Ecwid store setup checklist for Holiday sales
Dive into key features for your store that will help you increase sales and create an effortless fulfillment process during the rush Holiday period. Follow the checklist in this guide to make sure your store is 100% ready for the sale season.
Set up sale prices
Sale prices are the main thing that can seal the deal, enchanting your customers to make a purchase. There are several ways to put items on sale in your store.
- To put specific products or categories on sale, it’s best to use promotional campaigns on the Marketing → Promotions page. A discount will apply to many items at once and you can schedule when to run a sale. Prices automatically adjust when the sale begins and revert to their original values afterward.
- To create a site-wide sale, you can adjust prices for all products at once from the Catalog → Products page. Tick the checkbox at the top of the product list to select all items, and click Mass Update → Set Up Pricing to assign sale prices. Later, you can revert prices the same way by selecting Mass Update → Set Up Pricing → Remove “Compare to” price.
Pro tip: You can change the default text of your sales labels (e.g. HOT DEAL instead of ON SALE) and choose to display the price difference as a percentage or dollar-amount off.
Create promos for product and categories →
Set up sale prices for all items at once →
Set up discounts on cart total
Instead of putting individual items on sale, you can create a discount on cart total, meaning that the discount will apply to the entire purchase amount once certain conditions, like a minimum spend, are met. You can also limit the discount to customer groups to make your marketing strategy more versatile. For example, you can create a 5% discount for $200+ cart total, or 15% discount on all items for new customers. The on cart discounts can be created from the Marketing → Promotions page.
Set up discounts on cart total →
Create discount coupons
Coupons are pretty flexible to set up—you can discount a percentage (10% off), fixed value ($5 off), offer free shipping, or both discount + free shipping on products and categories. What is more, you can specify a certain shipping or delivery method for the “Free shipping” coupons to avoid spending a fortune on distant shipments.
You can set up coupons in Marketing → Discount Coupons on desktop. In the mobile app, tap Discounts.
Offer gift cards
Gift cards help uncertain shoppers to solve the What-To-Buy-For-Colleagues-And-Friends dilemma. Gift cards are especially helpful for last-minute shoppers since they will immediately get the card in their email and don't have to wait for a product to be delivered.
You can enable gift cards in Catalog → Gift cards. You choose the card amount yourself. The recipient can use the card amount as payment for multiple orders until the card is fully redeemed.
Add gift cards to your store →
Highlight special offers with promo bars
Inform your customers about discounts and special offers with promo bars and notes in your store. There are several ways to highlight seasonal deals in your online store:
- Promo bars in the New-Gen Instant Site
- Sliders in the New-Gen Instant Site
- Announcement on the store home page or a category page
- Product ribbons in catalog
The most eloquent way to display special offers is with bright promo bars available in the New-Gen Instant Site. You can even highlight your discount coupons on top of your website.
Add promo bars and announcement notes to your store →
Showcase your products with video
Various statistics indicate that around half of customers are inclined to make online purchases after viewing a product video. Elevate your chances of making a sale by adding videos to the product gallery. It can be a video showing the manufacturing process or providing instructional content on product usage.
Add videos to the product gallery in your store →
Highlight product categories on your Instant Site
To help customers navigate your store more easily, you can display categories in the top menu of your Instant Site. For example, if you sell running shoes and have categories organized by brand, you can add root categories to your menu bar to give customers a quick overview of your offerings.
Add categories to the top menu of your Instant Site →
Upsell with extra services at checkout
People tend to buy gifts during the Holiday season, so they need a special wrapping. You can offer a gift wrapping at checkout and add surcharge fees for that service.
All you have to do is create an extra checkout field in the Settings → Custom Checkout Fields, name it “Add gift wrapping”, and add a fee.
Pro-tip: you can use custom checkout fields to ask for additional information. E.g., what gift message to include, does they need an invoice inside the parcel, etc.
Create custom checkout fields →
Prevent your store from running out of stock
The best way to avoid running out of stock is to turn on email notifications about product stock — when a product quantity gets low, you’ll get an email alert and be able to restock in time.
And to prevent your business from overselling, enable the order quantity limits for your products. This feature allows you to specify the minimum and maximum amount of a product that is available per order. For example, you want customers to purchase 10 event tickets at most.
Enable order quantity limits for products →
Sell out of stock products with pre-orders
Enable pre-orders to accept orders even when you are sold out during the sale. Especially useful if you run a flash sale.
You can turn on pre-orders for each product individually in the Stock Control block on a product editing page in Catalog → Products. Shoppers will be able to order a product once it reaches “0” in stock.
Learn more tips how to manage your stock during the sale season →
Recover abandoned carts
Sometimes customers add products to the cart but don’t finish the purchase. In that case, you can remind buyers about unfinished orders by sending them emails. Each recovery email contains a list of products left in the cart and a button to complete an order.
You can set up cart recovery emails in the in My Sales → Abandoned Carts.
Pro-tip: You can download data with the details of every abandoned cart: customer emails, payment and shipping methods selected, products in the cart, and much more. Data is useful for analyzing your customers’ behavior and creating marketing campaigns.
Bring customers back with abandoned cart recovery emails →
Offer a variety of payment choices for your customers
Improve the customer experience and increase your sales potential by introducing a range of payment options in your store. For instance, alongside standard card payments, consider offering the Buy Now Pay Later option that is provided by PayPal. Additionally, you can enable subscriptions and start selling products on a recurring basis.
Improve order processing
To help you improve your fine-tuned fulfillment processes, you can enable custom order statuses to be more specific about the order processing stage. Once you change the order status, buyers see custom statuses in order email notifications and in their accounts in your store.
Create custom order statuses →
To better handle local deliveries, you can create a delivery schedule by adding pickup or delivery orders to your calendar. That way, all new orders with delivery or pickup time will appear in your calendar, and you will clearly see what order is next to prepare.
Add local delivery and pickup orders to your calendar →
Pro-tip: Use Ecwid mobile app to streamline your daily tasks. The app has all crucial desktop features, and a little extra like scanning barcodes, using in-app order reminders, creating a delivery direction, and more.
Analyze your store performance
On the Reports page, you can view various data about your store's performance, including visitors, conversions, orders, revenue, and marketing. You can select a specific sales period to see how your store performed during that time. For example, checking your marketing performance can help you identify the top sources driving traffic to your store, such as Facebook ads, gift cards, or abandoned cart emails. Additionally, seeing the most popular shipping and payment methods will help you decide if you should remove less popular options.
Learn about your store performance →
Pack like a pro
To make sure the package arrives safely, wrap your orders in quality packaging. We recommend Arka, eco-friendly custom packaging service at the best prices, lowest minimums and quickest turnarounds.
In the Arka you’ll find insert, poly mailers, stickers, and tissue paper, and boxes of different sizes. To seal the best deal, use the ecwid15 promo code to buy discounted packaging from Arka. To apply promo code, go to arka.com/ecwid, and start your design. You will be able to enter a promo at checkout.
You can also use the Arca app from the Ecwid App Market to customize your packaging.
Choose package for better customer experience →
Show delivery date right away
Number of shipments increases dramatically during the Holiday season, so there might be delays. Make it more predictable for customers when to expect their purchase by adding an approximate delivery date to a product page.
You can turn on displaying an estimated delivery date on a product editing page in Catalog → Products → Shipping & Pickup.
Add an estimated delivery time to product pages →
Inform customers about blackout dates
The Holiday season can be pretty overwhelming especially for local business and local deliveries. You may want to take a day off to manage order fulfillment or simply to take a break. To prevent customers from selecting your day-offs for delivery or pickup, add blackout dates to your store. Customers won’t be able to choose blackout dates at checkout as a date to get their order.
Speed up fulfillment with shipping labels
Each package needs a shipping label before it can be shipped. To save your time going to the post office, you can purchase shipping labels from your Ecwid admin. Currently, buying shipping labels is available for stores based in the US, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
You can buy a label by clicking Buy shipping label in the order details on My sales → Orders. In the mobile app, tap Orders → choose an order → tap Buy shipping label.
Pro-tip: you can assign staff accounts for employees that are focused on specific tasks. For example, shipping orders. Each staff member will have their own restricted permissions and individual credentials to log in to the Ecwid admin.
Learn more about shipping labels →
Handle returns
The more people buy, the more they return. Here’s what you can do to prepare your store for returns:
- Create clear return policy →
- Add a return policy to your legal pages →
- Prepare for refunds. With Lightspeed Payments, you can issue refunds from your store admin →
Add more languages to your store
Add additional languages to your store to engage with more audiences. Default content in your store (buttons, field titles, etc.) is translated automatically, while individual content (products names, descriptions, etc.) you need to translate manually. The New-Gen Instant Site is designed to create a multilingual site along with the store.
Pro-tip: you can assign staff accounts for employees that are focused on specific tasks. For example, shipping orders. Each staff member will have their own restricted permissions and individual credentials to log in to the Ecwid admin.
Add more languages to your store →
Make your website multilingual →
Manage orders on the go
When you are in the warehouse, on your way to the post office, or buying additional duct tape, you can stay in the loop about new orders with the Ecwid mobile app for iOS or Android.
With the app, you will get notifications about new orders, will be able to update catalog, upload new products by scanning SKU, and a lot more.
See feature highlights for the iOS mobile app →
See feature highlights for the Android mobile app →
Promote your store
Drive visitors to your website with ads in Google and on social media. The more visitors you get, the more orders you receive. Apart from the ads, you can promote your store right on your social media.
Here’s what built-in solutions you have to promote your store:
- Linkup. The tool allows you to share promotional content across your social media. You can even highlight your products and sell them directly on your social media accounts without needing platforms’ approval.
- Google Ads →
- Facebook Ads →
- Tagging products on Instagram →
- TikTok Ads →
- Remarketing. Statistics say that visitors may need to interact with your brand seven times before turning into customers. With remarketing, you can bring visitors back to your store.
Pro-tip: try not only paid traffic, but also organic one with the SEO settings. You can edit your products SEO titles and descriptions in bulk.
Improve your ranking in search results (SEO)
Along with paid ads, search engine optimization (SEO) is a great free tool to drive traffic to your store. Why? Because people search for what they want to buy, and SEO is the process of improving your site's ranking in the search results.
Your store is optimized for search engines by default, but you can improve search results for your site. It’s especially important if your store is new to the market.
Improve search results for your store →
Customize your store for something special
As you can see, there are plenty out-of-box tools to prepare your business for the peak season. Still, if you have something special in mind and want more specific tools for sales, check our customization options:
App Market. Dozens of apps that can add more marketing tools to your store, collect customer emails, integrate payment or shipping methods, and more.
Custom design. Change colors, fonts, expand the discount coupon field, and design your store in any other way with premade CSS codes.
Customization. For any peculiar needs, submit a request to the Ecwid customization team. Stores on Business or Unlimited plans have 2 and 6 hours of free development included in the plan, respectively.