The holiday season is here! For consumers, it means decorated stores, peppermint lattes, and Mariah Carey. For business owners, it means the biggest shopping spree of the year that can make or break an e-commerce company. As an Etsy store owner, you have to prepare yourself in a way that allows you to capitalize massively, weather out the slow months, and set yourself up for massive growth for the rest of the year. Here’s our detailed:

Etsy Holiday Season Checklist

● Optimize Your Etsy Shop
● Add Pictures and Videos To Your Listings
● Create a List of Popular Items to Sell During the Holidays
● Stock Up on Inventory and Materials
● Write Up a Calendar
● Get Your Scores Up
● Plan Out Social Media
● Hire Some Extra Help

The holiday season can be very stressful so set yourself up for success this year by following everything on this list! Read below for a detailed way to prepare yourself for a season of joy and online shopping!

Making Sure Your Etsy Shop Is Ready For The Holiday Season

Most businesses can point to Holiday sales as the foundation for their revenue success. If you have a quality product or service and a solid brand you will undoubtedly see a 2x to 4x increase in sales during the months of November, mostly December, and some of January.

Not only will this give you double the amount of leads through emails, phone numbers, and other digital assets, you will have a surplus of cash to expand and scale in coming months leading to lower costs and a higher bottom line.

Finally, holiday sales always bring in new customers as a large chunk of sales are gifts, so you are reaching a whole new segment of people! This is how small businesses see 50% growth year after year.

So, trust us when we tell you, take the holiday season seriously! Brew a cup of coffee or cacao and take notes because you will need to checkoff everything in this list to ensure you are ready for the season of shopping:

Optimize Your Etsy Shop

If you take anything away from this article let it be this; your site’s SEO should be the number one thing on your Etsy holiday season checklist!

Having an optimized Etsy shop is a year-round good idea but without proper SEO you will ultimately lose out to your competitors this holiday season. Your Etsy shop needs to be optimized for you to rank better on search and allow customers to discover you easily through Etsy.

The three things you should optimize for the holiday season are:

1. Titles
2. Categories
3. Attributes

You could go above and beyond and also include a highly specialized ‘about’ section but for the time being, concentrating on these three will yield fantastic results. Read on for additional details on each:

1. Titles

This one may seem fairly obvious, but you’d be surprised how many Esty business owners don’t have solid listing titles. When it comes to writing a killer product or service title you need to think descriptive, short, and concise. Your title should reflect exactly what you’re selling but no more.

Try to keep it as short as possible but just long enough so your customers can buy without reading a product description. Pay close attention to the first term in your title, that’s likely what customers on Etsy will see first.

Pro tip: Even if you already have great titles with proven results you may want to experiment with more trending keywords leading up to the holidays to really optimize your listings and outshine the competition!

2. Categories

Make sure that you use the most specific category for your listings. Again, just like titles, you should review your product or service categories leading up to the holidays as there may be changes in search trends that you can quickly and easily optimize.

Don’t forget to add as many relevant subcategories as you can. A lot of Etsy sellers seem to ignore subcategories and tags which is a big mistake!

Pro Tip: Use different words and phrases for your categories and tags because they appear to work the same so you will massively broaden your reach.

3. Attributes

Optimized Etsy attributes have a direct impact on your product visibility so make sure you are checking and double-checking (better than Santa) these leading up to the holiday season. Attributes are tricky for some business owners because they fail to find that perfect balance between general and category-specific attributes.

Pro Tip: Don’t add the same word or phrase both in your attributes and tags, it will defeat the purpose. What you can do is use a term you’ve used in your attributes as part of a longer descriptive tag. So, if your attribute is ‘Flannel’ you can have a tag like ‘RedChristmasFlannel’.

Follow these tips and you will definitely see changes in your sales! Of course, there is a lot more that goes into optimizing an Etsy store for massive growth, especially during the holidays. For more in-depth and data-driven results contact us today and exponentially grow your shop!

Add Pictures and Videos To Your Listings

If you aren’t already doing so, you should jump on this today! Adding high-quality pictures and videos to your listings is a sure-fire way to maximize sales and grow your Etsy business.

Visuals like dynamic images and interactive videos are what your customers will see first. Apart from SEO, this is the number one way you can beat your competitors.

Keep in mind, it’s not just high-quality photos and videos but dynamic ones that work with your brand aesthetic and visual language. You want to set a mood and communicate an experience to your audience.

One thing you can do is add some holiday spark to your pictures. Throw in some red, green, and gold banners or snowflakes and a Santa hat. Get creative and don’t be afraid to experiment.

Create a List of Popular Items to Sell During The Holidays

Whether you have to add in new products and categories or just focus all of your energy on your best sellers, the holidays are an ideal time to narrow in on top-selling and trendy items in order to maximize sales.

You can get a head start on the season and make a list of all those products that do exceptionally well while leaving out those that lag behind. In the end, you’ll find that you have more money to invest into inventory and supplies for best sellers and will end up with what is referred to as a ‘lean production’ in business.

You could also experiment with circling in new and exciting items that you don’t currently sell on your website.

Research your competitors, trends, and holiday must-haves for this holiday season and make a list! That way you can add these products as listings to your Etsy shop and with the right optimization, you stand to win big!

Stock Up on Inventory and Materials

Having the capital or investment to purchase product materials and packaging supplies is something that most shop owners on Etsy struggle with. Even with great financial sense, having a full inventory can be a daunting task.

Still, you should never underestimate your sales potential come the holidays and the last thing you want to be us sold out of top-selling products when there are dozens if not hundreds of customers wanting more!

Make a list of the materials you will need to exponentially sell your products and stock up! Make sure your inventory is on lock and ready to go.

Write Up a Calendar

Here’s a big one, never leave anything to the last minute. You want to have a well-thought-out and mapped calendar of all the major events this Holiday season and address each one properly.

The season of giving doesn’t end with Christmas Day. What about Christmas Eve, New Year, and Hanukah?

More importantly, you need to plan and optimize your listings in a way that reflect each holiday in a unique way. Remember in business, if you’re on time you are already ten minutes late. Plan in advance and mark your calendars!

Here is a list of all the major days this holiday season that you can incorporate into your Etsy calendar:

● November 25 – Thanksgiving (United States)
● November 26 – Black Friday (US)
● November 27 – Small Business Saturday (US)
● November 28 – Hanukkah Begins
● November 29- Cyber Monday or Mega Monday (US/United Kingdom/Canada/Australia)
● December 5 – St. Nicholas’ Eve (Europe)
● December 6 – St. Nicholas’ Day (Europe)
● December 6 – Hanukkah Ends
● December 24 – Christmas Eve
● December 25 – Christmas Day
● December 26 – Kwanzaa Begins
● December 26 – Boxing Day (US/UK/Canada/Australia)
● December 31 – New Year’s Eve
● January 1 – New Year’s Day
● January 1 – Kwanzaa Ends

These are some general and well-known holidays for the US, Canada, and Europe; however, your niche may serve more specific holidays this season so be sure to research those and incorporate them in your calendar.

Get Your Scores Up

What scores and why aren’t they up? Your shop’s success is largely dependent on a few key scores including your Etsy listing quality score and your customer experience score.

Each listing you put out, Etsy will calculate a score which is based on how many people view your listing and when a purchase is made. The number one thing you can do to increase your listing score is to update your listing photo and title. These are what your customers see first so experiment with various options until you get the highest click-through and conversion rate.

You also have to pay attention to your customer experience score which is determined largely by your product reviews and market feedback. If you’re under the impression that customer reviews are out of your control, then think again!

Providing exceptional customer service and packing/dispatching orders on time will lead to a gradual increase in product reviews. You can also try incentivizing your customers by offering a 10% coupon if they leave feedback. Don’t ask for a five-star review, instead just ask for feedback, the reward and positive customer service should lead to a great overall score!

Plan Out Social Media

This may seem intuitive, but you’d be surprised how many e-commerce brands there are out there with no serious social media gameplan. Whether you’re running paid ads on Facebook and Instagram or rocking out some content on TikTok you need to be on social with a strategy.

Plan out a month of content, influencer marketing, and blog posts in advance in preparation for the holidays.

Now is not the time to skimp out or get lazy. Plan out a content calendar with relevant hashtags and block out chunks of your day specifically dedicated to creating posts, IG Reels, and LinkedIn articles. Dive in Pinterest and explore Facebook groups. There is no such thing as too much content and you never know where you will hit your stride.

If you are willing to invest capital then go for it with paid Google, Facebook, and TikTok ads. Just make sure you plan everything and hire help if need be, which brings us to:

Hire Some Extra Help

This may be your Etsy business’s best year yet! So, you have to ask yourself if you will be able to keep up with double or triple your usual demand and if you can afford to hire some extra help.

Don’t be too proud to admit you need help because a great business owner also knows how to delegate and hire effectively when necessary. The best part is, you don’t have to hire a full-time employee and worry about health insurance or anything like that! There are plenty of fantastic freelancer websites that you can use.

If you need to hire a VA check out our article on Hiring a VA for Etsy Administration.

The holidays can be stressful for Etsy sellers and shop owners so it’s important to plan ahead and avoid major problems or roadblocks. Prepare yourself for a fantastic holiday shopping spree with our Etsy checklist. If you would like to massively grow your Etsy business and take full advantage of the season, contact us today to learn how we can help!