Historic statistics have shown that sales during November and December increased by 5.5% over the same period in 2016. And that is no coincidence – because we’re talking about the holiday season.

The holiday season is every retailer’s prime time: motivated customers search high and low for the best deals, discounts, and products to buy off of the market. This gives retailers the chance to cultivate their crops exactly when they’re ripe.

However, that takes hard work and smart business decisions. We’ll make it simpler by giving you a useful guide on how to attract customers and increase sales in the holiday season.

Optimise your website

Considering how tech-savvy the modern age has become, people will most likely approach your store via the Internet first. Therefore, start off your holiday strategy by beefing up your online presence. Make your website as user-friendly as possible, with an eye-catching colour theme, simple layout, and useful links for customers to use.

Bonus: you can promote a festive mood with a holiday-themed website – customers will immediately feel reigned in!

You can also strengthen your website presence in terms of search results through SEO optimization – with carefully selected, popular keywords incorporated through your content, you can push your website up the ladder, and gain more popularity among curious customers.

Make the Most of Social Media

Social media is a quick way to connect with your target audience most directly – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the list goes on. Promote a sense of brand awareness, strong customer relationships and brand loyalty by interacting through social media platforms.

Here, all you need is creativity: video content, giveaways, contests, promotional advertisements – the ideas are cheap, easy and endless. Keep the content creative, engaging and shareable – the best kind of post caption is one that compels the customer to respond and interact!

Make sure your end goal is not only to drive sales but to secure customer retention; after all, only loyal customers can keep the sales strong.

Live in the Festive Mood

While creating sales strategies, we often get so muddled up in the technical details that we overlook the most basic feature of a retail store: visual attraction.

Customers appreciate a store that catches their attention – it’s what makes the shopping experience so memorable. So throw the “conservative” idea out of the window, and revel in the holiday season physically!

Now, we don’t mean you should paint your walls green and red when Christmas is around the corner – try something different. Accentuate your ambience with vibrant lighting, eye-catching window displays and even upbeat music. Go wild with festive signs both inside and outside your store; flyers, stickers, signboards at street corners – anything works! Curious customers will surely come in if they like what they’re seeing.

Improve the Customer Experience

Despite how happy people feel during holidays, the entire shopping experience can be exhausting – long queues, tiring trips round many shops and weaving through crowds can drain anyone out.

So focus on customer comfort. Make sure your staff is cordial, respectable and friendly. The store layout should be kept spacious yet manoeuvrable so that people don’t feel cramped; products should be placed at reachable places so that customers don’t feel added stress of searching for what they need.

Most importantly, you need to create a system for handling long queues. Too slow a line will most probably drive away a potential customer, and decrease your sales. To turn that around, invest in a good retail billing system like Oscar POS; it offers a number of payment options, which let transactions fly at the speed of light – and people don’t have to wait unnecessarily long.

Who says you can’t add your own flair? Here are some cool, new ways you can make your customers smile for sure:

• Offer delivery services during peak shopping hours so that your customer doesn’t have to stress out on yet another store visit
• Give free gift wrapping services for your customers – wrapper, bow, card, and everything in between!
• Send “thank you” notes with every purchase, so that you let people know you appreciate their presence
• Add a complimentary gift for loyal customers, for added customer appreciation and retention

Now that you’ve practically planned the ultimate customer pulling strategy, you’re on your way to confirm terrific profits for your business.

And you know what they say: the more, the merrier!