Christmas Business 2023: The best logistics tips for your online shop

Martin Jezy10 November 2023

The festive season of Christmas is fast approaching! For online shops and markets, it holds immense significance. To ensure a seamless Christmas business with no hindrances or sales losses, careful planning is essential.

As a logistics expert, we're here to help preparing your online shop for Christmas in the best possible way. We have worked out our 5 best logistics tips for you!

  1. Staffing during the Christmas period
  2. Managing logistics, warehouses, and supply chains
  3. Implementing automated logistics processes
  4. Expanding ordering options for customers
  5. Seeking feedback from your customer base

1. Staff situation at christmas

  • Who is responsible for IT and monitoring the webshop along with processing daily incoming orders?
  • How many employees are dedicated to sales, and how many are involved in day-to-day operations?
  • In the event of key personnel being absent due to illness, do you have versatile employees capable of handling various tasks? Are they well-trained for such scenarios?

These are crucial questions that should be addressed well ahead of the busy Christmas peak.

Begin searching for suitable personnel in the summer, ready to support your company during the peak period in October or November. By doing so, you can avoid any emergency situations that may lead to significant sales losses!

[Translate to EN:] christmas business staff

2. Logistics, warehouses and supply chains at christmas

  • Maintaining a smooth supply chain is paramount to ensuring a successful Christmas business.

    Regularly communicate with your suppliers to stay informed about the current status, enabling quick response to any issues or delays. Be prepared with a contingency plan, equipped with alternative strategies to handle unexpected situations.

  • Keep a close eye on your inventory levels and plan ahead for the required assortment at different times.

    Your warehouse should be well-stocked but not overly full. Aim for an average capacity of slightly over 80%, and consider increasing it further as Christmas approaches. If you have outsourced your e-commerce logistics, it's wise to check with your fulfillment partner well in advance about the option of renting additional warehouse space. This will be beneficial if you anticipate a surge in orders or a significant increase in demand in a short period.

Strategically focus your inventory on items you intend to promote through advertising, and decrease the proportion of goods that have historically lower sales. This optimization will help reduce storage costs and streamline the order processing.

3. Automate your christmas logistics

Indeed, many webshop operators handle their entire e-commerce logistics internally, leading to a significant workload that consumes resources and results in additional expenses.

As a company grows in size, ensuring prompt and customary delivery to all customers becomes more complex. This includes managing the warehouse efficiently, fulfilling special requests like Christmas gift wrapping, and maintaining continuous coordination with shipping partners and carriers, such as the post office, DHL, DPD, among others.

Depending on your product type, the organization of returns is also not to be neglected! Especially after Christmas, many well-intentioned gift ideas go back to the sender and sometimes cause a lot of logistical effort. Professional fulfillment centers can take care of these tedious processes for you, or make them much easier, so that you can better concentrate on your core business

We specialize in handling e-commerce logistics and offer flexible services for companies of all sizes. Our fulfillment centers take care of all steps of your logistics and ensure significantly increased efficiency in parcel shipping. From connecting your online store system to storage, packaging and shipping.

Simply contact us, without any obligation.

4. Give your customers more order options

Numerous analyses show that customers prefer online stores that provide them with more order options.

This prevents you from losing a quarter of all orders on average! A decisive factor here: 60% of users choose their online store according to whether it offers their preferred shipping option and payment method! Therefore, make sure that you offer a wider range of order options in your webshop so that no one drops out shortly before the end of the order process. 

A few common examples:

  • Some people like to order their Christmas gifts at the last minute and accept higher costs - for express shipping, for example.
     
  • Others do not like to order on the Internet for environmental reasons, but absolutely want to give their loved ones exactly your handmade product. They would be happy with the possibility of climate-neutral shipping.
     
  • Likewise, there are many customers who are hardly ever at home and would like to pick up their packages themselves from a pick-up station.

Get advice from your fulfillment provider on what shipping options are possible and make them available in your web store.

In addition, Amazon has made it socially acceptable: if additional shipping options aren't possible for your business for various reasons, at least consider making deliveries free. This is a key factor that will make online shoppers choose you and your shop!
 

Discover our detailed guide about the Peak Season and learn more about how you can improve your online shop - both technically and in terms of content.

 

5. Get feedback from your customers

Last but not definitely not least:

  • Actively ask for feedback from your customers!

    This is a real goldmine that many companies often don't take seriously enough, or shy away from because they don't want to risk negative reviews on Google and social media. Yet it is one of the most important means of finding errors and learning from them in the future. 

    What's the best way to do this? Try to answer all reviews, comments and emails as quickly as possible and try to find a solution. Mistakes happen - if they are solved quickly, it shows your customers that you care and that they can trust your store.

  • Make it easy to give feedback! If you don't already do it, we highly recommend asking your customers for their feedback by email. It may be that some people were not satisfied with the process, but don't want to bother sharing their negative experience. 
     
  • Set up email automations that are sent a certain time after the order is placed and solicit reviews from your customers in a direct way.
     
  • This way you will not only find the most common reasons, such as late deliveries or faulty package contents which are usually reflected in the returns anyway, but also many other very specific problems that you might not even know about. The most popular applications to set up email automations through your website are Mailchimp, Active Campaign and Mailerlite.
     
    Several webshop systems like Shopify or WooCommerce already offer plugins to schedule and automatically send emails to customers.

Together with your e-commerce logistician, you can adjust various settings and improve customer satisfaction in the long term! Especially at Christmas, this is essential to build trust and drive your business forward in the long term.

  • Do you have any questions or would you like to automate your logistics? Just write to us, we'll take care of it.

 

 

Sources

Page: 19 e-commerce statistics you can use to guide your marketing strategy
URL: https://sleeknote.com

Page: E-commerce in the festive season: Why online retailers need to do more during the COVID Christmas period
URL: https://www.finextra.com

Page: Shopify App Store
URL: https://apps.shopify.com

Page: Active Campaign
URL: https://www.activecampaign.com

Page: mailchimp
URL: https://mailchimp.com

Page: Mailerlite
URL: https://www.mailerlite.com


Image sources:

Quivo / Logsta © 2023
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