the store, and poor packaging due to order influx are just a few examples of how things can go wrong. So, the first thing you should do to prepare your store is to speak with your suppliers and maintain transparency. Remember, a supplier you can trust will make or break your wholesale dropshipping business this holiday season!
7. Review and familiarize yourself with company policies
Dropshipping stores frequently work with multiple suppliers, making this step even more important. Discuss how much they can accommodate and establish a process for the organization.
This should be done several weeks before the holiday season begins so that you have a clear understanding of what needs to be done and a backup plan in case something goes wrong.
If you don’t want to exhaust your operation dealing with exchanges, returns, and other order issues during the holiday season, you can have your standard store policies in effect. A clear-set policy helps the business operations and eliminates the chances of customers or employees abusing the business.
To avoid the hassle, clearly state store policies outlining how users should handle refunds and returns during sales. Not only will this ensure that customers are aware of your policies, but it will also instill trust in your store and demonstrate your commitment to providing an excellent customer experience.
During the holiday season, you should clarify the following:
- Returns or refunds
During holiday sales, many stores do not accept returns or refunds.
This is due to the fact that these products are already discounted, and engaging in returns or refunds can be costly due to the shipping and logistics involved. If you still want to offer them, make sure the timelines and processes are transparent.
- Shipping and taxes
Inquire with your suppliers about their ability to handle surge orders and how long it will take to ship and deliver them. It is best to keep some buffer time.
Similarly, be open and honest about shipping costs, and check with the supplier to see if the previous rates can be maintained or if they need to be revised.
8. Develop an advance advertising plan and budget allocation
During the holidays, you will see loyal customers purchase from you, but you will also gain many new customers. To maximize the impact of your efforts, create an advertising plan and budget before the season begins.
It’s critical to assess your most profitable channels before laying out your strategy. Understand where your customers are coming from: organic search, paid social media promotions, email marketing, and social media channels.
The holiday season is not the time to try out new advertising channels. Instead, you should double down on methods that have previously worked well for you and optimize them for better results. People are free from work and are chilling at their homes, so capitalize on that opportunity!
Here are a few steps you can take to accomplish this:
- Create and allocate a budget to different channels after assessing your advertising channels.
- Create an ad strategy that allows you to prioritize channels based on previous traffic and conversions.
- Hire a team or delegate tasks to an existing team of full-time employees or freelancers to put your strategy into action.
- Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the success of your efforts, such as traffic, sources, conversions, channels, clicks, and so on.
- To generate buzz about your sale and store, create great content and use a solid social media strategy.
- Use innovative strategies such as contests and giveaways, partnering with influencers, and developing a loyalty program to effectively promote your holiday sale.
- Prepare your advertising strategy well in advance of the holidays. This would give you time to raise awareness about your store.
People will come in for the familiarity and purchase once you launch your deals.
9. Be able to learn about top-selling and in-demand wholesale dropshipping products
Not all products sell the same way, and if you can identify and improve your top-selling products, you may be able to increase your sales.
More than simply offering a variety of products, curating and positioning your best-selling products will help you drive more conversions and pique the consumer’s interest in further exploring your store.
Here’s what you can do to find out more about these products:
- Examine the customer purchase history for the previous 9-12 months and select the products with the highest sales. Determine whether the product is relevant during the holiday season and include it accordingly.
- Analyze your previous holiday season purchase history and select the products that performed exceptionally well. Consider reintroducing them or adding an upgrade to those products to boost sales.
- Once you’ve identified your top-selling products, you can strategically position them throughout the website and run promotions on them to attract more customers.
Alternatively, you can research Google trends, communities, and industry reports to identify potential best-selling products that you can supply and list on your dropshipping store.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The holiday season is favorable for dropshippers; thus, take this opportunity to promote your eCommerce. Several dropshipping stores have started their gimmick to boost sales, especially during Christmas or New Year seasons. Think about how you will relate your eCommerce during these holidays.
Christmas and New Year bring several eCommerce stores to business scaling — considering freebies and several kinds of treats to attract several customers since, during holidays, competency is prominent. Besides, people worldwide have been experiencing holidays once a year. So, dropshippers must be flexible in integrating holidays with their brands and products.
Adaptability and flexibility are crucial in stimulating sales during holiday seasons. It indicates preparation and forethought to make your dropshipping store competent during the holiday season. Make sure during the holiday season, the more clients you have, the more employees you need to hire to process all of your product orders.
LET’S GO!
COVID-19 affected everything, for, during holiday seasons, spending habits and budgets have been compromised. Besides, dropshippers worried about the effect of the pandemic on their dropshipping stores. These days, shoppers prefer to shop online, thus creating eCommerce competition and fluctuation of orders. No worries! If it sounds like too much work, Adserea offers quality services in managing traffic for you!
Surprisingly, Adserea is known for conducting eCommerce analysis. Thus, we could help you analyze trending products to add to your eCommerce store. Besides, we are one of the best e-commerce marketing agencies.
GET STARTED.
Adserea is probably the most recent e-commerce marketing agency. Wherein, you can advance your business through promotion – that you can plan and work. How about we cooperate at Adserea! You might send any of your videos or try our services to optimize your website’s traffic — to improve your product sales and engagement. Are you ready for a new level of exposure? Try Adserea services! We provide product quality at a reasonable price! Get started now! adserea.com
