The holidays are right around the corner and holiday shopping is in full swing for most! According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast the 2021 holiday shopping season is predicted to "increase by 7-9% with holiday sales reaching $1.28 to $1.3 trillion during the November to January timeframe". 

With those numbers we want to make sure your business is ready for the holiday crowds and rush. We found a great list created by the amazon pay team. They point out 6 ways you can prepare your business for this crazy holiday shopping season.

The 6 tips to get your business prepared for the holiday shopping season  are:

1. Increase your digital presence
2.  Get ahead with social media posts
3. Join a holiday gift guide
4.  Make sure you offer a gift card 
5. Be ready for more capacity 
6. Keep your and your customers’ info safe

You can read the full Amazon Pay article HERE.

These may seem like too much to do in the little time you have left ~ but there is still time for most of these! We suggest with your social media posts keep it simple! You can keep it to just posting about your sales and new arrivals each week. Something is better than nothing. Schedule it out beforehand and if you have more time you can fluff later! Here at WCE we have monthly social media post idea guides that can help you streamline this task. Click HERE for November's Guide. December's guide will be coming out at the end of November so keep your eye for it! We also have amazing social media managers in ShopaSmallBusiness.com that can you help you with this as well! 

Another suggestion we have to help break this list down is the digital presence and the gift cards. You want to make sure your customers can find you online. If don't already have an online shop or a way to take payments online you need to look into that ASAP. "Deloitte also forecasts that e-commerce sales will grow by 11-15%, year-over-year, during the 2021-2022 holiday season. This will likely result in e-commerce holiday sales reaching between $210 billion and $218 billion this season." That means YOUR BUSINESS needs to be online. If you can't get your business converted to an online presence this year try to make eGift Cards available to your online customers. This will open up your market and help out of town customers buy your intown customers gifts from you.

A few places that offer egift card options that you can look into:

1. Square
2. GiftFly
3. GiftUp

There are other options available too, but we really think adding egift cards would be a great addition to your business for the 2021 holiday season.

And lastly, we loved Amazon Pay's suggestion of getting on a Holiday Gift Guide List. Here are WCE and ShopaSmallBusiness.com we are doing weekly gift guide lists that each targets different topics. Click the button below to read the Holiday Gift Guides we have published so far.

ShopaSmallBusiness.com Holiday Gift Guides

The best part of our gift guides is that they are all Small Businesses! Yay! WCE & ShopaSmallBusiness.com members are the only ones that are included on the lists. For more information about joining Women's Council of Entrepreneurs and ShopaSmallBusiness.com click the button below.

More about WCE

As always, we hope this helps. Search our other articles for great tips and some free downloads too! And check out our all of Upcoming Events and in our Training Resources for more tools that can help you grow as an entrepreneur.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us at connect@wearewce.com! And to opt-in for WCE's text to get up-to-date info on events, resources, and deals simply text WCE to 936-228-6391!