Christmas and What it Means for Your Small Business

The Christmas season is one of the most lucrative times of the year. Have you been handling your business properly during this season?

As soon as summer ends, businesses hunker down for the most critical season in their calendar. At least… they should, if they want to make the most of booming sales over the holidays.

Retail businesses shoot up the most during this season, but practically all types of businesses should be seeing higher sales numbers. This is because people generally have more money, and spend more of it towards the end of the year.

Record-breaking

If you're late to the party, you've already missed out big time last weekend. If it's any indication of how crazy things got, Cyber Monday was record breaking with a 17% jump in online sales, totaling over $2 billion. It was dubbed "the heaviest online spending day in history." Black Friday saw over $9 billion in in-store sales plus $1.5 billion in online sales.

If you missed out, don't make the same mistake next year.

Don't Rest Just Yet

Whether you got a piece of that pie or not, this is still no time to kick back and sip some eggnog. This year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday figures combine for over $12.6 billion in sales. This barely scratches the over $3 trillion in U.S. holiday retail sales last year, a number that can only go up this year.

As consumer research firm ShopperTrak points out, most shopping gets done between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, so we're still right in the middle of things.

Mind the Technology

Although in-store sales figures still trump online sales by far, they were actually down about 7 percent year on year. Online sales, on the other hand, jumped 9.5 percent on the same day. This year, Cyber Monday was bigger than Black Friday for the first time ever. More and more people are staying at home and shopping online.

Having an effective online presence just keeps getting more important. Mobile commerce also deserves special attention, accounting for more than 20% of sales last Monday. Email marketing had the biggest impact on the same day, at almost a quarter of all sales.

Don't Forget the Reason for the Season

From Halloween to Thanksgiving, Christmas to New Year's Day, remember what's being celebrated – don't just treat them as opportunities to make money. In today's world, honesty and sincerity in business are essential. People will know if you've really caught the spirit of the holidays or are just trying to make more money.

Come up with deals that will give real value to your customers, and give them a celebratory experience befitting the holidays.

Make the effort to change the material on your pages to reflect each holiday as it comes, and say a few words about each holiday's true significance.

Doing these will not only attract more customers, but should make everything more fun for them as well as those in your business.

Cheers!