Hang on a second, young grasshopper. RepricerExpress wants you to go through a little ecommerce checkup list before you start prepping for holiday marketing and advertising. After all, the more prepared you are, the less time you’ll have to spend on the end result. An ounce of preparation and pound of cure, after all.
1. Take Every Action to Make Sure Your Site is Always Spiffy, Working and Efficient
During the Black Friday brouhaha in the United States (and Canada, too, to a lesser extent), merchants knew well in advance they had to put in a lot of legwork to deal with the extra traffic. However, one store, Best Buy, apparently didn’t get the memo.
For about two hours on 27 November, the Canadian version of the Best Buy website stopped working the way it should. Most of the problems were centered around the checkout process, with buyers either unable to complete their purchases or having their credit cards charged without orders going through. It’s not known how many millions the company lost, but the ironic part is Best Buy owns Geek Squad, a tech fix-it-all company that’s supposed to be adept in this sort of stuff.
The lesson in all this is simple: do whatever it takes to ensure your website is always up and running smoothly the way it should.
2. Distinguish Between Cash Flow, Revenue and Profit
It’s easy to lump everything together, but there are very specific differences between the three.
So, let’s take a look.
- Cash: It’s a type of asset, where an asset is a benefit you can use to leverage your position into something better. As long as you keep cash in cash form, like in a bank account, it’s an asset. Once you put that cash toward something else, such as purchasing more inventory, then it becomes a liability (until you manage to turn the purchase back into cash).
- Revenue: This is the total amount of cash flow you’ve got coming in from all sources. It only counts as revenue when it’s a unidirectional occurrence, but can take the form of things like cash, stocks, refunds and the like.
- Profit: No business can only take in revenue, as you’ll have to do things like pay yourself and your employees, pay for marketing and advertising, stock up on your inventory, subscribe to professional services and more. Once you’ve subtracted all your costs, the cash left is your profit.
Over the holiday season, keep a close eye on all three. If you’re successful in your practices at all, you’ll notice a big bump in cash and revenue. Resist the temptation to splurge on fancy stuff for yourself, and figure out a solid plan on how to use that to boost your business for the long-term.
If you need extra reminders on why you should avoid splashing out on Christmas gifts for yourself, remember that holiday hangovers will affect your sales. Conversions will drop off (sometimes steeply) in January and you’ll want to be financially prepared for that. It’s always good to sock a bit away to have a cushy rainy-day fund.
3. Make Sure All Your Staff Are on the Same Page
Once you’ve established your business to the point of being able to hire staff, you’ll need to ensure they’re all on the same page. What we mean by that is have everyone (including yourself) understand the following:
- The holiday season is not a great time to book a personal holiday. Give everyone the actual day off, but before and after, no personal leaves should be granted.
- Hire temporary staff if need be so no one person is stressed and overworked. It’s tempting to want to save on dollars by spreading the work around to your existing employees, but if the result will be burnout, you’re not being fair to anyone. And your employees will eventually find a boss who won’t do that to them.
- Go on damage control and de-escalate every situation before it ever explodes into something else. The rest of the year, you might be able to get away with employees bickering and sorting things out themselves. But during the holiday season, stay on top of everything like a task master. There are just way too many other things to worry about without disputes and disagreements taking over.
- Keep morale at a high level by doing random and nice gestures for everyone. You’re asking a lot more of your employees and they’ll be trying to give it to you, so don’t forget to show them your appreciation. Organise a luncheon or holiday party, create a secret Santa gift exchange, or just do something as simple as a little bonus.
