Plan Ahead For Christmas According To Royal Mail

Christmas is near. We all know that when September hits, the Christmas shopping period starts for the most organised.

However, many still do not shop until the last minute, when shops and malls are crowded and people have to wait in line to pay.

In order to avoid that, and to help people plan for the holidays much better, Royal Mail has come up with some suggestions for sellers as well as buyers.

Royal Mail’s Preparation Advice

One of the things sellers can do is to share their forecasts early on. This will help buyers to plan their shopping ahead of time, and will not have to make the planning while in the shop or mall.

Another suggestion is to offer services that can cater to both early shoppers as well as late ones. This is sensible, as early shoppers needs will be different from those who would be shopping later on. Early shoppers should also benefit as well from incentives rather than waiting for the weeks before the big day.

Royal Mail also suggest that sellers should decide if the products are available for international shoppers. This would make sense especially for those engaged in eCommerce.

Shoppers might see a product that they like, only to find out it is not available for sale internationally. This can be a missed opportunity for the seller, especially if selling seasonal products.

Royal Mail also agree with us when we advised to order stock well ahead of Black Friday and the holidays. It has been known that sellers would run out of stock on the events themselves missing out on a huge sales opportunity.

Along with that, sellers are advised to order label stocks and other stationary. This again avoids unforeseen issues arising with dispatch.

Sellers would also do well to put Christmas posting dates in a prominent place on their site. This would be so buyers will know what to expect as well as when to expect it, and not be caught off guard that there is to be an event by the seller.

This will also help buyers to plan ahead. Fast delivery is crucial in such times as same day delivery is getting more important.

It has been suggested then for sellers to improve on first time delivery by offering services such as Local Collect from the Royal Mail.

Finally, Royal Mail suggests to make returns easy in order to for customers to keep coming back.  If a buyer knows that they have a flexible returns window, they will be much more likely to commit to the purchase.

Planning ahead will always make the holidays much easier for both sellers and buyers.

Dave Furness

Dave is a Co-Founder of eSeller365. For over 10 years he has been involved with eCommerce with a particular interest in the marketplaces and the huge opportunities available for sellers when utilizing a multi-channel strategy. After a year of being the UK’s youngest eCommerce consultant, he built an education platform called UnderstandingE that showed the world how to utilize Magento as the “Third Generation of Multi-Channel software”.

Dave has also created a YouTube channel dedicated to entrepreneurship and eCommerce as well as a podcast dedicated to mental health awareness. When Dave isn’t working his main interests include learning and playing Chess, researching the Crypto and NFT space, and trying to find the nearest beach.