When the holiday cheers come near, it seems everybody wants to be in the clear—of work-related stuff, that is!
Your current workload, jampacked calendar, and the shopping that you need to be doing either overwhelms you or thrills you, but the end result is just the same: your productivity dwindles.
Those “How to be Productive During the Holidays” posts (like this one) in business websites simply shows that the plague is real.
Maybe I don’t even need to serve you a platter full of statistics to prove this because you know the feeling very well. insert mischievous smiley here
But I still will share one to illustrate the effects this will have on your business.
On Christmas Day, there’s a 55% decrease in web traffic for a certain B2B website.
If you’re seeing a similar thing on yours, what does the decrease in traffic mean for your business?
Do You See What Your Website Sees?
Your website traffic gives you a rough idea of how your clients behave at this time of the year. This is especially true to e-Commerce businesses, online retail, SaaS companies, and other online-based businesses.
If you don’t have a website, look elsewhere. Look into your social media traffic. Survey the holiday plans of your crowd to know how to serve them in the following weeks. Research on your look-alike businesses.
You have to know your holiday demand so you can plan your marketing accordingly.
Are your clients active during this season? Will they need your service or support? Is it worth operating during the busy days? Will you still make profit or will you incur a loss because your expenses are greater than your profit during those days? If you’re having a Holiday sale, when is the best time to start and end it?
Take for example Debenhams. Campaign reported that the retail company gained a 3.7% rise in like-for-like sales for the 7 weeks before the 9th of January, while their online sales jumped 15.4%. This year, they’re hoping to still hit it big with their Cinderella-inspired Christmas Fairy Tale ad.
Research group Conlumino explained what Debenhams did, _”It reduced stock levels across clothing – particularly high margin, weather-sensitive categories – enabled the department store to enter the post-Christmas period with less discounted stock compared to the same period last year.”_Are
To be like Debenhams, take note of your purchasing peaks and your consumer behavior. If you’re a retail owner, this could somehow be applicable to you.
More shoppers are shopping online just days before Christmas and come back a week after for the Christmas discounts.
Will your employees be home for Christmas?
Now, another thing to consider is your team or employees.
What are their holiday plans and availability? If support is needed, will somebody be there to work on these days? Can your team handle all the sales and operations or do you need to hire an extra freelancers or workers just for this time?
You have to take into consideration the plan of your workforce too.
That seems a lot, eh? If you need some holiday stress management 101? Here we go.
Dreaming of a White Christmas
To make Christmas one of the most wonderful times for your business, you will want to invest in this: online form automation. We always give this advice and it’s actually helpful all year round.
But let’s just focus on the holidays for now.
Here are ways on how online forms can boost your holiday marketing, help you organize your team’s parties, and more.
Yep, you don’t have to be a Grinch this Christmas.
1. Take care of your orders and online payments
Have a specialty gift shop? Selling online baked goods?
Make sure that you cope up with orders this busy season by having an online order form that can take orders anytime of the day (or night) and one that can accept online payments too.
Having an order form frees up your team while minimizing human errors in taking orders manually.
2. Double your customer support form as a holiday announcement medium
If your business has customer support responsibilities, make sure clients are made aware of your schedule break. You don’t want to be answering support tickets on Christmas Eve, eh?
Sure, you can announce your holiday schedule via email or social media. But how about clients who missed those and thought you have 24/7 support?
Well, online forms can help you champion customer support. Add your holiday break schedule as a note in your support request form and your autoresponder messages.
This is to remind clients that you are on holiday and are not be able to attend to their request immediately. Include your return date so users know when to expect a reply and a resolution.
3. Run holiday contests and giveaways
The Holiday Season is a perfect time for you to let your dear clients know how much you appreciate their business.
Holding a giveaway or contest is a nice way of doing this while engaging your users at this time of the year. A competition entry form like this one will make this activity an easy one to manage—and share on social media.
4. Organize fun parties and tease party goers
Are you the designated party organizer for your office Christmas party? You don’t have to go cube hopping to survey if everybody’s going and which type of food they want to eat.
Create an event registration form with all the necessary questions and the map to the venue. Once that’s created, all you have to do is send the email and wait for their replies. No sweat.
Hooray! You have just created more time for you to take care of your actual work before the break comes.
5. Make Christmas wishes come true
Picking out an exchange gift for your work colleague is not easy, especially if you’re not that close with that coworker.
Here’s a trick to make everybody in the office happy when the wrapper-ripping time comes: a Santa Wishlist that asks what each wants as a gift, plus options if the main gift is impossible to find.
Holiday Stress Tip: Use a similar form when your kids start asking for too many presents for Christmas. Ask them to pick their top three items (you can set this on your form) because Santa can only give them 3 gifts max and the “form wouldn’t allow them to break this rule.”
See, coping with holiday stress ain’t that difficult if you learn to make online forms work for you the right way. We hope this article has sparked ideas on how you may be able to automate your workflows (and your personal life’s affairs) this season.
Let our forms be your little helpers so you can have more time to spend with family and friends.
Make your business work for you and try to relax. Enjoy the coming holidays. They only come once a year.
Aiza Coronado
Aiza is a Content Developer and Marketer at EmailMeForm. She easily gets upset when random dogs don't bark back at her hello's.
